The Record
When Congress and the courts stop checking a president's worst impulses, ordinary people pay the price. The items below are matters of public record, each linked to credible reporting. Read them, then judge for yourself.
Eric's answer: pass a law limiting presidential power — as the founders intended — restore real checks and balances, and root out corruption and self-dealing.
This page cites independent news organizations, court records, and official disclosures. Links open the original sources so you can read the full context. Where figures come from official filings or court rulings, we say so.
On his first day back in office, Trump pardoned or commuted the sentences of roughly 1,500 people charged in the January 6 Capitol attack — including hundreds convicted of assaulting police, and leaders of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers convicted of seditious conspiracy.
The administration pursued criminal investigations of perceived enemies. A career prosecutor was forced out after refusing to charge New York Attorney General Letitia James, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted, and DOJ fired career lawyers who had worked on prior Trump prosecutions — moves legal experts warned would chill the department's independence.
In November 2025, after six Democratic lawmakers — all military or intelligence veterans — posted a video urging service members to refuse illegal orders, Trump wrote on Truth Social that their conduct was “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and reposted a call to “hang them.” House leaders contacted the Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police over the lawmakers' safety.
Starting in June 2025, Trump federalized National Guard troops and deployed them to Los Angeles, and sought deployments in Chicago and Portland. Federal courts repeatedly ruled against him; in December 2025 the Supreme Court kept a block on the Chicago deployment, after which he withdrew the troops — vowing to return.
Beginning September 2025, the U.S. military carried out more than 20 strikes on vessels it alleged were trafficking drugs near Venezuela, killing dozens of people, without seeking congressional authorization. Legal scholars, human-rights groups, and UN experts described the strikes as extrajudicial killings.
Immigration agents routinely operated masked, in plain clothes, and in unmarked vehicles. A federal court in Los Angeles found immigration raids there amounted to racial profiling, and human-rights organizations and judges warned the tactics undermined due process and accountability.
Trump's official 2025 financial disclosure, released by the U.S. Office of Government Ethics in mid-2026, reported more than $2 billion in income for his first year back in office — roughly $1.4 billion of it from family cryptocurrency ventures. Ethics experts called the scale and sources a serious conflict of interest.
The administration barred the Associated Press from events, sued news organizations (including a $10 billion suit against The Wall Street Journal tied to its Epstein reporting, plus settlements from ABC and CBS's parent), and used FCC leverage over pending mergers. Press-freedom trackers counted more than a dozen lawsuits filed by journalists against the administration in 2025.
Trump resisted releasing the Justice Department's Epstein files, then signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act after the House voted 427–1 to force disclosure. The heavily redacted December 2025 release drew bipartisan backlash from the bill's own authors. Separately, the WSJ reported Trump was among contributors to an Epstein birthday album; he denied it and sued.
Executive Order 14253, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” (March 2025), directed the removal of “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian and singled out the National Museum of African American History and Culture, placing the vice president in charge of the effort. Critics said it aimed to erase how the museums present race and American history.
Executive Order 14183 (January 27, 2025) reinstated a ban on transgender people serving in the military, issued alongside an order recognizing only “two sexes.” In May 2025 the Supreme Court allowed the ban to take effect while litigation continued, and the Defense Department began separation proceedings.
In January 2026, Trump threatened tariffs starting at 10% (rising to 25%) on eight NATO allies — Denmark, Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, and Finland — over their refusal to support U.S. acquisition of Greenland. The eight nations issued a joint statement warning the move risked a “dangerous downward spiral” in transatlantic relations.
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