Enriching himself and his family
Crypto.com spent more than a year under investigation by federal regulators, who had signaled that enforcement action was likely. After Trump won the election, the firm hired a lobbyist close to him and donated $11 million to political committees tied to him. Within months, the investigation was dropped. By August 2025, Crypto.com committed roughly $1 billion to a new venture with Trump’s own social media company, which put up little cash yet received a substantial ownership stake. The Associated Press documented the arc, from investigative target to business partner of the president, as a case study in the conflicts of interest of his second term.
Sources: From investigation target to the president’s business partner (PBS / Associated Press)
Trump's own financial disclosure shows he made about $1.4 billion from his crypto businesses last year, most of it from buyers whose identities are not public. One of the largest known purchases, $100 million of tokens from World Liberty Financial, the venture run by Trump and his three sons, came through a firm called Aqua 1; as much as $75 million of it went to a company the family controls. A New York Times investigation identified the man behind Aqua 1 as Guren “Bobby” Zhou, a failed British retailer who has been under an active money-laundering investigation in England since 2021. He has not been charged. World Liberty said it followed all applicable laws and declined to say whether it knew the source of the funds.
Sources: New York Times investigation · $75M to the family, buyer under UK probe (Crypto Times)
On August 1, 2026, Trump Media launched “Truth API,” a paid feed that sells trading firms the fastest access to posts from the most influential Truth Social accounts, including his own, delivering them in milliseconds for up to $100,000 a month. His posts routinely move markets: a single tariff announcement can swing the major indexes within minutes. Trump owns about 41 percent of the company through a trust his children oversee, so nearly half of every subscription fee flows to him. The company says the feed sends posts the instant they are public, “not before,” but the whole value is a speed edge ordinary investors cannot match. A former SEC lawyer says it normalizes insider trading, members of Congress have asked the SEC, now led by his own appointee, to examine whether it is legal, and one Wall Street executive told NPR that in another administration it would be considered criminal.
Sources: The product and the $100k fee (Fortune) · His stake and the company’s own pitch (Time) · Wall Street and a former SEC lawyer react (NPR)
On January 17 and 19, 2025, days before he was sworn in, he and Melania launched “memecoins,” $TRUMP and $MELANIA, with the family’s own firms controlling most of the supply. On-chain analysis found that hundreds of thousands of small wallets lost money as the coins collapsed, while the family’s companies collected hundreds of millions of dollars in trading fees, a direct transfer from ordinary buyers to the president’s family. He then made access to himself the prize: the top 220 holders of $TRUMP were invited to a private dinner with him and the top 25 to a White House tour, so buying the coin bought time with the president. Blockchain researchers later estimated total retail losses in the billions.
Sources: The on-chain data: small holders lost, the family’s firms profited (CoinDesk) · The dinner for top holders (ABC7) · Total retail losses (Yahoo Finance / CryptoRank)
In January 2026, Trump, two of his sons, and the Trump Organization sued the IRS for $10 billion over a contractor’s leak of his tax returns, a case in which he was both the plaintiff and, as president, head of the agency he was suing. Todd Blanche, then his acting attorney general, settled it: a $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to pay people who claim the government targeted them, a pool critics in both parties said could reach January 6 rioters, plus a permanent bar on the IRS pursuing tax claims against Trump, his sons, or his companies. Two Republican senators, John Cornyn and Thom Tillis, held up his confirmation over it, with Tillis calling the fund “horrible policy and horrible politics” until Blanche vowed in writing to scrap it; both then relented, and the Senate confirmed him on August 8. Then 35 former federal judges appointed by presidents of both parties moved to reopen the case as “collusion” and “a fraud on the court.” A judge agreed, found the suit was “brought to manipulate the judicial process,” sanctioned Trump’s lawyers, and halted the fund. The tax immunity remains.
Sources: A judge finds collusion and sanctions his lawyers (The Hill) · 35 former judges of both parties call it a fraud on the court (CNN) · Republicans held up his AG confirmation over it (Axios) · The fund halted; the tax immunity remains (CBS News) · Confirmed 50-49 on Aug. 8, 2026 (NBC News)
His own financial disclosure shows the family's crypto venture generating well over a billion dollars. Days before the inauguration, a firm backed by the United Arab Emirates paid $500 million for a stake in it, a deal signed by his son Eric, at the same time the UAE was seeking access to advanced U.S. chips his administration controls. His sons, including Barron, are listed as stakeholders.
Sources: The $1.4 billion, Fortune · UAE deal in the disclosure, The Hill
His 2025 financial disclosure, an official government filing, records more than 21,000 securities transactions in stocks, bonds, and funds in a single year, on the order of 85 on an average trading day, an unprecedented volume for a sitting president. Many were in large companies with business before the federal government, and in more than 200 cases a stock was bought in one of his accounts the same day it was sold in another. The Trump Organization says outside managers run the accounts and that he plays no role in the trades. Even so, it is a sharp break from recent presidents, who generally held index funds and Treasuries rather than actively traded securities.
Sources: The disclosure (CNBC) · The analysis: 85 trades a day (Bloomberg)
Qatar gave the administration a Boeing 747 to serve as Air Force One, which the government spent about $400 million to retrofit. It is widely described as the most valuable gift ever given to the United States by a foreign government, and it is slated to go to his presidential library afterward. Even his own base balked: MAGA commentator Ben Shapiro called the jet “skeezy” and “not America First,” and Laura Loomer called it a $400 million “gift” from “jihadists in suits.”
Sources: The jet and the $400M, PBS · His own base called it a bribe (Axios) · Covered on the Christian right (CBN News) · MAGA backlash (Axios)
In October 2025 he pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of Binance, who had pleaded guilty to a money-laundering violation. Binance hosts the Trump family's crypto venture, wrote the code for its stablecoin, and helped arrange a $2 billion foreign investment that added billions in paper wealth to the family. Zhao had personally sought the pardon. The pardon and the ties are on the record; whether it was a trade is not proven.
Sources: The pardon and the family crypto ties (CNBC) · The connection, NPR
His 2025 inauguration raised a record ~$239 million, including $1 million or more from 104 companies, many of which had not given to his campaign but gave once access came with it. His first inauguration had capped donations and rejected corporate money; this one did neither. Separately, media companies routed about $64 million in lawsuit settlements to a Trump library fund that was then dissolved with no public accounting. The money is documented; whether it bought anything is not proven.
Sources: The record haul, from the FEC filing (Daily Caller) · The norm break, Brennan Center · Dissolved library fund
After saying earlier that his ballroom project “won't interfere with the current building,” in October 2025 he had the entire White House East Wing demolished to build one, proceeding without sign-off from the federal commission that normally reviews such changes, and against roughly 98% negative public comments. The cost roughly doubled to about $400 million, and the private donors covering it include corporations with business before his government, Apple, Google, Meta, Palantir, and Lockheed among them.
Sources: The White House donor list (The Hill) · Those donors' $50B in federal contracts (Public Citizen) · Demolition and cost, CNBC
He promised to fix the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool for about $1.8 million; the cost ballooned to $14.7 million. The Interior Department bypassed competitive bidding, giving the main contract to a company that had previously worked on Trump's own properties, after he said he had “a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools”, and a second no-bid contract to a firm owned by a Trump donor. The paint later peeled and the pool turned green.
Sources: $14.7M no-bid contract, The Hill · Won't rebid, PBS/AP
Turning the government’s power to his own ends
Starting in late 2025, DHS spent $464 million on a no-bid contract for 10 used planes, citing an urgent need for deportation flights. The planes then sat idle for months at a Louisiana airport. Three are luxury business jets, one now lent to FBI Director Kash Patel, whose bureau already has its own; another was outfitted with a bedroom, shower, bar, and flat-screen televisions. The seven Boeing 737s, DHS said, it lacked the staff to fly. The vendor, a first-time federal contractor, has a chairman who donated to a political committee tied to then-Secretary Kristi Noem, who approved the deal before Trump fired her. Former DHS officials and Senate appropriators call it a waste and have asked the inspector general to investigate.
Sources: Homeland Security paid $464M for planes, then parked them (New York Times) · The deportation planes sitting idle in Louisiana (CNN) · The no-bid deal and the donor contractor (Newser)
In 2026 the Department of Homeland Security waived dozens of federal laws, the National Park Service Organic Act, the Endangered Species Act, the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, the Clean Water Act and more, to fast-track border barriers and roads through Big Bend National Park, a Texas crown jewel. Bulldozers broke ground near Santa Elena Canyon in August. Texas’s Republican land commissioner sent Customs and Border Protection a cease-and-desist for clearing state land, seven former Big Bend superintendents urged DHS to reject the waivers, and a coalition sued, arguing the waivers were unconstitutional. The security case is thin: the park accounted for 0.045 percent of the nation’s border apprehensions, with no documented illegal vehicle crossings. The contracts run to billions.
Sources: DHS waives dozens of laws for Big Bend border barriers (Houston Public Media) · Bulldozers break ground in Big Bend National Park (Center for Biological Diversity) · $1.7B and $2.6B border contracts through Big Bend (San Antonio Current)
On August 13, 2026, Trump signed a national security memorandum directing the Navy to abandon the electromagnetic catapults on its Ford-class aircraft carriers, the most advanced in the fleet, and revert to steam, which the Navy has not purchased in more than twenty years. Defense analysts say the change will cost billions, force extensive ship redesigns, and reduce the carriers’ capabilities, and many naval officers opposed it. His stated reasons were his own: he called the modern system “stupid electric” and said of steam, “you fix it with a hammer and a blowtorch.” The same memorandum also turns to allied foreign shipyards to build some U.S. warships as a temporary bridge while domestic capacity is rebuilt, an unusual step for a president who vowed to resurrect American military shipbuilding. Weeks earlier, China had showcased its newest carrier launching jets with the very electromagnetic technology he ordered removed.
Sources: Trump orders return of steam catapults (Breaking Defense) · Ordered back to steam over officers’ objections (Bloomberg) · China fields the tech he is abandoning (Interesting Engineering) · The memorandum, in full (White House)
On his first day in office, Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America” by executive order. When the Associated Press kept the long-standing name in its global stylebook, the White House barred its reporters from the Oval Office, Air Force One, and the press pool. The AP sued, and in April 2025 US District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, ruled the ban unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination: once the government opens its doors to some reporters, it “cannot then shut those doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints.” The administration appealed, and a divided appeals court let the ban stand while the case proceeds. Forty-six news organizations, including Fox News, backed the AP.
Sources: Judge McFadden’s ruling (NPR) · Timeline and appeal stay (U.S. Press Freedom Tracker) · 46 outlets, incl. Fox, backed the AP (RCFP)
In early 2026 Trump pressed for US control of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the NATO ally Denmark, saying the US would have it “one way or the other” and at first refusing to rule out military force. To pressure a sale, he threatened tariffs on eight European allies, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK, set to rise from 10 to 25 percent. Denmark deployed troops to Greenland and warned that any attempt to take it by force would mean the end of NATO. Several Republican lawmakers criticized his use of economic pressure against allies. Trump walked back the tariff threat and ruled out force, then revived the demand at the NATO summit that July.
Sources: “One way or the other”, force not ruled out (NBC) · Tariff timeline on eight allies (CNBC) · Republicans criticized the economic pressure (TIME)
Trump created DOGE and put Elon Musk in charge of cutting federal spending. DOGE published a 'Wall of Receipts' claiming about $215 billion in savings. In August 2026 the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office examined $110 billion of it and could not verify most of what it checked: two-thirds of the claimed contract savings were unsupported or did not follow DOGE's own method, 96 percent of claimed grant savings could not be substantiated, and $27.4 billion was credited to 2,503 contracts that were never terminated. Of 264 leases DOGE claimed it canceled, 108 were already being terminated before DOGE existed.
Sources: GAO report (GAO-26-108615)
In late July 2026, the FBI, the EPA, and the federal cybersecurity agency CISA, all part of his own administration, warned that hackers had struck municipal water systems in at least seven states, degrading operations at more than 30 facilities in Minnesota, with officials examining possible Iranian involvement. At a televised Cabinet meeting, Trump rejected that and blamed the state itself: 'I don't think there was an Iranian cyberattack. I think that Minnesota is behind it,' he said, calling the state 'grossly incompetent' and its governor 'corrupt.' The source of the attacks remained under federal investigation.
Sources: His own agencies' joint advisory (EPA) · His remarks blaming Minnesota (The Hill)
He ordered a rushed $14 million renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. When it failed, his administration blamed vandals and had a former Olympic athlete, David Hearn, indicted for felony destruction of property, along with several others. His own Interior Department was holding an engineer’s finding that the damage came from a botched contractor installation, and did not turn it over. Once it surfaced, his Justice Department dropped the case, stating in a court filing that the damage was “the result of a botched installation and not vandalism” and that it would never have sought the indictment had the evidence been disclosed. He then rejected his own department’s conclusion, insisting on Truth Social it was “a pure case of VANDALISM” and faulting his own appointed U.S. Attorney, Jeanine Pirro.
Sources: The dropped case, and his attack on his own prosecutor (Axios) · His own DOJ’s filing: a botched installation, not vandalism (NBC News)
His FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, told ABC and its stations to take action against Jimmy Kimmel over the host’s remarks, or face “additional work for the FCC ahead.” Within hours, station groups with business pending before the agency pulled the show and Disney suspended Kimmel, who returned only after a public backlash. Carr uses the same leverage elsewhere: he revived a “news distortion” complaint against CBS while its parent needed his approval for an $8 billion merger, which cleared after the network settled Trump’s lawsuit for $16 million. Republicans said so in their own words. Sen. Ted Cruz, a Carr ally who chairs the Commerce Committee, called the Kimmel threat “right out of Goodfellas” and an unconstitutional coercion, and Sen. Rand Paul called it “absolutely inappropriate.” Former FCC chairs who served under Reagan even petitioned to repeal the doctrine Carr was using, calling it weaponized. Trump backed Carr over Cruz.
Sources: Cruz (R) on the Kimmel threat (Texas Tribune) · The CBS merger and the news-distortion doctrine (Reuters) · Reagan’s own FCC chairs call it weaponized (Deadline)
When Republicans broke with him, the punishment was swift. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina voted against the Medicaid cuts and, within a day of Trump threatening to back a primary challenger, announced he would not seek reelection. Marjorie Taylor Greene, once among his most loyal allies, broke with him mainly over releasing the Epstein files; he branded her a 'traitor' and 'wacky,' and she resigned rather than face a Trump-backed primary. The warning to the rest of the party was the point.
Sources: Tillis, after his no vote and Trump's primary threat (The Hill) · Trump's 'traitor' post, in his own words (Fox News)
Presidents have kept their hands off the Federal Reserve to protect the economy from political meddling. In August 2025 he moved to fire Governor Lisa Cook over a fraud allegation about mortgage paperwork predating her appointment. The Supreme Court blocked it 5–4, with the Chief Justice writing she was denied due process. Its own opinion states she was the first Fed governor fired in the bank's 111-year history.
Sources: The Supreme Court opinion · The ruling, reported on the right (Washington Examiner)
After years of Republicans branding Democrats socialists, his administration took a 10% stake in Intel, a “golden share” with veto power over U.S. Steel, a $400 million stake making the government the largest owner of a rare-earth miner, and a 15% cut of Nvidia and AMD chip sales to China. Republican Senator Rand Paul called it “a step towards socialism,” and a prominent conservative host called it “actual socialism, happening by a Republican administration.” As of this week the government portfolio spans 30 companies, from Intel to a fresh round of chipmakers pressed to hand over equity as a condition of CHIPS Act funding; even the libertarian Cato Institute notes “how unremarkable government ownership is becoming.”
Sources: Rand Paul (R), CNBC · WSJ & National Review call it nationalization (Cato) · GOP criticism (The Hill) · Now 30 companies (Yahoo Finance) · The $874M letters of intent (Commerce/NIST) · Equity as a condition of funding (Fox Business)
His tariffs cut farmers off from foreign buyers, above all China, so he is sending them federal checks to cover the losses: a $12 billion package announced in December 2025, on top of roughly $28 billion in his first term. “We’ve made so much money on Tariffs,” he wrote, “that we are going to take a small portion of that money, and help our Farmers.” Republican Senator Ben Sasse called the first-term version welfare (“At no point have I heard a farmer or rancher say we want more bailouts”).
Sources: The $12B bailout (CNBC) · $28B in the first term (Investigate Midwest) · Sen. Sasse (R) calls it welfare (CBS)
In June 2026, National Guard troops and U.S. Park Police held former Olympic canoeist David Hearn for five hours after he touched the peeling lining of the drained Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool during a bike ride, and prosecutors charged him with damaging it. Six weeks later the Justice Department moved to drop the case. Its own court filing conceded the damage came from a “botched” and rushed installation by the government’s contractor, hurried to finish before Trump’s America 250 celebration, not from any vandal.
Sources: The DOJ dismissal motion (AP) · AP (Arab News)
He publicly pushed for years to prosecute people who crossed him. When the U.S. attorney in Virginia found too little evidence to charge former FBI Director James Comey and was pushed out, Trump installed his own former personal lawyer, Lindsey Halligan, who had never tried a case. Within weeks she secured indictments against Comey and against New York Attorney General Letitia James, whose office had won a fraud judgment against Trump. In November 2025 a federal judge dismissed both cases, ruling Halligan’s appointment unlawful and her actions “unlawful exercises of executive power.” Court filings also revealed the grand jury was never shown the final indictment it supposedly approved against Comey. His DOJ had announced the Comey charges itself, and separately indicted his first-term national security adviser, John Bolton.
Sources: The DOJ's own press release announcing the charges · A judge dismisses both cases as unlawful (CBS News) · The grand jury never saw the final indictment (PBS News)
After New York Times reporters wrote about security gaps in the new, Qatari-gifted Air Force One, the Justice Department subpoenaed them to a grand jury and sought their phone records, with agents delivering some subpoenas to reporters' homes. His attorney general had first rescinded the policy protecting journalists' records in leak investigations.
Sources: The subpoenas, PBS · The escalation, and the rescinded press protections (AP via ABC7)
Congress made agencies like the Federal Trade Commission independent, with members removable only for cause. He fired two Democratic commissioners anyway. To uphold it, the Supreme Court's conservative majority overruled a unanimous 90-year-old precedent 6–3. Justice Sotomayor wrote that the Court “undoes centuries of political practice” and hands the president “a power unknown even to the English Crown.”
Sources: The decision, SCOTUSblog · What it means, NPR
In February 2025 he fired the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Navy's chief (the first woman on the Joint Chiefs), and others, and later fired the Army's top officer during the Iran war. His defense secretary had publicly demanded the chairman’s firing, vowing that any general tied to “DEI” had to go. The senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee said ten generals and admirals were fired without explanation.
Sources: The firings (AP via PBS) · Hegseth's push to fire him over 'DEI' (ABC News)
In July 2025 he put a 50% tariff on all goods from Brazil, and his own letter tied it to Brazil's prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro, his ally, whom he called the victim of a “witch hunt.” The usual reason did not apply: the United States runs a trade surplus with Brazil, so this was about politics, not trade.
Sources: His own words on the tariff (AP via Euronews) · The 50% tariff, CNBC
He pressured Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional map mid-decade to pick up five House seats before the 2026 midterms, saying plainly “we pick up five seats”; Missouri, North Carolina, and Ohio followed. A federal judge Trump himself appointed struck the Texas map down as an illegal racial gerrymander. California Democrats redrew their own map in response, after Texas moved first.
Sources: Trump-appointed judge, Governing · A Trump-appointed judge struck it down (Texas Tribune) · The block, reported on the right (Fox News)
During the October 2025 shutdown, federal agency homepages, including the Justice Department and HUD, carried banners blaming the “Radical Left Democrat shutdown,” using official taxpayer-funded sites for partisan messaging the Hatch Act bars. A Republican who served as George W. Bush's chief ethics lawyer called it the most extreme partisan use of federal agencies he had seen. Formal enforcement stalled because the office that handles it had been furloughed.
Sources: The partisan banners, GovExec · A Republican ethics lawyer, Spectrum
He sued The Wall Street Journal and Rupert Murdoch for $10 billion over a story about a 2003 note to Jeffrey Epstein, which he denies. Earlier, ABC and CBS each paid multimillion-dollar settlements to resolve suits he brought, with CBS's parent settling as it sought federal approval for a merger. First Amendment experts have called the cases weak and see a pattern of using litigation to pressure the press.
Sources: The $10B WSJ suit (PBS/AP) · The suit and prior settlements (CNBC)
On August 14, 2026, six days after the Senate confirmed him, Attorney General Todd Blanche appeared at a Trump campaign event on Long Island and praised the Republican nominee for New York governor, Bruce Blakeman, saying he was “doing everything we need him to do to back the blue.” FBI Director Kash Patel appeared alongside him. The Justice Department has long held that the attorney general stays out of partisan campaigns to preserve public trust in impartial justice, and Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland, never campaigned for Governor Kathy Hochul. Legal commentators said the appearance may violate the Hatch Act, which restricts partisan political activity by executive-branch officials.
Sources: The Hill · Fox 5 New York · Democracy Docket
On August 18, 2026, Disney and ABC sued the Federal Communications Commission in federal court, arguing that the Trump administration had waged a retaliatory campaign against the network because it disapproved of what ABC broadcasts. Months earlier, the FCC, led by Trump appointee Brendan Carr, had ordered Disney's eight ABC-owned stations to file for license renewal years ahead of schedule, licenses not otherwise due until 2028 to 2031, alongside a probe into the program “The View.” The moves followed the administration's pressure over late-night host Jimmy Kimmel, whom Disney briefly pulled off the air in 2025 after Carr warned the network it could do this “the easy way or the hard way.” A range of First Amendment groups, and some conservative organizations that support other parts of Trump's agenda, said the FCC's actions threatened free speech.
Sources: NBC News · CNBC · Fox News
Breaking the law, defying the courts
After Harvard refused the administration’s demands over its hiring, admissions, and curriculum, Trump froze roughly $2.6 billion of the university’s federal funding, citing campus antisemitism. In September 2025 a federal judge vacated the freeze as a violation of the First Amendment, writing that the record made it difficult to conclude anything other than that the administration had used antisemitism as “a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically motivated assault” on the nation’s premier universities. In August 2026 a second federal judge dismissed the administration’s related antisemitism lawsuit, finding the incidents it cited “too isolated and episodic” to prove any ongoing violation of the law.
Sources: Judge vacates the freeze as a First Amendment smokescreen (Center Square via Yahoo) · Judge dismisses the related antisemitism lawsuit (CNN) · The dismissal, in detail (Harvard Crimson)
Deaths in immigration detention have reached their highest level in at least two decades, with more than 50 people dying in ICE custody since Trump returned to office, including two at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey, where detainees and their lawyers have alleged medical neglect and spoiled food. DHS denies the conditions. As scrutiny grew, the administration moved against oversight itself. It charged Democratic Rep. LaMonica McIver, who now faces up to 17 years in prison, over a legally protected inspection of Delaney Hall, and it rewrote guidelines to curtail Congress’s long-standing power to inspect ICE facilities without notice. Oversight of detention is a constitutional check; the administration has moved to punish and restrict it.
Sources: More than 50 dead in ICE custody, deadliest in decades (CNN) · Two deaths and alleged neglect at Delaney Hall (Gothamist) · Charged over an oversight visit, facing 17 years (Rep. McIver)
On January 3, 2026, Trump ordered a large military operation across Venezuela that captured President Nicolás Maduro and flew him to New York to face charges. Trump did not seek congressional authorization, and Congress did not grant it. Legal scholars said the operation exceeded the president’s constitutional war powers and violated international law, with no claim of self-defense. Republican Senator Mike Lee, a Trump ally, publicly noted there had been no congressional approval for the use of force. Trump then said the United States would “run” Venezuela until a transition and would take sanctioned Venezuelan oil, reportedly worth about $3 billion.
Sources: Legality of the strike (FactCheck.org) · Considerations for Congress (nonpartisan CRS) · Sen. Mike Lee (R) on the missing authorization (MSNBC)
The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power of the purse, and a 1974 law says a president cannot simply refuse to spend approved funds. In 2025 the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found the administration broke that law at least six times, including holding back about $8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, plus Head Start and FEMA money. Republican Senator Susan Collins called it unlawful.
Sources: GAO, NIH · GAO, Head Start · GAO, FEMA · Sen. Collins (R)
Inspectors general find waste, fraud, and abuse inside federal agencies. In January 2025 he fired seventeen of them in one night, without the 30-day notice and specific reasons a 2022 law requires. A federal judge later ruled the firings unlawful, and Republican Senator Chuck Grassley objected and asked for the reasons the law requires.
Sources: A judge found it 'obvious' he broke the law (Government Executive) · The 30-day-notice law (CRS) · Grassley (R): the required notice 'was not provided' (Lawfare)
He signed orders stripping security clearances and federal access from major law firms over the clients they had represented. A federal judge permanently struck down the order against Perkins Coie, writing that “no American President has ever before” issued such an order and that it violated the First, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments. At least nine other firms avoided punishment by pledging tens of millions in free legal work to causes he favored.
Sources: The ruling, NPR · The ruling that it was unconstitutional (Reuters)
He federalized National Guard troops and sent them into Los Angeles, Portland, and Chicago over the objections of the governors who normally command them. In December 2025 the Supreme Court's conservative majority refused to allow the Chicago deployment, finding no legal authority “that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.” He withdrew the troops and repeatedly threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, last used in 1992, to get around the courts.
Sources: The Court's own order (SCOTUSblog) · The ruling, NPR
The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war. On February 28, 2026, he ordered strikes on Iran aimed at overthrowing its government without congressional authorization. Republicans Thomas Massie and Rand Paul called the strikes acts of war unauthorized by Congress, and the Senate passed a war-powers resolution against it, the first time such a measure cleared both chambers. The revolt ran through MAGA media too: Tucker Carlson called the war “absolutely disgusting and evil,” and Marjorie Taylor Greene said “we voted for America First and ZERO wars.” Months in, the war he began without authorization had drawn down US air defenses. The nonpartisan Center for Strategic and International Studies estimated the military had already fired more than 60 percent of its Patriot and THAAD interceptors, the systems that defend US troops and Gulf allies. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, a Trump appointee, had warned him before the strikes that US stockpiles could not sustain a prolonged fight. Trump waved off the concern, insisting the United States has “far more munitions than anyone in the world, and far more than we need.” Days later, his own Pentagon undercut the claim: the deputy defense secretary gave weapons makers 21 days to plan a rapid increase in production of the munitions the war had drained, a memo the Pentagon confirmed was real.
Sources: Launched without authorization, NPR · Massie's GOP-backed war powers resolution (Fox News) · Rand Paul (R): opposed from the start (The Hill) · MAGA revolt (ABC) · Interceptor depletion, CSIS estimate (CNN) · Trump: far more than we need (Al Jazeera) · Caine warned Trump before the strikes (Washington Post) · Pentagon’s crash-production memo, confirmed (Washington Post) · Pentagon confirms the memo (AP via Business Standard)
He put Elon Musk in charge of dismantling USAID, cutting its workforce by 98%. A federal judge ruled the shutdown “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways,” because only Congress can close an agency it created. A study in The Lancet projected the cuts could cause 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million children under five.
Sources: The ruling, reported on the right (Fox News) · Lancet projection, TIME
Governing by loyalty, and the human cost
On August 10, 2026, Trump signed an executive order he called the “Gold Standard Childhood Vaccine Recommendations,” bypassing the scientific advisory process that normally sets the schedule. It orders the measles, mumps, and rubella shot, a single combined vaccine used for more than 50 years, split into three separate injections given at different times; drops the recommendations for COVID-19 and flu shots for children; and directs the Justice Department to sue states that do not allow religious and medical exemptions. The American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and other medical groups said the changes are not backed by evidence and put children’s health at risk, noting that U.S. measles cases have reached a 35-year high.
Sources: The order, in the president’s own words (White House) · What the order changes, amid a 35-year measles high (TIME) · The AMA says it risks children’s health (American Medical Association)
The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed to the Middle East since November 2025, its tour extended again and again to sustain Trump’s war with Iran, now in its ninth month. Military Times reported that conditions aboard, food shortages, exhaustion, and a mental-health crisis, grew so severe that multiple sailors tried to jump overboard and were stopped by shipmates. When families raised alarms in the spring, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dismissed them as “fake news.” In August, with military leaders privately warning the Pentagon and White House about morale, the Pentagon moved to replace the ship.
Sources: Pentagon to replace the Lincoln amid morale and fatigue concerns (NBC News) · The Lincoln to be replaced; Hegseth had called warnings fake news (Newsweek) · Sailors have tried to jump overboard, per Military Times (The New Republic)
As the administration surged deportation operations, federal immigration officers shot 14 people between September 2025 and February 2026, according to NBC News. Among the dead were two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis: Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive-care nurse, and Renee Good, 37, shot in her car. Many shootings involved agents firing into moving vehicles, a tactic policing experts have spent decades trying to end. Video repeatedly contradicted the administration’s first accounts. DHS said Pretti had pointed a gun; a CNN analysis appears to show an officer taking a gun off him after he was shot. In a Chicago killing, DHS said its agent was seriously injured being dragged by a car, but footage caught the agent describing his injuries as “nothing major.”
Sources: Federal agents shot 14 people in five months (NBC News) · Video contradicts the account of Alex Pretti’s killing (CNN) · Shooting deaths climb in the deportation drive (PBS News)
To win confirmation as health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician and the Republican whose vote sealed it, that he would not undermine vaccine science. Within the year, Kennedy’s department had the CDC revise its decades-old position that vaccines do not cause autism, now calling that consensus “not an evidence-based claim,” and in August 2026 it canceled roughly $500 million in mRNA vaccine research and began winding the program down. Cassidy called the changes deeply concerning. Public health experts warn the moves will drive vaccination rates down and cost lives.
Sources: RFK Jr.’s moves on vaccines, tracked (U.S. News) · A year of health policy under RFK Jr. (PBS) · HHS rewrites the CDC vaccine committee (CNN)
His 'big, beautiful bill' cuts federal Medicaid spending by about $1 trillion over a decade. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates it will leave 11.8 million more people uninsured by 2034, largely through new work requirements and added paperwork, and it threatens rural hospitals across the country. Three Republican senators voted no, Thom Tillis and Susan Collins over the Medicaid cuts, with Tillis calling them 'devastating' and 'the greatest form of hypocrisy in American politics,' and two House Republicans joined them.
Sources: CBO estimate (FactCheck.org) · The $1 trillion cut (KFF) · Tillis and the Republican no votes (AP via AOL)
Since September 2025 the U.S. military, on his orders, has carried out at least 16 strikes on small boats it said were carrying drugs, killing more than 60 people in international waters, with no arrests, trials, or public evidence. Administration officials conceded to senators they had no legal justification for expanding the strikes onto Venezuelan soil, and the UN human rights chief called them extrajudicial killings. Two Republican senators, Rand Paul and Lisa Murkowski, broke with Trump to vote to stop the strikes; Paul said the Constitution demands “deliberation before war.”
Sources: The bipartisan vote to stop it (Stars and Stripes) · Paul (R): deliberation before war (U.S. Senate) · UN: extrajudicial killings (PBS)
He ran on public safety. In 2025 deaths in ICE custody hit the highest level since 2004, at least 32, alongside a record number of people detained. California's Attorney General and a Senate investigation documented overcrowding, denied medical care, and detainees sleeping on floor mats. Many deaths appear in ICE's own required reports.
Sources: ICE's own death reports, AILA · California AG report
A federal judge set a hearing over whether the administration deported a two-year-old U.S. citizen to Honduras with, in his words, “no meaningful process.” The judge, Terry Doughty, was appointed by Trump himself. It was one of a documented pattern of cases where courts found people, including some with citizenship claims, were removed in defiance of court orders.
Sources: The Trump-appointed judge's order (Law & Crime) · Detail (Law & Crime)
FEMA's own data shows he approved about 80% of disaster requests from Republican governors but only about 60% from Democratic ones, rejecting aid to blue states at the highest rate in the agency's 47-year history, in several cases overruling his own agencies that had found the states qualified. His administration separately admitted in a court filing that it cut blue-state energy grants “based solely” on political criteria.
Sources: FEMA's own data, Politico/E&E · Approval rates, PBS/AP
The Social Security Administration's chief data officer filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that DOGE copied a live copy of the master database of Social Security numbers and personal details, covering hundreds of millions of Americans, to a cloud server an internal review had flagged as high-risk, after circumventing the office that denied approval. The administration says the data is secure.
Sources: The complaint, NPR · The whistleblower complaint (FedScoop)
A Senate report found the Pentagon committed at least $2 billion to immigration and border operations in 2025, including reprogramming construction money away from two elementary schools on military bases and from overseas barracks to build border wall.
Sources: The reprogramming, Federal News Network
The people and interests behind it
Michael Boren, the Trump megadonor who oversees the U.S. Forest Service, repeatedly called agency offices, including once in the middle of the night, demanding more aircraft for a seven-acre fire that started near his Idaho mega-ranch, according to two Forest Service officials. A Washington Post analysis of flight paths found aircraft were pulled in from across the West, including a tanker taken off another fire in Nevada, at a cost of about $114,000, at a time when officials were warning that firefighting resources were stretched thin. Weeks earlier, a larger fire elsewhere in Idaho had drawn three aircraft for about thirteen minutes. Boren spent years fighting the Forest Service over that same ranch, an unpermitted airstrip and an unauthorized cabin on national forest land, before Trump put him in charge of the agency.
Sources: Washington Post · Politico E&E News
In March 2026 Trump fired Kristi Noem, the first cabinet shakeup of his second term, amid questions over a taxpayer-funded ad campaign of roughly $200 million that prominently featured the secretary, including footage of her on horseback at Mount Rushmore. Republican Senator John Kennedy joined Democrats in pressing her on the spending, which drew allegations of fraud, corruption, and conflicts of interest. Noem said Trump had personally signed off on it; Trump denied that to Reuters. He softened the ouster by naming her to a newly created envoy role.
Sources: Noem fired amid spending questions; Trump denies signing off (Government Executive) · Fired over a nine-figure ad campaign featuring herself (PBS News) · Trump fires Noem, taps Mullin (NBC News)
A network of people connected to investor Peter Thiel holds senior positions, including the vice president, whom Thiel funded, and the AI policy chief. Meanwhile Thiel's company Palantir saw its federal contracts nearly double, from about $541 million in 2024 to over $970 million in 2025, expanding into immigration data.
Sources: The network, Bloomberg · The contracts, The Hill
Howard Lutnick, former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, took over as Commerce Secretary with ties to some 800 businesses. Rather than use a blind trust, he sold his stake to trusts benefiting his adult children, whose firm then created a product betting on whether the very tariffs he was architecting would be struck down in court. Congressional committees opened conflict-of-interest investigations.
Sources: The tariff-betting investigation, NOTUS · “Most conflicted”, Public Citizen
At the 2026 Munich Security Conference, JD Vance told allied governments their gravest threat was “from within,” and urged German parties to work with the far-right AfD days before its election. German officials called it improper interference.
Sources: The speech, CNBC
The Tate brothers, facing human-trafficking and rape charges in Romania, flew to Florida in February 2025 days after reporting that the administration pressed Romania to lift their travel ban, with envoy Richard Grenell raising their case. It split the right: Ben Shapiro said “America does not need more self-proclaimed pimps,” and Gov. Ron DeSantis said the brothers were not welcome in Florida.
Sources: What happened, Forbes · The pattern, PBS · The intra-right split (report)