Trump's War on the Vulnerable Has Now Reached Military Families
The family residential section of U.S. Naval Air Station Key West, Florida, is usually a very pleasant place, with military families from the Navy, Coast Guard, and Marine Corps enjoying the sunny respite of a golden duty station like Key West.
At least it was until the Department of Homeland Security and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, under the direction of Donald Trump's lackeys, abandoned their vital mission of keeping military families safe and instead became a Gestapo-like force imprisoning them.
Just when you thought the Trump administration couldn't sink any lower, it just moved to deport the wife of an active-duty Coast Guardsmen.
The military spouse's crime? An expired work visa. It is unclear if any children had to witness this act of terror in the very place they should be safest, a military family community.
DHS oversees both Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Coast Guard. Using their knowledge and inside information, DHS officials have turned their power against one of their own, arresting an active duty Coast Guard wife who was attempting to find on-base housing at Naval Air Station Key West.
There has been debate on whether the arrested military spouse was home alone, with her husband being deployed or on temporary duty somewhere, as the Associated Press reported that the Coast Guardsman's ship, the USCGC Mohawk (WMEC-913), has been in port at Key West since mid-March.
Either way, what a dastardly move by the Trump Administration to attack someone and their family who has done more for this country than Trump ever could. After returning from a long deployment defending democracy, the Coast Guardsman's reward will be having his wife deported.
As tales spread of judges being detained and arrested for 'interfering' with immigration operations, federal and local law enforcement personnel flinch at the prospect of defying illegal orders from the Trump Administration, facing threats of arrest and career-ending repercussions.
At the same time, Jose Barco, a U.S. Army veteran and Purple Heart recipient, sits in a Texas detention center awaiting deportation. Barco fought in Iraq, survived a traumatic brain injury and PTSD, and tried to become a citizen, only to have his application lost by the very system he fought for. After returning home broken and untreated, Barco spiraled and committed a tragic crime. After he served his time, he now faces exile to Venezuela, a country that refuses to accept him.
It is unclear whether the Coast Guardsman will face any disciplinary action, as the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) does not cover immigration law. But don't count out the Trump administration and its extreme cruelty toward migrants.
They have already shown a willingness to weaponize immigration law by digging up defunct statutes like the Alien Enemies Act, no matter how flimsy the rationale.
Now, people across the military are taking notice. Word is spreading fast through the ranks that not even service members or their families are safe from Trump and Stephen Miller's draconian assault on those they label 'illegal.'
If a Purple Heart doesn't protect you, nothing will. If active-duty military personnel and their families, with guns and guards, aren't safe from Trump and his minions, how safe are you? Americans must take heed of this.
Trump will go down in history as one of the cruelest presidents in American history — here's looking at you, Andrew Jackson and all the slaveholding presidents — and possibly the worst. In the first 100 days, Trump has arguably done more damage to this nation than any other president.
No one is coming to save our active duty military members, our veterans, our senior citizens, or our migrant neighbors. The only person who can save you is you. Organize, act, resist. Before it is too late.
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Yahoo
28 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Amid recent string of attacks inspired by Israel-Hamas war, some experts worry counterterrorism not a priority
Five alleged high-profile terrorist attacks have occurred across the United States in the first six months of 2025, including four that investigators suspect were motivated by the war in Gaza or radicalized by the ISIS terrorist group. But as law enforcement investigates the violent incidents -- from the New Orleans truck rampage to the Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder -- some counterterrorism experts say they're worried the federal government has taken its eye "off the ball" in preventing terrorism as its priorities shift -- from counterterrorism to mass deportation. "It's stunning to me that we're making the same mistakes we did in the lead-up to 9/11," said Elizabeth Neumann, a former Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for counterterrorism during the first Trump administration. "Now that does not mean that we're going to have another 9/11, but it's very alarming to me that we are repeating mistakes." A DHS senior official said in a statement to ABC News, "Any suggestion that DHS is stepping away from addressing terrorism is simply false." "Under President Trump, the Department of Homeland Security will use every tool and resource available to secure our border, protect the homeland, and get criminal illegal aliens out of our country," the DHS official said. "The safety of American citizens comes first." The wave of extremist violence has come against a backdrop of a rising number of assaults, vandalism and harassment nationwide linked to the Israel-Hamas war. The war erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Hamas terrorist group staged a widespread ambush in Israel, killing 1,200 people, including children, and taking 251 hostages, with about 20 still held in captivity. According to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, the death toll in Gaza is nearly 54,000 since the war began. Federal and state law enforcement agencies and the Department of Homeland Security have repeatedly issued bulletins, warning the country is vulnerable to terrorism, especially at large events, as a result of the Gaza war. The New York City Police Department, responsible for protecting the largest Jewish population in the world outside of Israel, issued a bulletin last month, saying, "Jewish people and institutions continue to be the target of violent assaults, harassment, intimidation, hate crimes, and threats, especially since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war." On Thursday night, the FBI and Department of Homeland Security warned of an "elevated threat" facing the Jewish community in the wake of the back-to-back incidents in Washington, D.C., and Boulder. However, the DHS and FBI did not indicate there are any known threats in a joint intelligence bulletin sent to law enforcement on May 23. "Violent extremist messaging continues to highlight major sporting and cultural events and venues as potential targets, and threat actors -- including domestic violent extremists (DVEs), homegrown violent extremists (HVEs) inspired by Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs), and other mass casualty attackers not motivated by an ideology -- previously have targeted public events with little to no warning," according to the bulletin. John Cohen, a former Department of Homeland Security undersecretary of intelligence, said he is concerned that at this time of heightened security, the White House has proposed cutting the FBI's fiscal-year 2026 budget by $545 million dollars, or about 5% of the bureau's budget. An internal memo from the FBI Chicago office, obtained in March by ABC Chicago station WLS-TV, confirmed that members of the office's Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), and terrorism task forces nationwide, will be supporting Homeland Security task forces focused on making immigration arrests. "So at the very time that we are seeing more and more acts of violence and destructive demonstration activity by people who are being, in some cases, not only inspired but facilitated by foreign threat actors, the concern is that the resources being devoted to addressing that threat are being decreased," said Cohen, an ABC News contributor. Neumann said it's not just the FBI's counterterrorism departments getting slashed. She said an office she helped establish within the Department of Homeland Security to help communities across the nation prevent hate-fueled attacks is being drastically cut back. ProPublica reported this week that the office, the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships (CP3), is currently being spearheaded by a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no previous counterterrorism experience. "What this office does is it creates capability locally, within a state, to be able to educate bystanders on the signs and indicators of somebody that might be radicalizing ... and then it helps states create the capability for mental health practitioners and other professionals to be able to intervene with individuals," Neumann said. "It was needed because we just have so many people moving into that stage of, 'Well, they might commit an act of violence, but they haven't done anything criminal yet.'" Neumann, an ABC News contributor, said she has noticed a complacency set in after the U.S. declared victory over ISIS in 2019 and withdrew troops from Afghanistan in 2021. "We are moving our eye off the ball to focus on things that I don't know are what I would put in the top of my counterterrorism bucket," Neumann said. In a statement to ABC News, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said concerns that the administration has taken its eye off counterterrorism to focus on its deportation crackdown are unfounded. "Immigration security IS national security -- look no further than the terrorist, who was in the United States illegally, that firebombed elderly Jewish women," Jackson said, referring to 45-year-old Egyptian citizen Mohamed Soliman accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at a group of marchers advocating for the release of hostages being held in Gaza. "Enforcing our immigration laws and removing illegal aliens is one big way President Trump is Making America Safe Again." Soliman entered the U.S. in 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023, according to DHS. A senior official told ABC News he was then granted a work permit that expired in March 28, 2025. Answering critics questioning the administration's preparedness for protecting the homeland in the wake of the string of recent terror attacks, Jackson said, "But the President can walk and chew gum at the same time -- we're holding all criminals accountable, whether they're illegal aliens or American citizens. That's why nationwide murder rates have plummeted, fugitives from the FBI's most wanted list have been captured, and police officers are empowered to do their jobs, unlike under the Biden Administration's soft-on-crime regime." According to the Department Justice and annual FBI violent crime statistics, that nation's murder rate has fallen for the past three consecutive years. The White House also pointed to President Donald Trump's proclamation on Wednesday banning travel from 12 countries -- including Afghanistan, Iran and Libya -- and imposing travel restrictions on seven other countries as evidence the administration has not lost its focus on national security concerns. Egypt, where the suspect in the Boulder attack is from, was not included in the list of countries. Ben Williamson, the FBI's assistant director for public affairs, told ABC News in a statement that while the bureau does not comment on specific personnel decisions, "our agents and support staff are dedicated professionals working around the clock to defend the homeland and crush violent crime -- a mission which certainly overlaps with the consequences of the previous administration's open border policies for four years." Williamson added, "We are proud to work with our interagency partners to keep the American people safe." Cohen, the former DHS intelligence official, said neither the Trump administration nor the Biden administration have done enough to prevent terrorism, while foreign actors and terrorist groups like ISIS have upped their game on the internet to radicalize converts within the U.S. "We're continuing to see efforts to not just inspire but instruct those individuals who are angry, who are certain, who are looking for the justification to engage in violence, to express that anger," Cohen said. "So content is developing and introduced online that's intended to inspire them to commit violence, but also providing instructions on just how to do it. We've seen videos talking about vehicle ramming. We've seen videos talking about how to construct explosive devices. We've seen video online encouraging mass shootings at the same time." In August 2024, two Austrian teenagers were arrested and accused of plotting to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna. Authorities said both suspects appeared to have been inspired by ISIS and al-Qaeda, and one of them had researched bomb-making techniques and uploaded to the internet an oath of allegiance to the current leader of the Islamic State. "Law enforcement analysts over the last several months have seen online content posted by al-Qaeda-related and Hamas and Iranian-linked groups advocating violence as a way for people to respond to their concerns about what's going on in Gaza," Cohen said. Neumann said the pandemic opened the door for terrorist groups to manipulate people during a time of extreme vulnerability. "COVID is a huge reason why it's more complicated," said Neumann, adding that the usual modus operandi of terrorist groups is "offering a certainty in an uncertain world." "It's offering this black-and-white answer of why the bad thing happened to them," Neumann said. "When you look at why people mobilize to violence or radicalize, it is not the ideology. The ideology is kind of the bow that comes on top after all of these other factors have kind of gotten into play for an individual." She added, "We, largely as a field, understand those that commit acts of violence have underlying psychosocial factors that have led them to this place where they are willing to be convinced that violence is the right solution for their problems." Neumann pointed to a 2023 poll by University of California, Davis Violence Prevention Research Program that found 32.8% of respondents considered violence to be usually or always justified to advance some political objectives. "And then you add to it, COVID, Oct. 7, social media, it's just a perfect cauldron for a lot of people to be led astray," Neumann said. In three of the alleged U.S. terrorist attacks that have occurred since mid-April, investigators said the suspects were motivated by the war to commit violence on American soil. The suspect in the April 13 firebombing of the Pennsylvania governor's residence allegedly targeted Gov. Shapiro, who is Jewish, "based upon perceived injustices to the people of Palestine," according to a criminal complaint. The man who allegedly gunned down two Israeli embassy staff members on May 21 outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., was captured on video shouting "Free Palestine" following the shooting. Neither suspect has entered a plea. In Boulder, Colorado, on June 1, authorities say Soliman, shouting "free Palestine" and wielding a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails, targeted demonstrators, injuring 15. Soliman has been charged in both state and federal court. He is also charged with hate crimes in the federal case. He has yet to enter a plea to any of the charges. The year started off with the New Year's Day truck-ramming on Bourbon Street in New Orleans that left 14 people dead. The suspect, who was killed in a gunfight with police, had pledged support for ISIS, according to investigators. In a Facebook video the suspect posted as he drove to commit the attack, he said he "originally planned to harm his family and friends, but was concerned the news headlines would not focus on the 'war between the believers and the disbelievers.'" Cohen said, "Regional conflicts in the past were isolated events occurring in foreign lands. But because of the internet, they are now taking place in communities across America." A fifth terrorist attack, that was apparently unrelated to the Middle East war, occurred on May 17 in Palm Springs, California, where a car packed with large quantities of ammonium nitrate was detonated, allegedly by a 25-year-old man who investigators said died in the blast and lived by "pro-mortalism, anti-natalism, and anti-pro-life ideology," or the belief that people should not be born without their consent. An alleged co-conspirator in the Palm Springs attack was arrested this month with federal authorities saying he provided large quantities of ammonium nitrate to the suspect killed in the blast. The attacks in Washington, D.C., New Orleans and at Gov. Shapiro's Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, residence were all allegedly carried out by U.S. citizens, according to investigators. The suspect in the Boulder attack is an Egypt-born man who lived in Kuwait until he moved to Colorado three years ago and had overstayed his B2 tourist visa, investigators said. Additionally, a dual American-German citizen was arrested on May 19 after he allegedly attempted to attack the U.S. embassy in Tel Aviv, but was thwarted by a guard, investigators said. The suspect was captured after dropping a backpack filled with Molotov cocktails, authorities said. Exclusive: Gov. Shapiro gives sit-down interview from residence after arson attack "We have to do a better job at maintaining awareness of the threat, and that means by tracking what foreign domestic threat actors or what foreign intelligence services terrorist groups are posting online, the types of attacks they're calling for and the techniques that they are promoting to conduct those attacks," Cohen said. "Law enforcement can take that intelligence then and have a better understanding of the targets that are at risk and ensure that security measures are put in place to reduce the likelihood that these types of public events would be targeted." Neumann said that the current threat environment requires an urgent response from the federal government. "As with everything that happens in Washington, there will be another attack of such a scale that people are going to say, 'We should do something,' and then all of a sudden, the money will flow, and then they'll be like, 'Oh, look, here's this new shiny object that we can solve this problem with,'" Neumann said. "It will get restarted, but we will have lost a long period of time and expertise and will have to make some similar mistakes again as we relearn. That's kind of sad, because in the intervening time people will die because we're not investing in this now." ABC News' Michelle Stoddart and Luke Barr contributed to this report. Amid recent string of attacks inspired by Israel-Hamas war, some experts worry counterterrorism not a priority originally appeared on
CNBC
38 minutes ago
- CNBC
What to know about Trump's deployment of National Guard troops to L.A. protests
President Donald Trump says he's deploying 2,000 California National Guard troops to Los Angeles to respond to immigration protests, over the objections of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. It's not the first time Trump has activated the National Guard to quell protests. In 2020, he asked governors of several states to send troops to Washington, D.C. to respond to demonstrations that arose after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Many of the governors he asked agreed, sending troops to the federal district. The governors who refused the request were allowed to do so, keeping their troops on home soil. This time, however, Trump is acting in opposition to Newsom, who, under normal circumstances, would retain control and command of California's National Guard. While Trump said that federalizing the troops was necessary to "address the lawlessness" in California, the Democratic governor said the move was "purposely inflammatory and will only escalate tensions." Here are some things to know about when and how the president can deploy troops on U.S. soil. Generally, federal military forces are not allowed to carry out civilian law enforcement duties against U.S. citizens except in times of emergency. An 18th-century wartime law called the Insurrection Act is the main legal mechanism that a president can use to activate the military or National Guard during times of rebellion or unrest. But Trump didn't invoke the Insurrection Act on Saturday. Instead, he relied on a similar federal law that allows the president to federalize National Guard troops under certain circumstances. The National Guard is a hybrid entity serving state and federal interests. Often it operates under state command and control, using state funding. Sometimes National Guard troops will be assigned by their state to serve federal missions, remaining under state command but using federal funding. The law cited by Trump's proclamation places National Guard troops under federal command. The law says that can be done under three circumstances: When the U.S. is invaded or in danger of invasion; when there is a rebellion or danger of rebellion against the authority of the U.S. government, or when the President is unable to "execute the laws of the United States," with regular forces. But the law also says that orders for those purposes "shall be issued through the governors of the States." It's not immediately clear if the president can activate National Guard troops without the order of that state's governor. Notably, Trump's proclamation says the National Guard troops will play a supporting role by protecting ICE officers as they enforce the law, rather than having the troops perform law enforcement work. Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center who specializes in military justice and national security law, says that's because the National Guard troops can't legally engage in ordinary law enforcement activities unless Trump first invokes the Insurrection Act. Vladeck said the move raises the risk that the troops could use force while filling that "protection" role. The move could also be a precursor to other, more aggressive troop deployments down the road, he wrote on his website. "There's nothing these troops will be allowed to do that, for example, the ICE officers against whom these protests have been directed could not do themselves," Vladeck wrote. The Insurrection Act and related laws were used during the Civil Rights era to protect activists and students desegregating schools. President Dwight Eisenhower sent the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, to protect Black students integrating Central High School after that state's governor activated the National Guard to keep the students out. George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King. National Guard troops have been deployed for various emergencies, including the COVID pandemic, hurricanes and other natural disasters. But generally, those deployments are carried out with the agreement of the governors of the responding states. In 2020, Trump asked governors of several states to deploy their National Guard troops to Washington, D.C. to quell protests that arose after Minneapolis police officers killed George Floyd. Many of the governors agreed to send troops to the federal district. At the time, Trump also threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act for protests following Floyd's death in Minneapolis — an intervention rarely seen in modern American history. But then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper pushed back, saying the law should be invoked "only in the most urgent and dire of situations." Trump never did invoke the Insurrection Act during his first term. But while campaigning for his second term, he suggested that would change. Trump told an audience in Iowa in 2023 that he was prevented from using the military to suppress violence in cities and states during his first term, and said if the issue came up again in his next term, "I'm not waiting." Trump also promised to deploy the National Guard to help carry out his immigration enforcement goals, and his top adviser Stephen Miller explained how that would be carried out: Troops under sympathetic Republican governors would send troops to nearby states that refuse to participate, Miller said on "The Charlie Kirk Show," in 2023. After Trump announced he was federalizing the National Guard troops on Saturday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said other measures could follow. Hegseth wrote on the social media platform X that active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton were on high alert and would also be mobilized "if violence continues."
CNN
42 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: The Musk blowup reveals how Trump is remaking the presidency
Through a panoramic series of actions, President Donald Trump is transforming the federal government into a vast machine for rewarding his allies and punishing those he considers his adversaries. Trump is using executive orders, federal investigations and regulatory decisions to deploy federal power against a stunning array of targets, ranging from powerful institutions such as Harvard and Columbia universities and major law firms to individual critics from his first term and former President Joe Biden's top White House aides. Simultaneously, Trump is rewarding allies with presidential pardons, commutations, government contracts and the termination of federal regulatory or criminal investigations. The explosive breakup with Elon Musk has provided the most vivid demonstration yet of Trump's transactional view of the presidency. When Musk was Trump's most prominent political ally and benefactor, the White House brushed off complaints about the potential for conflicts of interest as the tech billionaire's companies competed for billions in government contacts. Then, when the two men fell out last week, Trump immediately threatened to terminate the contracts for Musk's companies. Trump struck a similar note on Saturday, telling NBC's Kristen Welker that if Musk began to fund Democratic campaigns in protest of the president's sweeping policy bill, 'He'll have to pay very serious consequences.' The extraordinary episode underscored how quickly anyone can move from Trump ally to adversary by opposing or questioning him in any way — and how dire the consequences can be for crossing that line. In his almost instinctive reaction to threaten Musk's contracts — even if it would be difficult to do in practice — Trump signaled unambiguously that staying in his favor would be the difference between favorable decisions by his administration and costly confrontations with it. The president sees little boundary between public policy by the federal government and personal fealty to him. 'Never before in this country has a president made so clear that mere disagreement with him or failure to show sufficient personal loyalty might cause that person to lose government contracts or even face investigation,' said Ian Bassin, co-founder and executive director of Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan group that analyzes threats to US democracy. 'That's how things work in Russia, and apparently, under Donald Trump, now here.' Until Trump, historians considered Richard Nixon the president who pushed hardest to bend federal legal authority into a lever to advance his personal and political interests — a process that culminated in the Watergate scandal and the disclosure of the infamous White House 'enemies list.' But while Nixon fulminated against his opponents in private, he never subjected them to anything approaching the bombardment of hostile federal actions that Trump has directed at his targets. 'You see very similar personality traits in the men, about how they feel about people and what they want to do about them,' said John Dean, who served as Nixon's White House counsel during Watergate and later revealed the existence of the enemies list. But, Dean added, whereas Nixon would often lose sight of his threats or back off when faced with resistance inside or outside his administration, Trump and his aides are moving to draft virtually every component of the federal government into this mission. 'Everything with Nixon is more or less a one-off,' Dean said, 'whereas with Trump it is a way of life.' The effect is that, with much less pushback than Nixon faced, Trump is now moving far faster and further toward reconfiguring the federal government's sweeping authority into an extension of his personal will. 'We are so far beyond Nixon's inclinations and disposition to employ the government to attack perceived enemies and perceived political adversaries,' Dean said, 'that it is the difference between spitballs and howitzers.' Almost daily, Trump is acting in new ways to deploy federal power in precision-focused attacks on individuals and institutions who have crossed or resisted him. He has revoked federal security clearances from an array of former officials (including Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and Republican former Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) and terminated federal security protection for others. He's withdrawn security clearances from and directed his administration to investigate two critics from his first term, Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs. Last week, Trump ordered a federal investigation into the right-wing conspiracy theory that aides to then-President Biden misused his autopen to implement decisions without his knowledge. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to investigate Democrats' principal grassroots fundraising tool, ActBlue. Large institutions Trump considers hostile have faced comparable threats. He's signed executive orders imposing crippling penalties on several large law firms that have either represented causes or employed attorneys Trump dislikes. Trump has canceled billions of dollars in scientific research grants to prominent universities and escalated that offensive with a dizzying array of other measures against Harvard, including attempting to revoke its ability to enroll foreign students and publicly declaring that the Internal Revenue Service intends to revoke its tax-exempt status: The New York Times recently calculated that Harvard is now facing at least eight separate investigations from six federal agencies. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating '60 Minutes' over its editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris, probing charges that television networks have engaged in 'news distortion,' and scrutinizing the proposed merger with Skydance Media that is being ardently pursued by CBS' parent, Paramount, and its controlling stockholder Shari Redstone. Trump's administration has arrested a judge in Wisconsin and US representative in New Jersey who have resisted his immigration agenda. While pursuing these penalties for critics, Trump has conspicuously rewarded allies. His Justice Department dropped federal corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, who has pledged to support Trump's immigration crackdown, and regulators have terminated high-profile enforcement actions against the crypto industry even as his family's financial ties to the industry have mushroomed. Trump has also issued a flurry of early second-term pardons targeted at his supporters, beginning with the mass pardon of January 6, 2021, rioters and extending to a growing list of Republican and conservative public officials. Legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, author of 'The Pardon,' a recent history of how presidents have used that power, said Trump's actions have no precedent. 'It's not even close,' Toobin said. 'I can't even think of even a parallel.' Taken together, these actions signal something like a mafia-style protection racket, Bassin argued. For those who meet the administration's demands, Bassin said, Trump is offering protection from federal interference, and for those who resist his demands, he's brandishing the opposite. The speed at which Trump flipped from praising to threatening Musk and his companies, Bassin added, 'is a perfect example' of how no one is safe from falling from one side of that line to the other — which allows Trump always to preserve the option of raising the price of protection with new demands. It's a method of operation, Bassin argued, that would be equally recognizable to Russian President Vladimir Putin or mobster John Gotti. Nixon unquestionably wanted to sharpen federal law and regulatory enforcement into the cudgel Trump is forging. Behind closed doors in the Oval Office, Nixon often bombarded his aides with demands to punish those he viewed as his political enemies. 'We have all this power, and we aren't using it,' Nixon exploded to his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, in one August 1972 meeting captured by the White House taping system. At times, Nixon succeeded in channeling that power against his targets. He successfully pressed the Justice Department to intensify an investigation into kickbacks and illegal campaign contributions swirling around Alabama Gov. George Wallace. The administration tried for years to deport John Lennon (over a British conviction for possession of a half-ounce of marijuana) after Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond sent a letter to the Justice Department warning that the former Beatle might headline a series of concerts intended to mobilize young voters against Nixon's reelection. A team of White House operatives — known informally as 'the plumbers' because they were supposed to stop leaks to the press — undertook a succession of shady missions, culminating in the break-in to the Democratic National Committee offices in the Watergate building that eventually led to Nixon's resignation. Chuck Colson, one of Nixon's most hardcore aides, tried to pressure both CBS and The Washington Post over their coverage of the administration by threatening FCC action to revoke the licenses of local television stations they owned. Colson and Nixon openly strategized about holding open the threat of a federal antitrust investigation to pressure the three television networks. According to research by Mark Feldstein, a professor of broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, the plumbers even fleetingly discussed ways to assassinate investigative journalist Jack Anderson before they were diverted to a more urgent project — the Watergate break-in. In his obsessive hunt for leaks, Nixon illegally wiretapped the phones of both journalists and his own National Security Council aides. All these resentments converged in the development of what became known as the enemies list. The White House actually compiled multiple overlapping lists, all fueled by Nixon's fury at his opponents, real and imagined. 'It clearly originated with Nixon's disposition, anger, reaction to things he would see in his news summary in the morning,' said Dean. In an August 16, 1971, memo — titled 'Dealing with our Political Enemies' — Dean succinctly explained that the list's intent was to find all the ways 'we can use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.' Dean told me he wrote the memo in such stark terms because he thought it would discourage the White House. 'I actually wrote that memo that way thinking I would make this so offensive … that they would just say, 'This is silly, we don't do this kind of stuff,'' he said. 'I never got a response to that directly, but when I went to the (National) Archives decades later, (I saw) Haldeman had written 'great' on the memo with an exclamation point.' In fact, though, enthusiasm in the White House did not translate into action at the agencies. On the advice of Treasury Secretary George Shultz, the IRS commissioner put the list in his safe and ignored the White House request that he audit the people on it. Subsequent investigations found no evidence that those on the enemies list faced excessive scrutiny from the IRS or other government harassment. Once Dean revealed the list's existence during the 1973 hearings of the Senate Watergate Committee, inclusion on it became 'something for people to celebrate,' he recalled. 'I have actually spoken to (reunions of) a couple groups of members, people who have been on the list, because they had no consequences other than a badge of honor.' That was a common outcome for Nixon's rages. The Justice Department eventually dropped the case against Wallace. The courts blocked Lennon's removal. The Washington Post did not lose licenses for any of stations, said Feldstein, author of 'Poisoning the Press,' a book about Nixon's relationship with the media. 'Trump is doing what Nixon would have liked to have done,' Feldstein said. 'Even Nixon didn't take it as far.' The differences between Nixon and Trump in their approach to federal enforcement and investigative power extends to their core motivations. Nixon, as Dean and other close observers of his presidency agree, wanted to retaliate against individuals or institutions he thought opposed or looked down on him. Trump certainly shares that inclination. But Trump's agenda, many scholars of democratic erosion believe, pushes beyond personal animus to mimic the efforts in authoritarian-leaning countries such as Turkey and Hungary to weaken any independent institutions that might contest his centralization of power. 'Although some of it was (motivated by) revenge, the huge difference here is most of what Nixon did was to protect himself, politically and personally,' said Fred Wertheimer, who served as legislative director of the government reform group Common Cause during the Watergate scandal. 'Trump is out to break our democracy and take total control of the country in a way that no one ever has before.' One telling measure of that difference: Trump is openly making threats, or taking actions, that Nixon only discussed in private, and even there with constant concern about public disclosure. Trump's willingness to publicly deliver these threats changes their nature in several important ways, said David Dorsen, an assistant chief counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee and former federal prosecutor. Simply exposing an individual or institution to such an open threat from the world's most powerful person, Dorsen noted, can enormously disrupt their life, even if the courts ultimately prevent Trump from acting on it — a point recently underscored by Miles Taylor in an essay for Politico. And because Nixon's threats were always delivered in private, Dorsen added, aides dubious of them could ignore them more easily than Trump officials faced with his public demands for action. Maybe most important, Dorsen said, is that by making his threats so publicly, Trump is sending a shot across the bow of every other institution that might cross him. 'Trump is legitimizing conduct that Nixon did not purport to legitimize,' Dorsen said. 'He concealed it, he was probably embarrassed by it; he realized it was wrong.' As the IRS pushback against the enemies list demonstrated, Nixon's plans faced constant resistance within his own government, not only from career bureaucrats but often also from his own appointees. 'He failed in getting key officials in the government to do what he wanted,' said Wertheimer, who now directs the reform group Democracy 21. If that kind of internal stonewalling is slowing Trump's sweeping offensives against his targets, there's little evidence of it yet. Congress was another constraint on Nixon. Not only did the administration need to fear oversight hearings from the Democrats who controlled both the House and Senate, but at that point a substantial portion of congressional Republicans were unwilling to blink at abusive actions. Ultimately it was a delegation of Republican senators, led by conservative icon and former GOP presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, who convinced Nixon to resign during Watergate. By contrast, Trump today is operating with 'a completely compliant Republican Congress' and has filled the federal government, including its key law enforcement positions, with loyalist appointees who 'operate as if they are there to carry out his wishes, period,' said Wertheimer. As Feldstein pointed out, Trump also can worry less about critical press coverage than Nixon, who governed at a time when 'there were just three networks and everybody watched those.' That leaves the courts as the principal short-term obstacle to Trump's plans. In Nixon's time, the federal courts consistently acted across party lines to uphold limits on the arbitrary exercise of federal power. Three of Nixon's own appointees joined the unanimous 1974 Supreme Court decision that sealed his fate by requiring him to provide Congress his White House tapes. John Sirica, the steely federal district judge who helped crack the scandal, was appointed by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower. Today, federal district and appellate courts are mostly demonstrating similar independence. The New York Times' running tally counts nearly 190 rulings from judges in both parties blocking Trump actions since he returned to office. 'I think we've seen the largest overreach in modern presidential history … and as a result, you've triggered a massive judicial pushback,' said Norm Eisen, co-founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, a group fighting many of Trump's initiatives in courts. 'I won't say democracy has won so far, because of the damage that Trump and his ilk have done, but I will say Trump lost.' But even if courts block individual Trump tactics, the effort required to rebuff his actions still can impose a heavy cost on his targets. And, on the most important cases, these lower court legal rulings are still subject to reconsideration by the Supreme Court — whose six- member Republican-appointed majority has historically supported an expansive view of presidential power and last year voted to immunize Trump against criminal prosecution for virtually any actions he takes in office. So far, the Supreme Court has sent mixed signals by ruling to restrain Trump on some fronts while empowering him on others. 'We haven't found out yet what the Supreme Court is going to do when … they get the really big cases,' said Wertheimer. Those decisions in the next few years will likely determine whether Trump can fulfill the darkest impulses of Richard Nixon, the only president ever forced to resign for his actions in office.
