Analysis: Trump's 7 most authoritarian moves so far

CNN

19 hours ago

The story of President Donald Trump's first seven months back in office is the consolidation of power.
He has bulldozed the obstacles that often stood in his way in his first term and constantly tested boundaries, in an almost single-minded pursuit of more authority.
Whether you think that's a good thing (because that's what the country needs) or a bad thing, that's objectively the state of affairs. Trump has for years made no secret of his disregard for the limits of his power, and he's governing accordingly.
In recent days alone, he and his administration have taken major steps on this front.
One is his federalization of the DC Metropolitan Police Department and his deployment of the National Guard to the nation's capital to deal with what he says is out-of-control crime. The former step is unprecedented, and the latter is extraordinary – given the guard is usually only called in for widespread disturbances like riots.
Another step concerns Trump's politicization of government data. After the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics over a jobs report he disliked, the question was whether the financial markets could trust government data moving forward, given the message Trump was sending. But rather than soothing those fears with a well-regarded consensus pick, Trump picked a MAGA loyalist.
And finally, there's the snowballing number of investigations of Trump's political opponents — which, as of last week, was growing at a rapid clip.
Given all of that, it's a good time to run through the most significant and consequential Trump power grabs of his second term.
These are the kinds of things we could one day look back upon as recasting the balance of power in American government and pushing us in a more authoritarian direction.
If there's one Trump inclination that most concerned top military and defense officials in his first term, it might have been his desire to dispatch troops on US soil.
And Trump is increasingly making it a reality. He has not only deployed the guard in DC, but he deployed both the guard and the Marines to Los Angeles two months ago in another extraordinary way (given the lack of widespread violence).
Trump is also increasingly talking about ramping up these efforts. He's spoken this week about also deploying active-duty military in DC and expanding his approach to other cities in a way that would militarize the US homeland like never before. And he's suggested he can expand the effort in ways that appear to go beyond his legal authority, by declaring emergencies.
Those top officials from Trump's first term worried about him politicizing the military, using it to target American citizens, and possibly even using it to hold on to power.
While the tariffs saga now feels like just a reality of our daily political life, it's also a major power play.
After all, this is the president claiming emergency powers over a prerogative that the Constitution gives to Congress, and constantly shifting the terms in an effort to bargain with other countries. He's in effect wielding an ever-changing level of taxation on American businesses and consumers.
The courts are still sorting through whether he's exceeded his authority, with the US Court of International Trade initially ruling that he had. But perhaps more than any other issue, this is the one on which Trump has neutered Congress and run the country like an all-powerful executive.
Lawmakers have the power to rein him in. And Republicans traditionally don't like tariffs. But the GOP-controlled Congress apparently wants no part of stopping their party's standard bearer.
The Trump administration has already launched investigations or taken investigative steps against key figures in four high-profile efforts to scrutinize Trump: the Russia investigation, his first impeachment, the January 6, 2021, investigations and his personal criminal and civil cases.
The retributive nature of these efforts is only reinforced by the fact that Trump has personally pushed for many of these probes – a break with longstanding practice. Early in his term, he even signed an executive order explicitly calling for investigations of two critics.
It remains to be seen if any of these probes will amount to anything. The GOP's attempts to impeach then-President Joe Biden never did, and we haven't seen substantial evidence in these investigations.
But even if they don't lead anywhere, a message will be sent to anyone else who might blow the whistle on or investigate Trump: If you scrutinize him, we'll go after you. That's a recipe for people keeping quiet.
While it might seem relatively small-bore, Trump's maneuvers with BLS could have large-scale implications.
Again, it's about the message it sends to others who might deliver bad news for Trump. And by nominating a loyalist in Heritage Foundation economist EJ Antoni for the new BLS commissioner, Trump is further eroding the expectation of independence from such officials. (Indeed, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick just this week called the notion of the independence of federal statistics 'nonsense.')
It's a lot like Trump's longstanding efforts to fire nonpartisan government officials and watchdogs, and to lean on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates by repeatedly threatening to fire or investigate him. This is quite simply something that presidents don't do, because it adds the specter of political pressure in apolitical government functions.
Trump increasingly appears to have no qualms about looking like he has his thumbs on the scale – even in circumstances where that could seemingly come back to bite him, like BLS and the Fed.
Trump has gone to extraordinary lengths to use his bully pulpit and executive powers to demonstrate his dominance over these powerful institutions, with plenty of success.
These institutions, which have made remarkable concessions to his administration, seem to be making the calculation that it's simply best not to be on Trump's bad side. That can't help but set new precedents that could impact other institutions and embolden him.
And the president has been happy to gloat.
'You see what we're doing with the colleges, and they're all bending and saying, 'Sir, thank you very much. We appreciate it,'' he said at the White House in March. 'Nobody can believe it, including law firms that have been so horrible, law firms that, nobody would believe this, just saying, 'Where do I sign? Where do I sign?''
Nothing encapsulates Trump's disregard for the legislative branch – and its acquiescence – like TikTok.
Congress passed a bill with huge bipartisan majorities requiring the social media platform to divest from its Chinese ownership or be banned, with lawmakers citing urgent national security concerns. The Supreme Court unanimously upheld that law. But Trump just keeps ignoring that and giving TikTok extensions, even as it's pretty evident he doesn't have the authority under the law.
There are practical reasons he's been allowed to do that. Democrats, for example, don't want to be the bad guys in following through on banning an app that is so popular. And it's not clear who would have legal standing to sue Trump over this.
But just because those practical problems exist doesn't mean this isn't a power play. It's a president effectively choosing to disregard the law, because he can. And he's doing so despite those supposedly very urgent national security concerns about the Chinese government mining Americans' sensitive data – concerns Trump once expressed himself.
Its also of-a-piece with Trump's repeated efforts to simply disregard congressionally appropriated spending.
Trump's efforts to ramp up deportations have included a number of power grabs. Most notably, that's taken the form of flouting due process and the rule of law.
Trump invoked what has traditionally been a wartime authority – the Alien Enemies Act – to try and quickly deport undocumented immigrants. His efforts have led to a number of wrongful deportations and attempted deportations that have been blocked by the courts. At one point, the administration clearly ignored a court order to turn around airplanes holding migrants.
Many of Trump's allies have argued these migrants aren't entitled to legal protections. And this has put Democrats in the politically uncomfortable position of standing up for those migrants' rights.
Perhaps nothing has so called into question the authority of the rule of law and the courts, with plenty of poking and prodding by Trump and his administration to force the issue.
This has been one area where the courts have stepped up and seemed to check Trump. But that's surely not the end of the power struggle.