Trump administration to shutter HHS' long COVID office: report
A federal office dedicated to the research of long COVID is set to close following the Trump administration's decision to slash the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) workforce.
Ian Simon, head of the Office of Long COVID Research and Practice (OLC), made the announcement in an email on Monday, Politico reported.
"The Office of Long COVID Research and Practice will be closing as part of the administration's reorganization coming this week," the email read, according to Politico. "We are proud of what we have accomplished together, advancing understanding, resources, and support for people living with Long COVID."
Fox News Digital reached out to HHS and Simon for more information, but they did not immediately respond.
Trump Admin Lays Out Who Exactly Was Cut At Hhs In Face Of 'Democrat Hysteria'
It is unclear when the OLC will close nor whether its staff will remain employed by the federal government.
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The Biden-era office was established as a federal response to the widespread and long-term effects of COVID, which can result in chronic conditions that require comprehensive care.
Academic Unions Plan Demonstrations Outside Hhs Building, At Med Schools, To Protest Trump Research Cuts
The decision to shutter the office comes after HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said during his confirmation hearing in January that he was committed to continuing funding and prioritizing long COVID research.
However, President Donald Trump directed HHS in a presidential action last month to "terminate the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Long COVID."
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) said more than $1.5 billion was approved in the last several years for its Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative, which studies the impact of long COVID.
The NIH reported in 2023 that 23 million people were affected by the illness, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated in 2023 that 6% of American adults suffered from long COVID, down from 7.5% in 2022.
"While our office is closing, we hope that the work we have been dedicated to will continue in some form," the email read.Original article source: Trump administration to shutter HHS' long COVID office: report
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USA Today
38 minutes ago
- USA Today
'I refuse to give up': Michigan researchers, health officials grapple with funding cuts
'I refuse to give up': Michigan researchers, health officials grapple with funding cuts Show Caption Hide Caption Video: MSU breast cancer researcher Jamie Bernard talks about funding uncertainty MSU breast cancer researcher Jamie Bernard talks about federal funding uncertainty on Thursday, May 8, 2025, at her lab in East Lansing. Michigan public health officers say they've had to cut services and lay off workers after the Trump administration slashed funding, affecting their ability to work to stop the spread of disease. Scientists from the University of Michigan and Michigan State University say federal cuts to their research could halt development for new cancer treatments and eviscerate the scientific workforce. Using words like "devastating," "heartbreaking," and "shortsighted," Michigan public health leaders and researchers at the state's largest universities described the effects of President Donald Trump's efforts to slash federal government spending — through executive orders, cuts to federal grants, and stop work orders — and the wide-reaching fallout. Some local health departments have laid off workers and cut back on the services they can provide at regional laboratories and at community and in-school health clinics, and have seen disruptions in their ability to stop the spread of infectious disease, said Norm Hess, executive director of the Michigan Association for Local Public Health. When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services revoked $11.4 billion in COVID-19-related grants in late March, the effects were felt across Michigan in ways that might not have been anticipated, he said. 'While everyone agrees the emergency response phase of COVID-19 is over, the funding streams created for pandemic response have been supporting laboratories monitoring other diseases around the state, from legionella to tuberculosis to measles, as well as water quality inspections and other sampling work,' Hess said. 'Federal leaders rescinded those grants, clearly thinking it was a responsible way to recover money that was being misspent. Instead, it's a great example of unintended consequences. Everyone agrees government should spend public dollars efficiently and effectively, but it appears they did not check to see what they were actually eliminating when cutting grants that had 'COVID' on the label.' Although Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has joined other states in challenging many of the Trump administration's cuts to federal public health and university research funding, including the $11.4 billion in COVID-19-related grants, Hess said it's too risky for local health departments to count on money that may or may not be awarded to them in the end. "You can't turn it off, and then if money comes, turn it back on," he said. Cuts hit research on the science of aging When he took office, Trump pledged to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse in federal spending, and "make America healthy again" by shifting priorities of the nation's top health agencies and taking aim at research and programs that focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. But medical researchers at Michigan State University and the University of Michigan say his administration's abrupt cuts to funding for scientific studies, clinical trials and training programs have all but gutted their life's work and could halt the development of new treatments for diseases like cancer as well as eviscerate the future scientific workforce. University of Michigan psychology professor Toni Antonucci lost the $13 million federal grant that supported her research on health disparities among aging Americans. It focused on minority populations, including African Americans, and comes at a moment in history when the U.S. population is older than it ever has been and is growing increasingly diverse. "I have never thought that politics should be involved in research, and, unfortunately, this is clearly the case here," said Antonucci, who has worked at U-M since the 1970s. "We were focusing on our most vulnerable populations, and I think that's the reason that the money was ... rescinded. "It shows a kind of shortsightedness and, in a way, vindictiveness. ... My focus was on ... how can the social relations that people have improve their health? What kinds of relationships are positive for people or negative for people? How do we increase the positive, and reduce the negative? "What are the kinds of things that universally predict better health, longer longevity? ... The point is, if you know what's influencing different groups, it gives you some insight on how to intervene both with that group and with other groups." Now, she said, that data will be lost. "If a government has policies that they want to enact, regardless of the data, then this is what you do," Antonucci said. "You just make sure there are no data. But just because you don't collect the data, that doesn't mean the association isn't still there." U-M professor: Slashed grants suggest 'you just don't matter' Gary Harper, a U-M professor of health behavior and health equity, learned in late March that his nearly $1.15 million five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health had been rescinded. "It's devastating," said Harper. "I am an openly gay man, and have been involved in activism, research, clinical work, and policy work in the HIV field for 40 years, starting out in 1985 as an old-time activist at a time when we were burying our friends every week. ... This is the first time in the history of my academic career that I've been without federal research or training funds." Harper is co-director of the SOAR at U-M, which stands for Student Opportunities for AIDS/HIV Research. It's a two-year intensive mentoring program that provides HIV-related research opportunities to undergraduate students, propelling them toward graduate school, and, eventually, the HIV research workforce. Many of those students are LGBTQ+ themselves, have disabilities, or come from low-income backgrounds, he said, but Harper noted that the program is open to anyone. "I'm a strong believer that we need to be making sure that we mentor researchers who reflect the communities that are most impacted," Harper said. More: Federal research cuts would rock Michigan economy, halt clinical trials, those affected say More: Trump's budget cuts could cost Michigan universities more than $200 million Discovering that the NIH canceled SOAR's grant funding "ripped me apart," Harper said. "We have one more cohort to get through their senior year." He said he won't let the Trump administration win and cancel the program before they graduate. "Basically, what they're saying is, 'We don't want to spend any money on you because you just don't matter,' " Harper said. " 'Your life has no value.' ... Well, I refuse to give up on them." Harper and SOAR's co-director are scrambling together the money themselves to pay for the final year of the program. Slowly, he said, that is coming together, but his other work through the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network (ATN) for HIV/AIDS Intervention has also been targeted by the federal cuts. A study on transgender youths was canceled, he said, and funding for the leadership group that oversees equity and inclusion in all ATN studies also was eliminated. He also lost grant funding to study gay and bisexual men in Kenya living with HIV. Still, he said, "I'm not going to let this get me down. "I try and show power and strength and resilience to the students, to give them hope that this, too, shall pass. This is a moment in time, but this is not your entire life. ... Your lives do matter. You are special and you are perfect, just the way you are." Breast cancer prevention studies in limbo The Trump administration isn't taking aim solely at research that fits its definition of DEI, said Jamie Bernard, an associate professor of pharmacology and toxicology at Michigan State University. "What I don't really think is being well communicated is that cancer research is also being threatened," said Bernard, who began studying interventions to prevent breast cancer in 2016, when her mother, Pamela O'Brien, was diagnosed with the disease at 61 years old. "This is something that Democrats and Republicans have always supported. In fact, we've come so far in the treatment of breast cancer due to federal funding, we diagnose women earlier. There's lots of options for treatment, and really, this research has saved a lot of lives and brought health care costs down." Her work is now focused on the environmental and lifestyle factors that can increase a woman's risk of getting aggressive breast cancers. "Not all breast cancers are curable, so that's what I really set off to focus on," she said, explaining that her work involves understanding how to kill cancer cells that are resistant to treatment and discovering new drug therapies. Earlier this year, she applied to renew a $2.07 million federal grant funded by the National Institutes of Health along with a new, $2.79 million grant, but both have been held up for months in a cloud of uncertainty. The initial reviews of her grants were postponed but eventually got through the first stage of the process; they now await the second step of review. There remain no guarantees. "How are they going to choose what they fund?" she said. "I don't know what's going to happen, really. So, we are in a time of uncertainty. Grant funding has always been uncertain. It's always been competitive, but there's always been a process and an infrastructure that researchers have relied on." Bernard runs a research lab at MSU, where a team of scientists are working to 'stop breast cancer from ever starting in the first place or prevent it so much that you've delayed it and you die of some other natural cause before you have to deal with cancer," she said. "I am in a place where I don't know if I should be accepting students in the fall. What's my next move? Am I still allowed to study what I've been studying? So it's a confusing time, a frustrating time, a time of high anxiety in our department of pharmacology and toxicology.' Bernard said the NIH canceled a grant for a graduate student from Puerto Rico who is Hispanic, and had applied through a mechanism that provided funding for predoctoral students who are disabled, identify as Black, Hispanic, American Indian or Alaska Native, or who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds. "Just simply because she was a minority, the grant mechanism that she applied with, they withdrew it," Bernard said. "The white woman in my lab, her grant is going to be reviewed. ... It's so awful." The work they're doing, she said, "really should be bipartisan, nonpartisan — not even partisan. It's freaking cancer research." Ph.D. student reexamines future in scientific research The political climate is chasing Alex Chapman, a Ph.D. student at MSU who is studying migraines and pain, away from a career in academia. Chapman, 24, who is originally from Richmond, Virginia, secured a federal grant studying a neuropeptide that's upregulated in people with migraines, before Trump took office in January. Many of her friends and colleagues haven't been so lucky. "Science is being so vilified that I'm considering careers in other places or different avenues because it's just hard to see a future in a place that doesn't value science at all," she said. "It's heartbreaking. ... My career options are kind of dwindling, and the more time that passes, the more fellowships and different opportunities just keep becoming defunded," Chapman said, noting that a fellowship she was eyeing through the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) has been axed. She considered shifting toward public policy work, helping government leaders understand "why we should fund pain research," but then she attended a symposium and heard a woman who works in public policy speak about the cuts there, too. "She was like, 'This is a great fellowship. It's been defunded. This was an awesome fellowship. It's been defunded,' " Chapman said. When entrepreneur Elon Musk, who headed the new Department of Government Efficiency early in the Trump administration, criticized the use of federal dollars on scientific studies of legumes and aggression in hamsters, Chapman said, it showed that he couldn't see the full impact of the work. "If you just simplify it like that, maybe it does seem silly, but you're looking at the small picture," she said. "The point of research is to zoom out and look at the bigger picture. When you understand the best process of planting beans or why certain strains of corn are more susceptible to different fungi, you help people more effectively and efficiently plant food. This will help us in the face of climate change. "If you understand why a hamster is aggressive after ingesting a certain substance, you understand the role of that substance and how it could potentially affect humans." That small-picture view — and the cuts made because of it — could have generational impacts on the United States and the world, Chapman said. "This isn't just shutting down one study that focuses on hamsters fighting," she said. "It's preventing a new generation of scientists from coming into the (field), which is going to stunt our growth as a nation, which is going to prevent new ideas from happening, which is going to lead to ... horrible damage that would take years, if not decades, to recover. "People are afraid to come out and criticize this because of the way the government has treated them, especially foreign students. When it gets to the point where the government can strike fear in your heart if you speak out against them, especially about something regarding science, it's a very scary place to be." Local public health departments rattled, services cut Nick Derusha, the director and health officer of the LMAS District Health Department, which also includes Luce and Mackinac counties, said his part of the eastern Upper Peninsula has been rattled by a Trump administration stop-work order that means there's no money to run clinics that provide medicine like methadone to help people wean off opioid drugs and reduce the risk of overdose deaths in Alger and Schoolcraft counties. "We take a really holistic approach to that program," Derusha said. "We're not just providing medication-assisted treatment. We have peer recovery coaches. We have community health workers. We have a lot of staff that are there to support them in many other ways, not just the medication. "When funding is abruptly eliminated like that, we can't just drop people off the caseload. We needed to find a way for them to be able to continue to receive services or some type of off-ramp. We worked with the local hospital, and we agreed for three more months, which is kind of nearing the end here, to continue to provide those services, absent the funding. But the long-term ability of us to do that is not likely." In addition, Derusha said the LMAS department lost $512,000 a year to pay for a courier system for its laboratory services. Because the district is so sprawling — it covers four U.P. counties — when test samples need to be shipped to the regional lab in Luce County, ordinary mail often doesn't get them delivered quickly enough. Without the courier system, it means slower results for important public health testing, he said, which could delay treatments and lead to poorer outcomes. The LMAS District Health Department isn't alone. The Mid-Michigan Health Department, which includes Clinton, Gratiot and Montcalm counties, announced in April it will no longer investigate or treat latent tuberculosis infections because of "funding cuts and workforce limitations." Mental health services for school-age children are being cut, too, said Andrea Cole, president of the Ethel and James Flinn Foundation, a Detroit-based nonprofit dedicated to improving the quality, scope, and delivery of mental health services in Michigan. A $1 billion grant was terminated through the Department of Education in late April to pay for in-school social workers, counselors and other mental health professionals — even though 70% of children who receive mental health services get them through their schools, she said. "A lot of the federal cuts were to the most vulnerable and underserved populations," Cole said. "Schools are faced with the possibility of laying off those people that they hired under that grant if they don't have funding to continue it." And the students will be left without that critical mental health support when "they need it more than ever," Cole said. Hess said all of these cuts, along with proposed legislation — the Big, Beautiful Bill Act, which has passed the U.S. House of Representatives and now is under consideration in the U.S. Senate — that would slash Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, and a state Senate budget proposal that also seeks to trim funding even more, public health in Michigan could dramatically change. More: Whitmer: Trump's 'big, beautiful bill' could cost Michigan $900 million a year for food stamps More: 700,000 Michigan residents could lose health insurance under Medicaid cuts, report shows "We don't want to give the impression that the sky is falling, and that public health is going to pack up and go home," Hess said. "We've been here for 100 years, and we've seen ups and downs over the years. Health officers are used to kind of making things work, but this is sort of a unique situation. "Community residents are really going to feel this if all of these things that we are watching come to fruition. Public health will not look the same in their communities, in most places." Contact Kristen Shamus: kshamus@ Subscribe to the Detroit Free Press.
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.
