In November, President Trump signed an Executive Order “Launching the Genesis Mission” which pushed for a faster integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into scientific spaces. It would integrate AI with existing scientific research infrastructure such as universities, labs, and national datasets to accelerate scientific discovery and development of AI, address national technological challenges and promote “America’s technological dominance”.

This integration is intended to empower AI to test hypotheses independently and automate research workflows and would be funded by existing Department of Energy resources.

A White House proposal for national AI policy

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Wall Street investors crowding out families seeking to buy homes

One aims to prevent “large institutional investors” from buying “single-family homes” but tasks the Treasury Department with determining the definitions for those two phrases. Since 2008, the number of single-family homes owned by large corporations and leased for rent has ballooned. Institutional investors began buying foreclosed properties and renting them out. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that before 2011 an investor owning more than 1000 single family properties was virtually unheard of, but in 2022 there were 32 investors who owned more than 1000 single family properties with 450,000 homes in total. This is only about three percent of the national market, but tends to be concentrated in densely populated areas. The Executive Order calls for narrow exceptions for build-to-rent homes, a model which many large institutional investors like American Homes 4 Rent and Invitation Homes have pivoted towards in the last couple of years.

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Military Contractors

The first Executive Order signed this year was “Prioritizing the Warfighter in Defense Contracting” which authorizes the Defense Department to restrict stock buy-backs and dividend payouts for defense contractors deemed as under-performing on their contracts. Since there aren’t provisions in existing defense contracts authorizing this kind of limitation or the negotiation period specified in the order it may be difficult to enforce, but new contracts may include language in accordance with this Executive Order. The government can, however, use existing tools such as withholding payments and leverage over invoicing and approvals.

Defense Production

Trump has also signed two orders pertaining to the Defense Production Act (DPA). One invokes the DPA to prioritize the domestic production and allocation of elemental phosphorus and glyphosate-based herbicides due to their uses in military devices, semiconductors used in defense technologies such as smoke devices and radar systems, and lithium-ion batteries, as well as agriculture. The other delegates authority to act independently under the Defense Production Act to the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of Commerce during a national energy emergency, like the one he declared on the day he took office in 2025 which was extended in January of this year. Typically, these secretaries would need presidential approval for actions relating to the Defense Production Act.

Arms Transfer

The “America first arms transfer strategy” order seeks to enhance defense production capacity and boost the United States defense industrial base with the development of a sales catalogue and ideally, expanded arms sales and transfers. In calling for accountability and transparency, the order makes no mention of transparency to the American public or auditing accuracy, and instead focuses on transparency for the industry and its buyers.

Coal Energy for Military Facilities

Trump signed an Executive Order instructing the Defense Secretary to promote “clean coal” with more coal-fired energy production facilities to serve military installations and facilities. Clean coal refers to plants that use carbon capture technology and other methods to reduce harmful emissions like CO2 and other pollutants known to cause acid rain. It doesn’t address other forms of pollution such as those that occur during the mining process and has been reported to increase the cost of coal plant operations by 56% according to a report by BloombergNEF, making it the most expensive power source in the country by a significant margin.

Oil Blockade of Cuba, Venezuelan oil proceeds

In January, Trump established an oil blockade of Cuba by Executive Order in response to their support of Russia, China, Iran, Hamas, and Hezbollah, placing tariffs on any country that provides oil to Cuba either directly or indirectly. This blockade has brought existing struggles and challenges for Cubans to “a different level” according to Patrick Poomann, Havana bureau chief for CNN. Power is unreliable island-wide, safe water is in short supply and food shortages and crop failures have begun.

After establishing designated Treasury accounts to hold funds collected from the sale of seized Venezuelan oil, Trump signed an Executive Order declaring a national emergency due to attempts by private parties to sue for access to the funds held in these accounts.

Immunity for the new Board of Peace

Another order signed in January attempts to give the Board of Peace designation as an international organization. The goal is to make the board exempt from most lawsuits, taxation and property searches. But the International Organizations Immunities Act only grants the president authority to provide these privileges to international organizations “pursuant to any treaty or under the authority of any Act of Congress authorizing such participation or making an appropriation for such participation.” Trump’s Board of Peace is not the result of a treaty, which would require ratification by the Senate, and it hasn’t been authorized by any congressional statute. Further, since the Board of Peace designates Trump by name to serve as its chairman even after the end of his term as president, as a private citizen, the exemptions afforded to international organizations may not apply.

Trump shifted money to avoid the political embarrassment that would be caused by the collapse of airport security screening through the actions of disgruntled agents and the disruption to air travel that would ensue. But it’s legally dubious.

The money the White House is tapping into to pay people like Transportation Safety Administration airport screeners and Coast Guard members was approved by Congress, but not through regular appropriations. DHS is using a pot of $10 billion dollars set aside in last year’s massive budget reconciliation bill – the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) – to cover payroll for more than 100,000 employees, the same bill that reserved $75 billion in multi-year operating funds for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Accessing that money to pay DHS employees, however, is legally dubious. The funds are made available in Section 90007 of the OBBBA until September 2029, but specifically for supporting DHS’s work “to safeguard the borders of the United States.” TSA agents working security lines in U.S. airports for domestic flights are not safeguarding the border, for example. Similarly for FEMA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), parts of DHS substantially focused on domestic security.

Government watchdog groups and other appropriations experts argue that tapping into that $10 billion runs afoul of the Antideficiency Act, which prohibits federal employees from moving funds from a purpose given in law to a purpose not given for the money in law. The law gives teeth to Congress’s “power of the purse” under the Constitution. Former Senate Budget Committee and Office of Management and Budget staffer Bobby Kogan thought using this section of the law for other purposes was a clear ADA violation.

The Trump Administration made a similar violation during the government shutdown last October by using research and development funds for military personnel pay.

The trouble with the ADA is that it relies on agency heads to report violations to the President and the Comptroller General at the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of Congress currently controlled by the Republican majorities of the House and Senate. In this case, the president directed the violation and Republicans in Congress do not want GAO to challenge it. Although violating the Antideficiency Act carries with it criminal penalties, no one has ever been prosecuted under it. Unlike the current situation, most violations have been by mistake.

Legal or not, the OBBA funds will run dry at the end of this week based on the rate at which DHS is spending it down.

Congress is moving forward to end the DHS funding lapse. The Senate began the process of budget reconciliation on funding for DHS for the remainder of the fiscal year and beyond this week. Because it allows for expedited consideration of spending and revenue bills, reconciliation will allow the Senate to overcome the 60-vote threshold holding back this funding in the regular appropriations process, which Democrats have leveraged for more than two months over their concerns about immigration enforcement agencies within DHS.

As the name implies, budget reconciliation requires the House and Senate to agree on which programs will be funded and at what level. That hasn’t happened yet, as some House Republicans want to fund immigration enforcement at a higher level than the Senate and include other items like funding for the Iran war.

Nevertheless, the unchecked ability of the executive branch to use money appropriated by Congress for other purposes violates the bedrock principle of the separation of the power of the purse from the power of the sword, which dates back to the English Civil War and Glorious Revolution of the 17th century. The Constitution grants Congress the power to determine how federal funds will be spent as a check on the presidency. What we’re experiencing now is a Congress and Executive Branch that does not care to check the President to the harm of the government’s democratic structure.

Using the reconciliation process still undermines congressional power in this case. The framework the Senate approved would extend funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection for more than three years. Regular appropriations bills generally apply only to one fiscal year. They also carry with them language requiring agencies perform certain oversight-related duties or prohibitions on using funds for specific purposes. ICE and CBP will get a blank check through the next Congress, which, if Democrats retake the majorities, will have to live with it.

The red line: Elections must be decided by the count of all the votes

There’s a red line after which we’re not living in a democracy anymore: Elections must be decided by the count of all the votes. Sometimes it’s not clear how to count a ballot (think “hanging chads” from the 2000 election), so disputes routinely get resolved by courts, which apply the law as written. That’s normal. After court rulings, the votes determine the winner. That’s democracy.

Yet after the 2020 presidential election some local officials refused to certify vote totals and then on January 6, 2021, most Republicans in Congress voted to toss out state-certified vote totals in order to throw the election to Trump. That had never happened before. It failed. We came very close to crossing that red line.

At least crossing the red line would be obvious.

But there are far more ways the election could be subverted that aren’t as glaringly obvious.

Tipping the balance by changing elections laws and procedures

This first section isn’t the most exciting, but it is the most likely: Changing election laws and procedures is legal and has an impact on who votes.

Although we no longer have poll taxes, literacy tests, and race and gender-based disenfranchisement, politicians still use gerrymandering, ID requirements, polling place convenience, and the availability of mail-in voting to sway elections in their favor. (By the way, around 3% of the voting age population still isn’t allowed to vote in the midterms: citizens residing in Puerto Rico, D.C., and other U.S. territories have no voting representation in Congress, and most citizens with felony convictions cannot vote. Who do you think that benefits?)

Redrawing congressional district maps

After President Trump suggested Texas redraw its maps for a partisan advantage last year, California (+5D), Missouri (+1R), North Carolina (+1R), Ohio (+2R), and Texas (+5R) all redrew their congressional district maps for an overall likely gain of 4 House of Representatives seats for Republicans. (Florida, Maryland, and Virginia have also taken steps to do so.)

Proof of citizenship for voting and ID

Republicans have also passed the SAVE Act in the House which would require proof of citizenship to register to vote in the name of preventing mass non-citizen voting, a conspiracy theory easily disproved by the fact that in a decade of fearmongering no mass voter fraud has been prosecuted either by Trump or by any Republican state attorney general. (Well, except for this Republican who voted illegally nine times and these other Republicans convicted of election fraud.)

What the bill would do is make registering to vote harder for anyone who doesn’t already have a passport or whose name doesn’t match their birth certificate, like most married women. The law would also go into effect immediately and require most states to make significant changes to their election administration procedures just months before the 2026 election, creating an opportunity for mass confusion.

Trump has demanded the Senate pass the bill but it’s been stalled without any votes from Democrats to reach the 60-vote Senate filibuster threshold, and it will probably remain that way. Last year Trump issued an executive order to do this, and it was blocked in court, pending appeal.

Speaking of ID, state lawmakers in Kansas recently revoked the drivers licenses of trans people, and since Kansas requires ID to cast a vote, you can see where that might be going (disenfranchising voters Republicans don’t want).

Limiting mail-in voting

Republicans also want to curb mail-in voting, an option that they claim is insecure and benefits Democrats. Nearly 1 in 3 voters voted by mail in 2024: Since 2000 Oregon has run its presidential election voting entirely by mail, and a handful of other states now also allow anyone to vote by mail, including red-state Utah which votes entirely by mail. (As with non-citizen voting, Republicans have not been able to find any mass mail-in voting fraud to prosecute either.)

In a new March 31 executive order, Trump directed USPS, the postal service, to develop plans to require voters to register with the federal government prior to mailing a ballot and to reject mailed ballots that don’t conform to new USPS tracking requirements. USPS could finalize those rules as late as August, creating new chaos for state officials just months before the election. But the order will be challenged, and likely blocked, because no law gives the president or USPS this power.

In last year’s proof-of-citizenship executive order as well as in proposed legislation and a lawsuit brought by the Republican National Committee in Mississippi that’s now before the Supreme Court, Republicans want to prohibit states from counting ballots postmarked by election day if they arrive after election day. USPS plans a double-whammy on that one: 1) It plans to delay postmarking, meaning a ballot mailed on or even before election day may not be postmarked until after election day. 2) It plans to lengthen mail delivery by routing local mail through further-away hubs, making it uncertain how far in advance a ballot would need to be mailed for it to be counted.

Last year’s executive order (the same one again) also required changing requirements for electronic voting systems under the guise of security and withholding grants to states that don’t comply with some of these updated rules. Courts will probably prevent any of that from being enforced before the midterms.

(Do Democrats want to expand mail-in voting for their own partisan advantage? Probably! But making voting easier is a good thing for everyone.)

Republicans have also proposed to prohibit ranked-choice voting and ballot harvesting.

Manipulating polling place availability, like their location, open hours, and capacity, is also expected. The long lines are intentional.

No one of these measures would likely turn an election, but taken together and they are happening together, they add up.

Voter roll purges

Republicans have also sought to ramp up voter roll purges, that is, un-registering voters who may not be eligible to vote. Voter roll purges by state officials are normal because people move out of state or die, and a bipartisan interstate organization named ERIC has helped states manage voter rolls effectively since 2012.

Indiscriminate purges right before an election could prevent eligible voters from voting. For example, Georgia aggressively purges voter rolls, disproportionately de-registering Black people.

Last year DOJ began demanding that states turn over voter registration lists to cross-reference with immigration databases to force states to purge immigrants from rolls. Some states have complied with DOJ, but courts have blocked those demands where states didn’t. So in the March 31 executive order, DHS is directed instead to provide lists of citizens to states, presumably so that red states would have new fodder for their own enforcement.

The Trump Administration and Republican states have already begun doing it, and an investigation found that the lists were wrong at least 81% of the time: First, many immigrants go on to become citizens and become eligible to vote before they registered. Second, a name on one list might match the name of a voter, but it might not be the same person. So an eligible voter may be taken off the rolls, or an immigrant might be deported for something they didn’t do. That’s the problem ERIC was designed to solve. (Although some part of the list was correct, it doesn’t appear that anyone on the list actually voted illegally.)

Refusing to certify election results

Here’s one way that’s not legal: After the 2020 presidential election and 2022 midterms, a handful of local elections officials simply refused to certify the result. While state laws do require that officials tally votes and then certify the count, local officials can gum up the system by delaying or refusing to do so until state officials or courts can intervene. But if those state officials and higher courts are friendly to Trump and gullible to conspiracy theories, then they might not.

Sham candidates and dark money

Then there’s the money behind elections. In 2024, “300 billionaires and their immediate family members donated more than $3 billion — 19 percent of all contributions” to political campaigns and related entities, overwhelmingly in support of Republicans. The money typically goes to advertising to swing voters. Which billionaires will show up to sway this year’s elections won’t be known until reporting deadlines after the election, if ever. It’s all legal.

In Nebraska, the Democratic candidate for Senate might actually be a Republican, filing at the last minute to siphon votes from the candidate Democrats are expected to vote for. Down-ballot, in 2020 a sham candidate swung the election of a state official in Florida from Democrat to Republican. And you probably remember Republican representative-turned-felon George Santos who fabricated his life story and was expelled from Congress. Trump commuted his sentence last year.

Seizing election equipment and sham investigations

The conspiracy theory that foreign nations hacked electronic elections equipment still has adherents even though it hadn’t gone well in court. In 2023, Fox News agreed to pay a voting equipment maker nearly $1 billion over lies it told constantly about the 2020 election and Trump advisor Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to unlawfully accessing secure elections machines in Georgia. You might remember back in 2020 Trump fired his own cybersecurity director for saying the election was the most secure in U.S. history.

Now, in January, the FBI seized elections materials from Fulton County, Georgia in what seems to be a continuation of that conspiracy theory, and in March a Republican sheriff running for governor seized 650,000 ballots cast in California in 2025. Trump recently commented that he should have seized ballot boxes during the 2020 election. In March, DOJ subpoenaed Arizona for records from state Republicans’ own sham audit of 2020 election results. They’re looking for anything to keep the lies alive. Now Trump supporters are talking about an executive order to take over elections based on the same conspiracy theory of foreign control of voting machines. It’s not legally possible, and Trump said he won’t.

But DOJ or local officials could seize more voting equipment — equipment meant for or used in the midterms — as a part of a misguided or sham investigation, disrupting the election.

A standing army and a pardon for the mobs (unlikely)

You might be thinking about whether Trump will send ICE’s 22,000 officers to polling places to arrest, or scare away, would-be voters under an immigration pretense. DHS had said ICE won’t, but in his confirmation hearing new DHS Secretary Mullin wouldn’t rule out immigration enforcement at polling locations. There’s also the National Guard (though Democratic governors would challenge their deployment) and other federal agents to wonder about (though what their pretense might be is anyone’s guess). There are nearly 100,000 polling places across the country, so intimidation nation-wide wouldn’t be possible, but targeting polling locations in the (currently) 18 toss-up districts could shift the needle just enough for a few more Republican wins.

White supremacist militias, like the ones that were on the front lines of the January 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol, could pick up the slack. Trump pardoned the violent January 6, 2021 rioters, and they may expect him to do the same if they mobilize again.

I don’t think these are likely to happen, though.

A wartime rally

Between 2011 and 2013, Trump predicted in various statements that then-President Barack Obama would “start a war with Iran” to get re-elected or for other political reasons. He didn’t, but Trump did. I leave the inference up to you. (So far polling indicates the new Iran war has hurt Trump, though.)

Congress has the final say

Finally, after the election, the House and Senate could simply decline to seat elected legislators. The Constitution gives the House and Senate the final say in whether a legislator-elect meets the Constitutional qualifications for office (age, citizenship, residency) and was “duly” elected. It has been extraordinarily rare, but the House and Senate have prevented legislators-elect from taking office, leaving the seat vacant. Although there are complex procedures around this, to “exclude” someone from taking office the other elected legislators ultimately only need a majority vote — and a Supreme Court willing to allow it.

Whichever party holds the most seats in each chamber could vote to hold the other party’s open seats vacant, but since that party would already have majority control over the chamber, taking away a seat from the minority party might not actually confer any new power, which makes this whole hypothetical extremely unlikely. Could the rules be abused to flip which party holds a majority? Anything is possible, I guess. (This is sort of similar to Congress’s role in having the final say in certifying the presidential election, but the Constitutional provisions and procedures are completely different.)

Trump need not order election interference

Trump himself was criminally charged in Georgia state court in 2022 for his role in the submission of a fraudulent slate of presidential electors to Congress for certification on January 6, 2021 and for making false statements about illegal voting in a call with Georgia’s top elections official, until a replacement prosecutor dropped the charges in 2025 (not because of the charges’ merits but because he “lacks the resources” to continue and other “difficult” logistics). A federal investigation also alleged that Trump sought to ignore true vote counts, manufactured fraudulent slates of presidential electors, and used the January 6 riot to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election, but this too was dropped after Trump’s re-election because DOJ prosecutors cannot prosecute their boss.

But as you can see from the long list of ways that elections can be manipulated, it doesn’t require an order from the top. Local and state elections officials, legislators in Congress, friendly judges, and mobs have all stepped forward on their own before to support Trump and might do so to support other candidates this fall.

IEEPA Tariffs

In February, the Supreme Court struck down some of President Trump’s tariff policies, ruling that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) did not provide the president with the authority to impose sweeping tariffs. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that “no president has read IEEPA to confer such power.” He went on to describe a violation of the “major questions” doctrine, which states that if Congress intended to delegate significant decisions it would have written so clearly. (We predicted this in an article we published last July.)

After the decision, President Trump signed a new Executive Order, ending the affected tariff actions described in nine previous orders which had cited IEEPA. Refunds of more than $166 billion may be issued to companies that paid the tariffs. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has said that a refund process could be ready by mid-to-late April.

(The rest of Trump’s tariff policies remain in place, as well as a new 10% tariff questionably under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, which can only remain in place for 150 days, expiring on July 24 without Congressional approval. Several states have sued the federal government, asking the U.S. Court of International Trade to block the implementation of the new tariffs, arguing that the statute is out of date and was written to overcome currency exchange rate challenges that no longer exist. They also allege that the tariffs are not being applied per the statute’s requirements, with no facts to justify the 80 pages of product exceptions. According to the statute, the tariffs must be applied broadly and uniformly, but it does allow for exceptions to meet the needs of the U.S. economy.)

The National Guard

Trump attempted to deploy National Guard troops in three states against the governors’ wishes, with a stated goal of curtailing violent crime. The National Guard is generally under state control, and can only be federalized in certain situations: an invasion from a foreign nation, rebellion against the U.S. government, or when federal laws can’t be enforced using regular forces. The Posse Comitatus Act prevents military troops from engaging in domestic law enforcement.

In Illinois v. Trump, the plaintiffs alleged that the move to federalize the National Guard (both Illinois and Texas troops were called up) was politically motivated and unconstitutional. They cited the Posse Comitatus Act, as well as the Tenth Amendment which protects state sovereignty, and the APA. A District Court blocked the federalization of troops. The ruling was upheld by the Seventh Circuit Court, and ultimately the Supreme Court. The Administration tried to argue in front of the Supreme Court that only the president can determine if conditions have been met to federalize the troops, but SCOTUS held that the government had not shown sufficient authority to deploy the National Guard in Illinois. Cases in Oregon and California were affected by the Supreme Court ruling, and the cases were dismissed and stayed respectively.

Birthright Citizenship

Trump’s day-one Executive Order calling for the end of birthright citizenship was immediately challenged. Several judges issued preliminary injunctions, halting its implementation. They ruled that the order was unconstitutional, violating the Fourteenth Amendment which states “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” Defense of the Executive Order hinges on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” which the Administration argues does not apply to children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants. The phrase has historically been interpreted as an exception for the children of foreign diplomats. Last Summer, the Supreme Court responded to a request to stay a preliminary injunction, ruling that lower courts couldn’t issue nationwide rulings. The decision notably did not rule on whether the order was unconstitutional, but it also didn’t rule out other types of court orders with national implications such as class-action suits or suits brought by states. The First and Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals both upheld the lower courts’ rulings. In December, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Barbara v Trump and determine whether the Executive Order violates the U.S. Constitution. Oral arguments were heard on April 1 with a ruling expected this summer. A ruling in favor of the Administration would upend a centuries-long understanding of citizenship in the U.S., but judicial experts think the Administration will lose.

“Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections”

In March of last year, Trump signed this Executive Order with wide implications for the way elections are run in the U.S. It directed the Election Assistance Commission to require a “show your papers” policy before approving voter registration forms to prevent non-citizens from registering and tie federal funding to the stipulation that states comply, sought to alter voting machine guidelines, allow DOGE to review state voter registration files to compel states to purge non-citizens from voter rolls, and limit mail-in ballots. Each of these provisions has been blocked in a slew of cases, each of which the government has filed to appeal. Most recently, a federal judge for the District Court of D.C. blocked agencies from requesting citizenship status when distributing voter registration forms. Each of the rulings cite the separation of powers, the states’ broad authority to run elections, and a lack of presidential authority. Voter registration forms themselves require attestation of citizenship and non-citizen voting is not a common issue despite political rhetoric asserting otherwise, as is the case with fraud by mail-in ballot. The proposed changes would, however, make it more difficult for citizens to register and vote, and provide an advantage to Republican candidates whose voters are less likely to use a mail-in ballot. The Supreme Court recently heard arguments for Watson v Republican National Committee, which will determine whether mail-in ballots have to be received rather than post-marked by election day. The conservative majority seemed skeptical that the post-mark rule should continue. If they rule this way, it could overturn laws in 29 states, impacting large rural areas and military members abroad.

“Protecting the American People Against Invasion”

This order in part sought to ensure that “sanctuary jurisdictions,” or jurisdictions which do not assist in federal immigration enforcement beyond the minimum legal requirements, wouldn’t receive federal funding. The State of New York is a recipient of funds from the Transit Security Grant Program (TSGP) for the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA). When that grant funding was cut off for New York, the state sued in State of New York v. Noem alleging that it was cut due to their sanctuary policies. The suit accused the Administration of violating the APA, and the district judge ruled in the state’s favor, finding that withholding the funding due to New York’s sanctuary policies was arbitrary and capricious, and requiring the government to reinstate the TSGP funds.

Illinois and San Francisco County have filed similar complaints due to funding cuts stemming from sanctuary policies, which have thus far resulted in temporary blocks, still pending appeal.

The order also instructed DHS to expand the use of expedited removal beyond border enforcement, which was challenged in Make the Road New York et al v Kristi Noem. Plaintiffs argued that the new rule violates the Fifth Amendment right to due process and the APA. A district judge blocked the implementation of the new rule. The Administration has appealed from district court to circuit court, the next higher level of the federal court system.

“Unleashing American Energy”

The Executive Order “Unleashing American Energy” rescinded several orders Biden had signed on renewable energy, promoted energy production on federal lands, and sought to eliminate what it referred to as the electric vehicle (EV) mandate by directing the Federal Highway Administration to suspend the National Election Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Formula Program. Several legal challenges are awaiting court rulings, but State of Washington v. Department of Transport et al resulted in the district court requiring the government to restore NEVI, finding that the funding freeze violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) because suspension of the program was arbitrary and capricious, meaning baseless and without an apparent motive (you’ll notice a pattern of rulings including this phrase below).

“Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”

This order in part required federal agencies to revise grant conditions to exclude any organizations which depicted or affirmed transgender and non-binary identities. It threatened grant funding for non-profit organizations which the government viewed as promoting “gender ideology” even if they met other criteria. A group of non-profits in Rhode Island received funding from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), but their missions to affirm transgender and nonbinary identities would violate the new criteria. They sued the NEA in Rhode Island Latino Arts v. National Endowment for the Arts claiming that the ban violated the Administrative Procedures Act for exceeding statutory limitations and being arbitrary and capricious, and the First Amendment by imposing viewpoint-based discrimination against artistic speech. The district judge ruled in favor of the Rhode Island Latino Arts on the First Amendment and APA claims. The NEA wasn’t allowed to condition its grant funding on whether organizations “promote gender ideology.”

Pursuant to the same executive order, the Department of Health and Human Services removed health-related data from public websites. A suit was filed on behalf of doctors and scientists who rely on those datasets, arguing that the new HHS Guidance was arbitrary and capricious under the Administrative Procedures Act. The judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs and required that HHS restore the health-information webpages and datasets.

More than 10 cases challenge the legality of this executive order or its implementation. These are just a couple examples.

Targeting Law Firms

Last year, Trump signed executive orders targeting several of the country’s most prominent law firms including Perkins Coie, Paul Weiss, Jenner & Block, Susman Godfrey, and WilmerHale for taking cases (or hiring people who took cases) unfavorable to the President, such as cases relating to Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The orders sought to bar the lawyers from government buildings, suspend their security credentials, and terminate any contracts they had with the U.S. government. Trump alleged that the firms posed a threat to national security and accused them all of anti-white racism and partisan lawfare. Paul Weiss acquiesced to the orders by pledging pro bono legal work on cases or issues Trump cares about, but others sued. The suits were successful, with district judges consistently ruling that the executive orders served as retaliatory sanctions for firms exercising their constitutional rights. The Administration initially sought to appeal the decisions, but within a 24-hour period had moved to drop the appeal and then pick it back up again. The appeals have been consolidated under Zaid v. Executive Office of The President.

“Improving Education Outcomes by Empowering Parents, States, and Communities”

This Executive Order called for the closure of the Department of Education and faced several court challenges, many of which it overcame. However, the order resulted in a $6 billion funding freeze of Department of Education programs while they were reviewed for consistency with the administration’s policies. When the freeze was announced, 24 states and the District of Columbia filed State of California v McMahon, claiming that it would impact summer school, after school programs, as well as adult education programs. It alleged that the Department of Education violated the APA, the Separation of Powers, and Presentment Clause. The case was withdrawn, however, after the Administration agreed to release the frozen funds.

The Department of Education continues to operate, though with a drastic reduction of staff. It has moved to delegate some of its programs to other parts of the government through interagency agreements, most recently including a transfer of its federal student loan debt to the Treasury Department. The department can’t be disbanded without direct action from Congress, which actually increased its budget for fiscal year 2026.

“Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy”

With this order, Trump called for the elimination of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) and six other federal agencies, resulting in the termination of most of FMCS’s staff. This agency reviews labor disputes by providing conflict resolution services for workers and employers nationwide. In April 2025 a group of unions filed American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO v Goldstein alleging arbitrary and capricious violations of the Administrative Procedure Act among other statutes. The district judge ruled in the plaintiff’s favor, requiring the government to reverse the reduction in force at FMCS. However, the agency currently lists 60 mediators on its website, while an anonymous FMCS employee cited almost 200 employees in 2024.

Another lawsuit on behalf of FMCS and three other agencies, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA), and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness (ISICH) was also successful but is pending appeal.

“Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism”

As a result of this call for a joint task force on combating antisemitism, the government sent a letter to Harvard with a list of demands in order to maintain federal funding, which Harvard refused. Harvard sued the administration in President and Fellows of Harvard College v. US Department of Health and Human Services. The district court ruled against the funding freeze, stating that the Administration had “used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities.” It found that the attempt to condition federal funding on changes to campus policies violated the First Amendment, Title VI procedural requirements, and the APA.

Another case filed by Harvard faculty received a similar ruling, but is currently pending appeal.

Another case was filed by the American Association of University Professors, American Association of University Professors v. Rubio, alleging an “ideological-deportation policy” against noncitizen students and faculty who participated in pro-Palestinian protests. The Administration had been targeting protesters for deportation, claiming their actions were antisemetic. The district judge ultimately held that the Administration violated the First Amendment and the APA by being arbitrary and capricious, and that further deportation efforts in this context could be immediately challenged in court.

“Imposing Sanctions on the International Criminal Court”

An Executive Order placing sanctions in the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its designation of war crimes committed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sought to punish anyone who did business with the ICC. In Rona v Trump, the plaintiffs were U.S. lawyers who advised and interacted with the ICC. The district judge ruled that the lawyers’ activities were speech-based activities for which they could not be sanctioned, permanently blocking the order from being enforced, but only against these lawyers.

Another case, Smith v. Trump, was filed by two human rights advocates who have advised the ICC. Their case also cites First Amendment violations, but goes further to claim that regulations put in place by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control violated the APA. A preliminary injunction was issued by the district court to prevent the government from imposing penalties on the plaintiffs, but the case remains ongoing.

Other Health Actions

HHS attempted to withhold Title X grant funding to 16 Family Planning and Reproductive Health organizations on the premise that they were in violation of civil rights laws and an Executive Order “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Open Borders” due to public statements on their websites about diversity, equity, and inclusion, and concerns that some members might provide care to undocumented immigrants. National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association v Kennedy alleged that the withholding of the grant funding was arbitrary and capricious and because they weren’t given proper notice or the opportunity for corrective action. The case was eventually withdrawn, after the Administration restored the Title X grants.

The National Institute of Health issued guidance which would impose a 15% reimbursement rate for indirect costs of medical research across the board, instead of the previous practice of institutions negotiating the reimbursement rate individually. Commonwealth of Massachusetts v National Institutes of Health was filed on behalf of 22 states, arguing that the policy violates the APA as an arbitrary and capricious change as well as Congress’s appropriations of NIH funding. A district court ruled against the policy implementation, which was later upheld by the First Circuit Court of Appeals.

ICE is a new agency by federal standards, created at the same time as DHS in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. It represented the recognition by Congress that the previous immigration-related bureaucracy had been a weak link in domestic security, as some of the hijackers had overstayed tourist visas to prepare for the attack. Although one component of the agency has a counterterrorism role, ICE’s most significant post-9/11 contribution is as a federal agency with the specific mission of removing people violating immigration laws.

Billions of additional funding, however, isn’t enough to explain how ICE has become a mass-deportation force. ICE agents are using legal authorities granted to federal immigration enforcement officers from all the way back in the Clinton Administration, just at much greater scale and pace. This post will explain how the agency became a behemoth through the combination of policy changes and bureaucratic redesign at risk of turning into a national secret police.

ICE’s post-9/11 origins

Congress created ICE in the 2002 Homeland Security Act, the legislation that combined 22 existing agencies under a single new cabinet department. The legislation took the 36,000 employees of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and split them among three new agencies. ICE was assigned enforcing immigration laws and deportation as its primary role. The act created a separate Bureau of Customs and Border Protection (CBP) that combined the missions of securing U.S. borders and monitoring the flow of imports and exports. A third agency, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), was launched to manage the processing of applications for permanent residency, naturalization, and asylum. Unlike the other two agencies, it has no policing powers.

INS itself had experienced a complicated bureaucratic lifespan. It was created by executive order in 1933 as a merger of two separate bureaus within the newly-established Department of Labor. It was then shifted to the Department of Justice in 1940 out of concern about foreign subversion at the start of World War II. Designed initially to unify the bureaucratic processes of immigration application and naturalization, it took on more enforcement duties. INS managed border security and immigration law enforcement in the interior of the nation. It was responsible for the mass deportation effort during the 1950s unfortunately named “Operation Wetback,” a systemic removal of Mexican farm laborers in the American Southwest.

Enforcement authority from the 1990s

A surge in southern border crossings during the 1990s strained INS and by 1996, the agency estimated that 5 million people were living in the country without legal status and that the number of unauthorized immigrants was growing at a rate of 275,000 annually. In response to this volume, mostly from Mexico, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 (IIRIRA). Among its changes to deportation policies, the law granted immigration officers new powers to designate someone for “expedited removal,” or immediate deportation without review by an immigration court.

Expedited removal originally applied to those arriving at a port of entry without valid entry documents like a passport, who gave false information, or lied about being an American citizen. If an immigration officer determined someone presenting themselves at a border fit such criteria, IIRIRA granted them the authority to detain and quickly deport. Expedited removal subsequently was expanded during the Bush Administration to include migrants arriving by sea and those apprehended within 100 miles of a border within 14 days of entering the country. (The 100-mile-wide border zone is larger than you might expect. It covers most of the United States by population.)

Congress also steadily increased the INS budget in the late 1990s to curtail unauthorized border crossings. U.S. Border Patrol, INS’s enforcement unit, saw its budget increase from $452 million in FY 1995 to $1.06 billion in FY 2000. The INS workforce grew from 21,000 in FY 1995 to 32,100 in FY 2000. Along with the money came new mandates and regulations that the agency struggled to implement in the time granted.

Public perception of the agency, meanwhile, continued to erode. The public perceived most undocumented migrants coming over the Mexican border, even though INS noted that more than 40% of undocumented migrants had arrived at ports of entry with legal visas that they overstayed. Private militias started patrolling the Southwest to draw attention to the issue. Recognition that the agency was struggling in its current form grew by decade’s end and proposals called for splitting the enforcement and immigration service functions apart into separate offices.

Post-9/11 changes

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks upended the existing federal response to a host of immigration-related issues. All 19 hijackers had received visas between 1997 and the attacks and they had entered the country 33 times. Three of them who entered multiple times violated federal law, but were not caught. Many commented at the time that the porous overland borders constituted an additional national security threat.

Congress and the Bush Administration explored consolidating various agencies and programs under a single cabinet department to better respond to threats to the American public. House Republicans introduced Bush’s plan creating the Department of Homeland Security in June 2002. It brought the functions of INS out of DOJ and into the new department and followed through with previous ideas about INS reorganization. Congress passed the bill in November 2002.

The law gave the Bush Administration leeway to organize DHS components over the next 60 days. It created ICE by grouping all interior enforcement functions into one office, which included managing the detention of those it arrests. It also combined the Border Patrol and Customs Bureau from the Treasury Department into a single border-focused entity. ICE and CBP went into operation in March 2003 with budgets of $3.3 billion and $1.52 billion, respectively.

The system of courts that hear immigration-related cases remained part of the Department of Justice. As Congress poured more money into both ICE and CBP over the next several decades, funding for immigration courts proved inadequate for the growing caseloads. In FY 2024, the nation’s 725 immigration judges averaged nearly 5,000 cases assigned. The overburdened system created even more incentive for ICE agents to utilize expedited removal.

ICE’s budget grew consistently during the rest of the George W. Bush Administration, reaching $6 billion in FY 2009. Congress during the Obama Administration focused more on increasing funding for CBP, but the first Trump and Biden Administrations began to ratchet ICE budgets upward again. In the last fiscal year of Biden’s term, ICE received $9.6 billion in funding.

The funding bill passed via reconciliation in 2025 (to avoid a Senate filibuster) added an additional $75 billion to ICE’s budget authority over four years on top of its annual appropriation in funding for DHS, essentially tripling its funding. This money is being tapped to keep the agency operating during the lapse in funding for DHS that began this February.

ICE and CBP were given enough funding by last year’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act to continue operations essentially indefinitely in the wake of a shutdown, leaving the rest of DHS as the only leverage Democrats have left.

What do Democrats want?

Democrats’ leadership in Congress released a list of demands 10 days before DHS funding was set to expire, including:

• Requiring a judicial warrant to enter private property (as the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment already requires)

• Verification of non-citizenship before detention and banning racial profiling and profiling based on job, language, and accent

• Prohibiting immigration enforcement officers from wearing masks and requiring them to wear ID and body-worn cameras

• Prohibiting arrests at hospitals, schools, daycares, churches, polling places, and courts

• Allowing states to investigate potential crimes committed by DHS and to sue DHS over detention conditions, and requiring state coordination for large-scale operations

• Safeguards including immediate access to attorneys for detainees, allowing states to sue DHS for violations, and unlimited congressional access to ICE facilities

• Prohibit tracking and databases of individuals engaged in activities protected by the First Amendment

• Codification and enforcement of a use of force policy

Doesn’t the Constitution already require some of that?

Some of these demands include rights that should be covered under the Constitution but are not being upheld: Judicial warrants are required by the Fourth Amendment to force entry or engage in search or seizure in any place with a reasonable assumption of privacy such as one’s home. But ICE officers have been trained to use administrative warrants in place of a judicial warrant for this purpose. Administrative warrants do provide authority to make arrests, but don’t provide authority to engage in a search protected by the Fourth Amendment, including forced entry into someone’s home.

Racial profiling violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment but the Supreme Court, via its shadow docket, stayed a lower court decision which barred federal officers from detaining people based on skin color, speaking Spanish, or working low-wage jobs.

And due process under the Fourteenth Fifth Amendment requires that undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens alike receive the opportunity to challenge their detention, but detainees are often not given sufficient access to an attorney for such a challenge.

Where Policy Change Meets Public Safety

ICE already has a use of force policy which states that they may only use deadly force when they have a “reasonable belief that the subject of such force poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury.” DHS quickly released statements after the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti claiming that they posed such a threat, despite video footage of both events contradicting those claims. The department has known since March of last year that use of force against civilians soared, but has done little to address or identify the cause of the increase.The Department has also failed to cooperate with independent investigators in Minnesota, calling into question whether use of deadly force is being properly investigated and addressed.

DHS cites an increase in threats to agents as a reason why they must remain masked and unidentified. ICE officers do carry badges, and are legally required to identify themselves when it’s practical and safe to do so, at their discretion. Agents have been doxxed and fear potentially violent retaliation for carrying out their orders. But cases of masked imposters are also on the rise, which creates an environment of uncertainty in how to respond when stopped by someone claiming to be with ICE.

There was a bill on the table to fund DHS including for the purchase of body-worn cameras, but it did not include a mandate for every agent to use them.

The Response

While Republicans have demonstrated some willingness to concede the use of bodycams, most of the other demands appear to be non-starters. The White House countered the Democrats’ demands, but did not publish the details. Democrats called the counterproposal “insufficient and incomplete” on February 10.

Senate Democrats sent a new proposal to Republicans on February 17 but similarly have not revealed the details. Days before, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer reiterated their demands on CNN’s State of the Union in three main objectives: no roving patrols, accountability to local governments and a code of conduct, and agent identification with masks off. He compared the Democrats’ demands to police departments across the country, asserting that ICE should be held to the same standards as other law enforcement officers.

The Outlook

Negotiations continued behind the scenes during last week’s recess, and Congress is scheduled to reconvene on February 23. Both parties appear to have their heels dug in on the issue, and it’s unclear how long either side will be willing to hold out, especially if TSA operations at airports become restricted (the Trump Administration opted to pause TSA’s Pre-Check, something seemingly not required by a shutdown, but reversed that decision hours later) or FEMA underperforms in a potential disaster. A proposal was made before the shutdown to find a way to fund DHS’s other agencies, but it gained little traction because doing so would have stripped both sides of any leverage.

As a result, funding for these DHS agencies could be held up indefinitely while ICE and CBP continue on.

The U.S. attack on Venezuela and seizure of the country’s president Nicolás Maduro and his wife earlier this year, and the overt threats to take over Greenland, plunged American foreign policy back into the force-based era that predated the current international legal order the U.S. largely built after World War II.

As with the strikes on civilian vessels leaving Venezuela suspected of transporting illegal drugs, the Trump Administration justified the attack on Venezuelan territory as an act of national self defense against “narco-terrorism,” a term with no definition or standing in American law. It also claims the operation, for which special forces units trained for months, was a law enforcement action rather than a military strike.

The Administration also considers itself unbound by domestic law or constitutional limits on its power to wage war. It violated the War Powers Resolution by informing Congress only after the attack had begun. Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio didn’t even alert his former colleagues on the Senate Intelligence and Foreign Relations Committees of the possibility of direct action.

Pulling a legal justification from the 1980s

The White House seemingly relied on a 1989 internal opinion written by would-be Trump Attorney General William Barr, when he was with the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, to justify the arrest and rendition of Maduro. Barr had concluded the president has an “inherent constitutional authority” to send the FBI to arrest individuals breaking U.S. law “even if those actions contravene international law.” Barr was writing to justify the American arrest of Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega after a military invasion of the country in 1989. State Department lawyers at the time disagreed, stating such arrests violated other nations’ territorial integrity.

In that case, the George H.W. Bush Administration had stronger grounds to claim the action was being taken in self-defense and in accordance with the UN Charter. General Noriega had overthrown a popularly-elected government with a military coup, which then requested American assistance in exile. The general persuaded the Panamanian legislature to declare open conflict with the U.S., which still maintained a military presence in the country to help secure the Panama Canal. Noriega’s forces shot and killed one American military officer and wounded another, then threatened to attack the 35,000 American civilians living in Panama City. Venezuela’s Maduro, meanwhile, had not made any hostile acts toward the United States, even though the Trump Administration characterizes its alleged support for drug running as such.

Trump gets a slush fund

Trump himself undermined the national security justifications for the Venezuela attack by asserting the U.S. would regain control of the country’s long-nationalized petroleum reserves which are considered the largest in the world. On January 9, Trump issued an executive order declaring the risk of any court or creditor attempt to seize the reserves would constitute a national emergency and therefore impermissible. Revenue from Venezuelan oil sales will be deposited in foreign government deposit funds at the U.S. Treasury, which foreign governments use to make payments to the U.S. Government. The administration would decide how much of the money would return to Venezuela. But it was reported on January 14 that some of the $500 million received in the first sale of Venezuelan oil was deposited in an account in Qatar, essentially a slush fund.

Taking Greenland for military bases we already have

Meanwhile, Trump has fixated once again on acquiring the Danish territory of Greenland. He posted on social media, after speaking with the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, that anything less than American control would be “unacceptable.” His rhetoric led Denmark and Sweden to deploy military forces to Greenland.

Through a 1951 treaty that built off Danish-American military cooperation during World War II, the U.S. has very broad access to Greenland for self defense already. An update of the agreement allows the U.S. to build military installations on Greenland, as Trump wishes to do for missile defense, simply by asking Copenhagen. U.S. Space Force currently operates a ballistic missile early warning station at an air base the US constructed in the early 1950s. Denmark granted some self-rule rights to the territory in 2009, but that agreement did not include military affairs. All six of its political parties support its independence at some point in the future.

Trump first fixated on Greenland in his first term, when he became interested in adding it to American territory because of its large size. Given the unbridled personalist turn to his foreign policy, now turned to action in the Caribbean, he may decide to act without consideration of the dire consequences of doing so.

Somalia

Trump’s first military target was Somalia in February, where he launched a still-ongoing campaign against Islamic State (IS) operatives. We have deployed more than 130 strikes on Somali soil since Trump re-took office (more than Bush, Obama, and Biden combined) killing between 115 and 292 people, mostly militants.

Iraq

In March, the U.S. launched air strikes in Iraq in cooperation with Iraqi Intelligence and Security Forces, killing the second-highest ranking leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Yemen

From March to May, the U.S. launched hundreds of strikes against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen in response to their targeting of Israel and commercial ships in the Red Sea. The operation killed hundreds of civilians and injured hundreds more. It ended with a ceasefire brokered by Oman between the U.S. and Yemen’s Houthis.

These were the strikes that Defense Secretary Hegseth sent sensitive information about in not one, but two unsecure Signal group chats. An Inspector General investigation found that Hegseth’s leak “created a risk to operational security” which could have resulted in “potential harm to U.S. pilots.” Still, Hegseth claims the report exonerates him, and no disciplinary actions have been reported.

Iran

On June 22, the U.S. deployed air and submarine missiles against three target locations in Iran with the intent of destabilizing their nuclear program. The attack followed several days of Israeli strikes targeting Iranian nuclear sites as well. Early reporting contradicted President Trump’s statement that Iran’s nuclear capabilities were “completely and fully obliterated”, estimating that their nuclear program was only set back a couple of months. The Pentagon eventually determined that the nuclear program was set back by up to two years.

International Waters

Since September the U.S. military has sustained a campaign of strikes on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coasts of Venezuela, Columbia, and Mexico. More than 100 people, whom the Trump administration claimed without evidence were drug traffickers, were killed while the U.S. deployed a large armada in the Caribbean. Speculation of war crimes surfaced after reports that the first strike in September included a “second tap” to kill survivors in the water.

Syria

The U.S. launched Operation Hawkeye Strike to avenge the death of three U.S. citizens in a terrorist attack in Syria by an IS gunman. The ongoing retaliatory operation began on December 19 and included 11 missions last year. The total death toll is unclear, but the U.S. Central Command has said nearly 25 IS members have been killed or captured.

Nigeria

With the support and guidance of the Nigerian government, the U.S. launched a strike in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day, delivering what President Trump sardonically called a “Christmas present” to members of Lakurawa, an alleged Islamic State-backed group (though IS has not claimed affiliation). Trump claims the strikes were a response to Christian persecution, but Nigeria’s Foreign Minister has said the joint operation had “nothing to do with a particular religion.” In reality, most of the people suffering under Lakurawa control are Muslim.

Venezuela

In December, following the strikes on boats in international waters, the U.S. began to seize oil tankers and announced a blockade on tankers going in and out of Venezuela. Then the CIA struck a docking area in Venezuela, which the Administration claimed was being used by drug cartels. It was the first known U.S. attack on Venezuelan soil, producing no reported casualties, and a precursor to the large-scale attack that followed on January 3.

A bipartisan committee, but politics in practice

Law enforcement, both local and federal, investigate alleged violations of the law. The HCE investigates violations of House Rules. Some things are violations of both laws and House Rules so a representative might get investigated both by law enforcement and HCE. For example, Rep. Cuellar was indicted by federal prosecutors in 2024 for allegedly accepting bribes. The HCE also opened an investigation. Last year he was pardoned by President Trump. So is he free of all concerns now? Probably, but not necessarily. While the legal case is over, the HCE can still investigate the allegations of bribery and censure, and even recommend to expel him, because bribery is also against House Rules.

How did this dual structure come to be?

Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution says

Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behaviour, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member.

Only expulsion has any detail to it and that’s that it requires a 2/3rd majority. Otherwise, the House has a range of punishments that have evolved over time to include censure - where not only does a majority vote to agree to a resolution of censure, but the censured member has to come down into the well of the House Floor while the resolution is read - but also reprimand/disapproval in which a majority of the House votes to agree to a resolution of reprimand/disapproval (but the member isn’t called down front to be shamed) and then a range of lesser public indications of “this was bad behavior”.

Until a standing committee to handle ethical or criminal allegations was created in the 1960s, reviews of and votes on censures or reprimands were handled by the whole House. With the establishment of the House Committee on Ethics (HCE), concerns were moved to the small group to investigate and then recommend action to the House as a whole. The HCE has an equal number of members from both the majority and minority parties in the House with the chair coming from the majority party. Most actions require a majority vote, or in other words, require members from both parties to vote in favor of them. In theory, this keeps the HCE from being purely a vehicle for political punishment. Again, in theory.

In 2008, the Office of Congressional Conduct (OCC, originally the Office of Congressional Ethics) was established as an independent and non-partisan office, staffed by career civil servants rather than elected politicians, to handle allegations of misconduct and then make recommendations to the HCE on how or whether to proceed.

Why was the OCC created? Because of the pervasive belief that investigations of legislators were based solely on political goals despite its attempt to avoid this problem in its design. In theory then, an allegation would come to the OCC, they’d investigate to see if there was anything to it and, if so, recommend that HCE use their work to decide how to proceed.

There’s just one problem: all ethics investigations are political because Congress is an inherently political body.

There’s never a case when choosing to investigate a specific legislator’s actions, where the member is in either the majority or minority, won’t have political ramifications. So, when a legislator under investigation complains that they’re being attacked for politics, they’re not wrong, but it’s also not necessarily exculpatory because they may have indeed also broken laws or violated House rules.

Take the recent example of former Rep. George Santos. As soon as he won his election, stories began to appear in the press indicating that he had lied outrageously about a wide range of things in order to get elected. It soon became clear there was evidence that he had also committed a number of criminal campaign finance violations. As a result, there was a lot of pressure within the House to expel him. But, at that time, the Republicans held a very narrow majority in Congress. So as much as he could creditably be said to bring disrepute on the House just by being there and there were vocal objections to his presence from members of his own party, there was a political problem for the Republicans because they needed every vote they could get. Do they let the criminal process play out and keep him as a voting member? Or do they acknowledge his many violations of House rules in addition to criminal codes and take the high road? After nearly a year in Congress, the House chose to expel Santos. He was subsequently tried, convicted, served a few months in prison and then released when President Trump commuted his sentence. This was an unusually obvious case of unethical behavior and even so, political considerations were never not part of the equation.

Censures for speech

Over the course of the last few years though, there’s been a new trend in censures that is all politics. Legislators are not accused of violating anything other than the rule that requires them to bring credit to the House. However, the definition of discrediting the House has been filtered through partisan lenses.

The first instance of this new use of censure came in 2023. Former Rep. Schiff (now a California Senator) was censured by the House of Representatives 213-209 on June 21, 2023 for various statements and misstatements he made between 2017-2019 related to President Trump and Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign — all likely protected from criminal prosecution by the First Amendment, but not protected from a House censure. The censure resolution itself contained misstatements including denying that the 2016 Trump Campaign attempted to coordinate with Russia, which was well documented by the Mueller Report. There was no campaign finance issue, no sexual harassment, no financial crime or other corruption alleged. He was censured because the Republican majority was angry about things he had said.

Perhaps the real first instance of this was when the House voted to remove (now-former) Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene from her committees in 2021. It wasn’t a censure, but it was an effort to punish her for being a conspiracy theorist whose antics were, say it with me, bringing discredit to the House. 11 Republicans voted with all Democrats on that vote which was an unusual outcome.

Since then these censures over speech have passed the House:

• In Nov. 2023, Rep. Tlaib was censured 234-188 for, according to the censure resolution, promoting false narratives regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and for calling for the destruction of the state of Israel. Tlaib and a number of Democratic colleagues denied that anything she said amounted to the allegations.

• At the President’s Joint Address to Congress on March 4 2025, Rep. Green repeatedly objected to various statements by President Trump. He was removed from the chamber and on March 6, he was censured 224-198.

Meanwhile, in the last few months there have been attempts to censure Rep. McIver for having been charged with impeding law enforcement in a complicated situation at an ICE facility in New Jersey and Del. Plaskett for texting with Jeffrey Epstein during a Congressional hearing. In both cases, just enough Republicans voted with Democrats to table the censure resolutions that they failed.

Did McIver and Plaskett deserve the censures? For the most part, your answer will depend on which party you identify with - that’s certainly the case with House membership. Did McIver’s scuffle with ICE agents bring disrepute on the House? Not if you think that she was right in her efforts to defend Newark’s mayor Ras Baraka from what the Department of Justice later admitted was a wrongful arrest. Does Plaskett texting with Epstein bring disrepute on the House? Apparently not in the minds of most Democratic members.

Campaign finance violations, misusing his office and sexual assault and stalking: The cases of Rep. Cory Mills

Also in both cases, Democrats used the threat of a censure over allegations against Republican Rep. Cory Mills to successfully kill the resolutions against Democrats McIver and Plaskett. Was the threat against Mills what pushed those Republicans to vote to table? They didn’t say so, but it might have been.

Something that is frustrating for regular observers of Congress is that the allegations against Mills are much more serious than any brought against either McIver or Plaskett. He is variously accused of multiple campaign finance violations, misusing his office and sexual assault and stalking. Yet, these allegations were treated purely as political tools. He should have already been under investigation by the Ethics Committee for all of them (he had been investigation for a small fraction for about a year already). Instead, Democrats appeared to only take the allegations as seriously as they needed to protect their own members.

Ironically, as the last vote in a 3 censure/censure-like vote week, a censure resolution against Mills, brought by fellow Republican Rep. Nancy Mace, was diverted into a recommendation that HCE investigate Mills on all the listed allegations. They say they have begun that process.

Serve or resign

Except for George Santos, and Greene who resigned for unrelated reasons, everyone mentioned so far in this post is still serving either in the House or in the Senate. Most still have their committee memberships and have faced no further consequences.

The truth is, no matter what a legislator says about Congress, they generally want to be there and will work to stay in Congress. Likely the one true punishment for a legislator is being either expelled or voted out in the next election. If you look through our Misconduct Database, you can find lots of examples where legislators were being investigated and, while there was no specific action taken by the Ethics Committee or law enforcement against them, they also chose not to run again or lost in primaries. Recent examples include: Rep. Michael McCaul, Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Rep. Kaialiʻi Kahele and Rep. Carolyn Maloney. There were doubtless other factors that contributed to each of these legislators’ retirements/losses including redistricting, but it’s also possible (and certain in Cawthorn’s case) that the party ceased to provide support as did the public.

To recap, when a legislator’s behavior warrants punishment, the House has a number of mechanisms by which to do so. Traditionally, these efforts are reserved for violations of House Rules other than just bringing discredit to the House or for their speech. But, as Congress continues to be intensely partisan and very, very narrowly divided, that is changing and censures as purely political tools seem to be gaining ground.

Misconduct should have consequences

There is a nascent effort by a bipartisan set of representatives to change the House Rules so that a censure requires a 60% vote rather than the current simple majority. This effort misses the point. No one else can punish House members for violations of House Rules besides the House itself. The problem isn’t the number of censures; it’s that the censures aren’t necessarily about actual misconduct. Making it easier for House members to violate House Rules looks like a step backwards. The rules aren’t the problem. The problem is that there’s so much political value to pursuing censures even when there’s no specific misconduct alleged.

As it is, HCE investigations can drag on for years. Rep. Mills, as we already noted, has been under investigation for a year already. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick’s HCE investigation began in 2023 and is not yet concluded. Same for Rep. Troy Nehls. Meanwhile investigations of Rep. Henry Cuellar and Rep. Andy Ogles began in 2024 and remain unresolved.

The House would be much better served by beefing up HCE and OCC and by pressuring legislators to cooperate with investigations rather than stonewalling them, and not making it harder to discipline members.

Since last fall we’ve

• bombed small boats and their civilian Venezuelan crews that we have claimed were smuggling drugs to the U.S.

• Brought a fleet of military vessels to the region

• Dropped bombs near Caracas, the capital of Venezuela

• Seized President Maduro and his wife and indicted him in federal court over drug trafficking

• Announced a plan to seize some Venezuelan crude oil indefinitely and spend it at the President’s discretion.

Whether any of this was legal is a difficult and a somewhat philosophical question.

What is the War Powers Resolution?

The War Powers Resolution, a 1973 law,, “requires that the President communicate to Congress the committal of troops within 48 hours. Further, the statute requires the President to remove all troops after 60 days if Congress has not granted an extension,” per the Legal Information Institute at Cornell University. Since military action appears to be over, although the President has threatened further action around the world, the War Powers Resolution may have been satisfied.

What are Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMFs)?

The Constitution gives the power to declare war to Congress, not the President, but all recent presidents have engaged in military actions without declaring war. In most cases, it came with an authorization from Congress instead.

Per Congress.gov, AUMFs are laws which “permit the President to use United States military forces in pursuit of set objectives and within defined parameters.” Without an AUMF, the President must rely on inherent Constitutional powers of the presidency, which may or may not apply. For example, after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Congress passed an AUMF that was used as the legal basis for military force in a wide range of places around the world because the authorization was for military force against terrorists. That authorization, along with one from 1991, were both repealed in the Fiscal Year 2026 National Defense Authorization Act. President Trump signed that law last year about a week before he attacked Venezuela and captured the Venezuelan president.

Whether removing a head of state is tantamount to declaring war, and thus not permitted without Congress’s approval, is not likely to be resolved.

Are we bound by international law?

Well, we agreed to be bound by international law when we joined the United Nations, of which we are still a member. In general, UN members are prohibited from unilaterally using force against other nations, with very few exceptions. This is the point of having an entity like the UN - to help manage disputes in order to avoid or at least decrease violent conflict around the world.

On the other hand, who’s going to stop us if we ignore international law?

Can the President control the proceeds from selling Venezuelan oil?

The Constitution is very direct in giving Congress ultimate control over government spending: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” Trump’s social media post that the “money will be controlled by me” makes a big assumption that Congress writes him a blank check in law first. Currently, many members of Congress are going on the record saying that they want oversight over any US revenues from Venezuelan oil sales, side-stepping the Constitutional issue of how the revenue is spent.

What Might Congress Do?

This week the Senate will vote on a War Powers bill to stop President Trump’s actions in Venezuela. It’s not expected to pass, and certainly not with enough votes to override the President’s veto. Democrats might also withhold votes on upcoming government funding bills, triggering another government shutdown at the end of the month, unless military funding is restricted or to extract other policy concessions around Venezuela and the sale of its oil.

Or Congress could pass legislation affirming the administration’s actions, instead.

What is Congress Likely to Do?

Nothing. It’s the safest choice politically. If you come out too strongly for or against and then public attitudes about the Administration’s actions go heavily one way or the other, it’ll cost votes. So the best thing to do politically is often nothing.

Reports last March indicated that Trump was inviting guests to dine with him at Mar-a-Lago for anyone who could cough up a few million dollars in political donations. In May he attended a fundraiser hosted by MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC which spent more than $400 million on his 2024 campaign. The cost per-plate at the fundraiser was $1.5 million. This super PAC raised almost $200 million after election day through June 30–raising eyebrows since it’s a single-candidate super PAC in support of Trump, given that he is barred under the Constitution from running for president again in 2028.

Later the same month, Trump held a dinner at his D.C.-area golf club for the top 225 holders of his memecoin, a cryptocurrency, which launched in 2025. He promoted the dinner on his social media platform and the memcoin website, encouraging people to “Join the Trump Community.” In the first week after the dinner was announced, the memecoin had raked in more than $1 million in trading fees. More on that next.

Crypto Profits

While Trump encouraged consumers to purchase his memecoin, his DOJ disbanded the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team and stopped enforcing some regulations for the industry. Trump proposed a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile for bitcoin in an executive order, and suggested on Truth Social that it should also hold ether, XRP, solana and cardano. A CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) report found in July that 19 White House officials could profit from the reserve plan if they didn’t divest.

The Trump Organization brought in more than $800 million in the first half of 2025, more than 90% of which came from crypto ventures. More than $450 million came from World Liberty Financial (WLF), a crypto firm founded in part by Trump’s family members which pays 75% of its revenue from token sales to a Trump Organization entity.

Profits for the Trump Organization directly benefit the president. When Trump first took office in 2017, he placed the Trump Organization into a revocable trust (The Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust) instead of the typical blind trust like recent presidents. He has claimed repeatedly that he does not have controlling authority over the trust, despite contradictory filings. According to business filings made to the British government last summer, Trump is described as a “person with significant control”, specifically someone with “the right to exercise, or actually exercises, significant influence or control over the activities of the trust.”

Product and Self Promotion

Trump has consistently promoted products that financially benefit him over the years. His 2025 financial disclosures revealed at least $10 million from royalty payments for things like guitars, coffee table books, bibles, sneakers and watches. In June last year he promoted his new fragrances on Truth Social, and Trump wines have been stocked at the Coast Guard Exchanges. None of this self-dealing is illegal, since the President is exempt from a 1989 law prohibiting federal employees from using their office for private gain, but ethical concerns remain.

And it’s not just Trump; members of his administration have participated in brand promotion, sometimes including their own products and ventures. FBI Director Kash Patel advertises his foundation on his FBI website biography. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick has encouraged Americans to buy Tesla stock which his financial services firm Cantor Fitzgerald encouraged at the same time. Patel and Lutnick aren’t exempt from the aforementioned law. Still, it doesn’t appear that any meaningful investigations or consequences have come, despite at least one complaint filed with the Office of Government Ethics.

The White House released a list of 37 donors for the construction of the reconstructed White House East Wing ballroom. The list includes individuals and corporations. Many companies such as Lockheed Martin and Booz Allen Hamilton hold government contracts including with the Defense Department. Google agreed to pay $22 million towards the ballroom as part of a legal settlement. Palantir has been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts this year, as have Amazon and Microsoft. Coinbase, another donor, is seeking government approval to offer blockchain-based stocks. These companies appear to be engaging in a pay-to-play by investing in the East Wing replacement.

Pardons for Sale

Justice Sotomayor wrote in her dissent to the Supreme Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States: “Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune, immune, immune.” The decision states that a president can’t be held criminally liable for official actions as president. So as Trump pardons his donors, he’s not obligated to keep it a secret.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, received a pardon from Trump in October after Binance received a $2 billion investment from the Trump Family’s cryptocurrency venture World Liberty Financial (WLF) in May. When asked about the pardon, Trump said he didn’t know anything about CZ and that he pardoned him because Trump was told that CZ was the victim of government weaponization. CZ pleaded guilty for failing to combat money laundering on his crypto exchange in 2023. He was sentenced to four months in jail and released in September 2024, meaning he had served his full sentence more than a year before receiving the pardon.

Trevor Milton was pardoned after donating nearly $2 million to Trump’s re-election campaign. Trump said that he pardoned Minton because it was “highly recommended by many people” and asserted that Minton was only prosecuted because he had supported Trump in the past. He had been convicted of fraud for lying to investors about his electric vehicle start-up Nikola.

Paul Walczak was pardoned after his mother attended a MAGA Inc. fundraiser in May last year. He had pleaded guilty in 2024 for tax crimes related to his nursing home. Rather than paying federal income taxes collected from his employees, he kept more than $10 million and used it for his own expenses including the purchase of a yacht.

Dropped Investigations

The Trump Administration has dropped or paused enforcement actions against 165 corporations last year, including a third of all targeted investigations against technology corporations, an industry which has provided vast financial support for the President. Here are just a few examples:

Elon Musk spent hundreds of millions in the 2024 election and became head of the Trump Administration’s DOGE team. The Administration then dropped or paused more than 40 agency investigations into Musk’s businesses, including SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink.

In May, after Trump-aligned WLF invested billions into CZ’s Binance, the SEC almost immediately dropped its case against the company, months before the founder was pardoned.

Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun was charged in 2023 with selling unregistered crypto securities. After Trump won the 2024 election, Sun bought $30 million of WLF tokens, and when Trump took office the SEC paused its enforcement action against him.

Coinbase gave $1 million to the Trump inauguration fund and the SEC dropped an enforcement action against them as well after Trump took office.

Foreign Influence

In May last year, a United Arab Emirates (U.A.E) senior government official announced a $2 billion investment into WLF. Soon after, the U.S. signed an agreement with the U.A.E. to provide American-made A.I. chips.

That same month, the White House accepted a luxury plane from the Qatari government with the intention of retrofitting it to serve as Air Force One while Trump is still in office. Then, the President signed an agreement to generate an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion.

Trump traveled to the capital of Saudi Arabia in April and May, and in September a new Trump-branded building was announced in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second largest city.

A break on tariffs against Switzerland from 39% to 15% came one week after Trump met with Swiss business leaders, accepting gifts (that is, in his official capacity) such as a gold-plated desk clock and an engraved gold bar. Negotiations with Swiss President Karin Keller fell flat, but after meeting with Swiss business executives Trump announced a deal in the works to lower tariffs. It still has to be approved by the Swiss parliament and put up for a referendum.

1,976 pages of new law

At 1,976 pages of new law enacted since President Trump took office, including an increase of the national debt limit by $4 trillion, any journalist telling you not much happened in Congress this year is sleeping on the job.

Using rules that exempt certain bills from the filibuster, Congress passed (and President Trump signed into law) the 330-page “reconciliation” bill which included tax breaks adding $500 billion to the deficit; new limits on Medicaid, SNAP, federal student loads, and green energy; and $171 billion for immigration enforcement, making ICE the largest law enforcement agency in the United States. Also exempt from the filibuster was the “rescissions” bill which slashed most funding for foreign aid (saving about $800 million and potentially causing 1 million deaths world-wide and a geopolitical vacuum that China is ready to fill) and public broadcasting (saving about $100 million).

Those were perhaps the most controversial bills ever enacted, with senators voting yes on the reconciliation bill representing just 44% of the country’s population. I don’t think that’s ever happened before and really captures the political climate. (For comparison, the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, passed the Senate with the yea votes representing 62% of the country’s population.)

Earlier this month, Congress passed the 1,259-page National Defense Authorization Act, a yearly bill that sets military and related policies. This year, the NDAA incorporated 40 other bills on a range of topics, including police first aid kits and reuniting Korean American families with family members in North Korea. It also included a provision intended to force the Secretary of Defense to provide more information on the military strikes on Venezuelan civilian boats.

Using a rarely-used rule to override the Speaker of the House, legislators passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act to force the Trump Administration to release Epstein files. It’s incredibly significant any time the Speaker loses control over the floor since setting the floor schedule is the Speaker’s most important job.

Congress also quashed numerous Biden Administration regulations.

And the Senate confirmed 341 Trump nominees, which is a fairly fast pace.

196 bills enacted

196 bills were enacted. The mainstream media will tell you it’s only 61 because they don’t look at what’s inside omnibus bills. Fewer bills are getting a vote and presidential signature, but they are getting longer and longer and often bundle a number of other bills. (That’s a trend that started decades ago.)

The 1,976 pages Trump signed into law is on the low side: More than Reagan (1,528) and GW Bush (1,024) did by this point in their terms, less than the first Bush (2,518), Clinton (2,705), Obama (3,478), Trump in his first term (2,236), and Biden (2,450).

But more isn’t better, and not every page of legislation enacted is actually important.

The reverse is also true. The just two pages cutting foreign aid has enormous domestic and geopolitical consequences.

What Congress hasn’t done

It’s also true that there are things that Congress hasn’t done. The first was not enacting funding for government agencies, perhaps Congress’s most important job, which resulted in the October government shutdown.

Then was not being in session. House Republicans took their chamber out of session for some 40 days vowing to not negotiate with Democrats to end the government shutdown, only to come back into session to approve a bill negotiated with Democrats in the Senate. They could have used that time to figure out agency funding levels for the remainder of the fiscal year after January. Instead, another government shutdown may be around the corner. (Congress is supposed to have figured this out before the fiscal year began on October 1.)

Nor has Congress done much for government efficiency, allowing Trump to fabricate cuts and fire Inspectors General, the abuse watchdogs at federal agencies. Republicans also hope to downsize Congress’s abuse investigators at the Government Accountability Office. These cuts would cost taxpayers billions of dollars by allowing waste, fraud, and abuse to go unchecked. Or more likely, abuse would be checked just when it advances the President’s interests.

Congress has also been silent on Trump’s tariffs, despite the power to tariff being reserved to Congress. Congress could also address the Trump Administration’s illegal deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, as the Supreme Court recently ruled, or the swirling conflicts of interest in the Trump family.

Conditions in Detention

Average daily populations at ICE detention facilities have reached a record point, with more than 60,000 people detained across the country– approximately 70% of those detained have no criminal record. Many facilities are operating over capacity limits, leading to inhumane, overcrowded conditions. Since Trump took office, at least 27 people have died in ICE custody, making it the deadliest year for detainees since 2004 – even surpassing COVID years. (Only 15 of these deaths are reported on ICE’s website, while the others can be found in their news releases. Congress requires ICE to report deaths in custody within 90 days. The last death listed on the report at the time of publishing is from September 22.)

Detainees have reported medical neglect, rotten food, or a lack of food. A report by Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff uncovered reports of medical neglect and poor conditions in detention centers nationwide. According to the report, detainees are being denied medical care for extended periods. People with asthma are being denied inhalers, diabetics are being denied glucose monitoring or insulin, reports of chest pain are ignored. One man suffered stroke-like symptoms, including partial paralysis. He was hospitalized for days and when he was returned to the detention center, officers accused him of faking his affliction and denied his access to the walker the doctor had prescribed for him. Food servings are reportedly too small, and the food itself has been linked to illness in detention centers. DHS has insisted that these claims are false, but they are consistent with complaints nationwide, and aligned with a history of medical neglect in ICE facilities.

Reduced Oversight

Trump moved in March to eliminate internal watchdogs at ICE’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversee immigration enforcement efforts, a decision which was reversed in May after a court challenge by civil rights groups. However, staffing was reduced to skeleton crew levels with around 20 employees in the Civil Rights and Civil Liberties office, which previously employed around 140 people to handle complaints from across the country.

Raids

ICE raids are taking place across the nation as masked agents push to meet their daily arrest quota of 3,000 immigrants. LA County voted on October 14 to declare a state of emergency to provide aid to residents who have suffered financial consequences from immigration raids due to the arrest of family members or fear of arrest if they leave their homes.

Some raids have led to the death of immigrants. A Honduran man in Virginia was fleeing ICE agents when he was struck by a car on the highway and killed. Others have been killed while attempting to evade ICE in Chicago and Los Angeles. Many raids are producing traumatizing experiences for U.S. citizens, including children, as ICE descends on cities like Chicago and Charlotte, NC for coordinated militarized operations.

Reports indicate that of the more than 600 people detained in Chicago during ICE’s Midway Blitz, only 16 had criminal records. There are also reports of at least 170 U.S. citizens, including veterans, being swept up in raids and detained by ICE temporarily.

Recruit Screening

Some ICE recruits have started training before their drug tests or background checks have come back. One man was dismissed from training because he had previously been charged with robbery and battery, a charge which would have typically prevented his admission into the training academy. Other recruits were dismissed after admitting they never submitted for drug testing or fingerprinting, raising concerns among Department of Homeland Security officials that some recruits could be slipping through the cracks by keeping quiet.

“NSPM 7” creates vague categories for political violence (but not right-wing political violence)

In late September, the Trump Administration issued a new National Security Presidential Memorandum (NSPM 7), a type of document that typically aligns policy between national security and federal law enforcement agencies and aren’t always immediately made public. NSPM 7 directs the national Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF), created after the September 11, 2001 attacks, to focus investigations into political violence, domestic terrorism, and support for terrorist activity by those holding a wide and vague set of ideals. The broad sets of ideas listed include “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” and “hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” It makes no mention, however, of right-wing or white-supremacist violence, which independent and government analyses blame for between 75% and 80% of domestic terror deaths since 2001.

The White House has taken specific aim at “antifa,” an umbrella term for antifascist activism that is not actually an organization or ideological movement. Activists self-identifying as “antifa” were active in confronting pro-Trump and white supremacist protestors during his first term, notably during the “Unite the Right” attack on Charlottesville in 2017. Shortly before issuing NSPM 7, President Trump issued an Executive Order declaring “Antifa” to be a “domestic terrorist organization”. NSPM 7 further grants the Attorney General the ability to recommend that other groups engaging in activities that fit the definition of domestic terrorism in the U.S. Code be designated a “domestic terrorist organization,” too. There’s just one complication: no law defines a “domestic terrorist organization,” so the designation has no significance.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller was the main driver behind developing the new security memo in the weeks after the murder of Trump political ally Charlie Kirk. Miller described the directive as part of an “all-of-government effort to dismantle left-wing terrorism, to dismantle antifa, to dismantle the organizations that have been carrying out these acts of political violence and terrorism.”

Extremism is not against the law — crimes are against the law

Miller’s all out effort, however, has no standing in law nor the Constitution. Although the USA PATRIOT Act defines “domestic terrorism” as “activities involving acts dangerous to human life” that appear to have the intention of affecting public opinion or changing government policy or conduct, there is no specific provision outlawing domestic terrorism. The FBI and DHS do not initiate what they call investigations of “domestic violent extremism” until a credible threat of actual violent actions emerges because, as the FBI and DHS wrote jointly in 2023, “the mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics does not constitute violent extremism and is constitutionally protected” by the First Amendment.

The memo elides those protections, however, by calling for the investigation of “campaigns” by groups seeking “radicalization” of audiences that the Administration, without evidence, claims drives violent incidents. Civil Libertarians warn that the broad categorizations of ideas connected to “radicalization” could make mainstream civic organizations like immigration support groups, labor unions, and racial justice campaigns a target. “Campaigns,” moreover, could include social media and online group discussions, which may be monitored by federal agents.

Grafting international terrorism law onto domestic law enforcement

Many criminal law concepts in the memo come from laws dealing with international terrorism. Because foreign terrorist organizations have no constitutional protections, federal law allows for the State Department to declare foreign groups to be terrorist organizations – as the Trump Administration has with several drug cartels in a loose application of law. Federal law also criminalizes material or financial support for international terrorist groups’ efforts to commit violence, even if the actions themselves do not constitute a violent act, like translating the writings of Islamic extremist groups.

If the standards of providing material support for international terrorism were to be grafted onto what the memo defines as domestic terrorism, an enormous range of everyday activity could be criminalized. Allowing someone accused of being a member of Antifa (even though one can’t be a member of an organization which does not exist) to stay in one’s home or share a meal would constitute material support, as would printing materials or contributing money.

The memo exploits some ambiguity in the criminal code. Through the 2001 PATRIOT Act, 18 U.S.C § 2332b(g)(5)(B) lists 51 “federal crimes of terrorism,” that may apply to domestic terrorist situations. Most of these offenses, however, are very specific, like hijacking an airplane or using a weapon of mass destruction – not, for instance, a mass shooting or driving a car into a crowd that may also have terroristic intent. Prosecutors could apply other sections of the criminal code related to the destruction of federal property and the use of bombs. Congress did not expressly authorize, however, federal prosecutors to apply such charges to Americans committing crimes against other Americans and whether Congress should codify specific domestic terrorism law is up for debate.

It’s already started

Federal prosecutors already have started to implement the new policies. Last month, two men were indicted in federal court for domestic terrorism-related charges for participating in a protest at an Immigration and Customs and Enforcement installation that turned violent in north Texas. Prosecutors charged them with “providing material support” to terrorists, under 18 U.S.C. § 2339A for attempting to seize weapons from the ICE facility in Alvarado for use by the Antifa “cell” the government argues to which they belong. (The indictments include no evidence that cell actually exists.) The men also were charged with attempted murder of an Alvarado police officer responding to the incident.

Existing terrorism law was rarely used because crime is already illegal

Although most terrorism-related federal charges have been brought against defendants since 9/11 under this section, only a handful involved domestic crimes. Furthermore, these previous cases involved planning mass violence or arson attacks.

In addition to criminal charges, prosecutors also may seek longer prison sentences for domestic terrorists. In the wake of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Congress directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to add stiffer penalties for crimes committed with “terroristic intent,” defined as the “calculated to influence or affect the conduct of government by intimidation or coercion, or to retaliate against government conduct.” But prosecutors rarely do so. As mentioned above, the First Amendment protects Americans’ political speech and assembly rights essentially to the point of violence being committed. Convincing judges that specific actions meet this broad standard, especially the planning or support of the crimes of others or plots that are abandoned, is difficult for prosecutors.

Notably, prosecutors chose not to charge defendants in cases related to the January 6, 2021 insurrection with domestic terrorism because enhanced sentences risked plea deals and penalties were inconsistently applied. Assaulting a federal officer is not among the crimes defined as “terrorism,” but “depredation” of federal property – like breaking a window in the Capitol – is. Applying “terroristic intent” too broadly also risks political backlash from those closer ideologically to defendants, as was evident with the embrace of January 6 defendants by Republicans in Congress.

Other avenues, like federal hate crime law, offer better prosecutorial avenues for demonstrating intent that lead to enhanced sentences, as in the case of lone actors like white supremacist mass shooter Dylann Roof.

If the courts accept the legal reasoning of NSPM 7, people providing any kind of aid to a disfavored group declared a “domestic terrorist organization” by administration fiat would face the stiffer sentencing guidelines laid down in 1995. Charities and philanthropies supporting disfavored groups could have their assets frozen and staff jailed. Organizations working in coalition with such groups also would face prosecution.

H.R. 5371: Continuing Appropriations, Agriculture, Legislative Branch, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs, and Extensions Act, 2026 is the bill that ended the shutdown. It includes funding for the remainder of the fiscal year for the food assistance program SNAP, the Department of Agriculture, the FDA, the military, Veterans Affairs, and Congress itself (that is, through Sept. 30, 2026), and a continuation of Trump-level funding for the rest of the federal government just through January. It also contains a handful of extraneous provisions discussed below.

It cleared the Senate in a vote Monday night with 8 Democrats defecting. Then it passed the House on Wednesday 222-209, with six Democrats voting for it and two Republicans against. The President signed the bill later that evening and by Thursday, furloughed workers were returning to work and backpay was supposed to start disbursing without delay. Midday Thursday, the Department of Justice withdrew its case against SNAP payments so those payments that were held up should also be disbursed in the next few days.

What Democrats Got

The first of three notable extraneous provisions reverses firings of federal workers that occurred during the shutdown and prohibits any further mass firings of federal workers until the end of this continuing resolution which is January 30, 2026. (Whether that actually stops the Trump Administration from doing more mass firings remains to be seen.)

Democrats did get one other thing out of the shutdown: Delay. By grinding Congress nearly to a halt in what is usually one of the most productive months for legislating, Democrats prevented the Republicans’ agenda from moving forward. Although the Senate kept working during the shutdown as we mentioned last update, floor time was occupied by numerous failed votes to end the shutdown. And no Republican legislation moved forward in the House for 54 days, though that was on account of House Republicans’ choice to leave town.

A Payout for Some Republican Senators

The next extraneous item — and one that caused one of the two House Republicans to vote no — is a part of a new section on surveillance by the Executive Branch of the Senate. Though the provisions are written generically, it seems to give several senators a payout over the seizure of their phone records during DOJ investigations into the events around January 6, 2021. This section provides for $500,000 to each Senator for each “instance” of record collection that doesn’t meet new but retroactive requirements. Potentially this could be quite the payday for the senators involved, possibly in violation of Senate ethics rules. As of Friday, November 14, some of the Senators who would benefit say they won’t pursue the money. Sen. Graham (R-SC) on the other hand says he’s going to go for as much as he can get. The House says it will hold a vote soon to repeal that provision, but that likely won’t go anywhere without the senators who put the provision there in the first place.

Food Safety Rules Weakened

According to The Lever, “Amid a lobbying blitz and a flood of campaign cash, senators inserted language into this week’s emergency spending bill that eliminates rules designed to prevent food contamination and foodborne illnesses at farms and restaurants, according to legislative text reviewed by The Lever. The bill would also limit the development of rules to regulate ultra-processed foods, despite such foods being derided by the ‘Make America Healthy Again Movement,’ championed by President Donald Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.”

SNAP Fully Funded Through Next September

Because the FY 2026 U.S. Department of Agriculture’s appropriations bill was included in the final version of the continuing resolution, SNAP (food assistance for low income Americans) will now be fully funded through the end of the fiscal year which is September 30, 2026. Even if there’s another shutdown, there will not (or should not anyway) be a gap in disbursements to folks who can’t afford food.

And there’s a lot more in the bill than we can research, unfortunately.

We’re Not Doing This Again Next Year, Are We?

Probably not, but who knows. The current continuing resolution lasts until January 30, 2026. Only three of the 12 appropriations bills have now been completed. Will the other nine get finished by January 30? Maybe, maybe not. More likely is another continuing resolution to get to the end of the fiscal year, September 30, 2026, or another shutdown.

Little is known about the targets of these attacks, and public announcements by Venezuelans were addressed and deleted quickly by the Venezuelan government, cutting electricity to one town where sympathetic posts were circulating after the first strike. Interviews with Venezuelans in coastal villages have produced reports that some of the people killed were fishermen, laborers, and bus drivers in addition to low-level criminals and one local crime boss.Two people survived one of the attacks in the Pacific and were detained and deported back to their home countries, Ecuador and Columbia. Mexico is conducting a search and rescue operation for a third survivor in the Pacific.

On October 23, President Trump spoke of a potential expansion of the attacks onto land in Venezuela. He said “The land is going to be next… we may go to Congress and tell them about it, but I can’t imagine they’d have any problem with it.” At the same press conference, a reporter asked why he wouldn’t ask Congress for a declaration of war, and he said “I don’t think we’re going, necessarily, to ask for a declaration of war. I think we’re just going to kill people that are bringing drugs into our country. OK. We’re going to kill them. They’re going to be, like, dead.” Venezuela called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council on October 10, where they expressed concern for an armed attack against their country and requested the U.N. Security Council investigate the strikes to determine their legality. However, the Security Council isn’t able to take action due to the U.S.’s veto power.

Military strikes on foreign civilians would be a war crime if the U.S. were at war.

On October 2 Trump sent a notice to Congress informing it of an “armed conflict” with unspecified drug cartels. It suggested that the U.S. would be participating in a sustained conflict with cartels which the administration has labeled terrorist organizations. However, no evidence has been shared that the military targets were in fact connected to an organized terrorist organization.

U.S. Military presence in the Caribbean

The U.S. has built up a wide array of military assets in the Caribbean including ships, planes, and drones. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the movement of a major aircraft carrier and its strike group from the Mediterranean Sea to the U.S. Southern Command to bolster the growing number of combat vessels in the area, where thousands of troops were already deployed. F-35 fighter jets have also been deployed, and U.S. heavy bomber planes have flown up to the coast of Venezuela as part of training exercises.

International Response

On October 31 the United Nations Human Rights chief called for an investigation and stated that she believes the attacks “violate international human rights law” and “must halt.” Experts appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council previously said that “the use of lethal force in international waters without proper legal basis violates international law of the sea and amounts to extrajudicial executions.” Even if the boats are transporting drugs, “These moves are an extremely dangerous escalation with grave implications for peace and security in the Caribbean region.”

Venezuela’s defense minister said in September that the attacks amounted to a “non-declared war,” prompting Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro to call militias into active duty. The Venezuelan military is working to train local militias made up of volunteers, largely older citizens from poor communities, which some political analysts in Venezuela view as a human shield. In response to the aircraft carrier being called to the Caribbean, Maduro accused the U.S. again of “fabricating a new war.” Trump, among other world leaders, doesn’t recognize Maduro as a legitimate leader after questionable results from the 2024 election. But the Trump administration goes further to claim Maduro heads a drug-trafficking ring, despite Venezuela’s minor role in the drug trade.

Some analysts have speculated that the military campaign is more about forcing a regime change in Venezuela and asserting U.S. influence over the world’s largest oil reserves than combating drug trafficking. This tracks with a pattern of actions the U.S. has taken over the years to unseat President Maduro including efforts to infiltrate his inner circle beginning in 2024.

Columbian President Gustavo Petro accused the U.S. of murdering at least one fisherman, posting on social media that “U.S. government officials have committed a murder and violated our sovereignty in territorial waters.” Trump responded by further cutting aid to Columbia’s counternarcotics programs and announcing new tariffs on Colombian goods.

Domestic Response and Messaging

The day after Trump confirmed that the CIA had been authorized to conduct covert operations in Venezuela, Admiral Alvin Holsey announced his retirement from his position overseeing operations in U.S. Southern Command in December. The retirement comes a year into his post, which would typically last three to four years. The exact reason for his retirement is unclear, though social media posts by Holsey and Hegseth afterwards appeared to demonstrate an apparent mutual respect.

The administration has repeatedly insisted that it is within its legal authority to perform these attacks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said “If people want to stop seeing drug boats blow up, stop sending drugs to the United States.” Hegseth has compared the initiative to the war on terror, posting on social media “Just as Al Qaeda waged war on our homeland, these cartels are waging war on our border and our people.”

On October 8, the Senate voted down a war powers resolution which would have required Trump to consult Congress before continuing military strikes in the area. It was a largely symbolic move, since the White House indicated that Trump would veto the legislation. The vote took place mostly along party lines, with two Republicans voting in favor of the resolution and one Democrat voting against it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth briefed lawmakers on November 5 on their legal justification for the aggression, which quelled some Republican complaints about a lack of transparency, while still leaving Democrats unhappy about being left in the dark. A bipartisan group of legislators is planning another vote to require congressional approval to engage in further hostilities, but administration officials have been lobbying Republicans to vote no again.

About half of federal government employees are still working, including federal police like ICE, TSA, and air traffic controllers, the military, and staff deemed essential throughout the government. But those workers won’t get paid until the shutdown ends, and it’s legally dubious that many should be working at all. Payments out of a contingency fund for SNAP, the food assistance program, are only covering part of SNAP’s benefits and recent payments may be clawed back (the Supreme Court also ruled on it). That’s all because the Constitution requires that federal dollars are only spent when a law is enacted to authorize it, and the last laws authorizing all this spending expired on September 30.

To end the shutdown, Republicans must find at least 8 Democrats in the Senate to agree on an “appropriations” bill for either short-term funding (called a “continuing resolution”) or year-long funding.

Republicans proposed to continue Trump-level funding until November 21, which would include the major increase in spending on immigration enforcement, major cuts to foreign aid, student loans, and food and medical benefits for the poor, and workforce reductions throughout much of the federal government that Republicans enacted during the year. The time until November 21 was to be used to negotiate full-year appropriations bills (which should have already been enacted before the fiscal year ended, ideally).

Democrats have said that they would agree to that with 1) an extension to expiring health insurance subsidies for middle-class families and 2) a guarantee that Republicans won’t break the deal in the middle of the fiscal year (again). More on all that below.

Senate Republicans offered to hold a vote on extending the subsidies, but they didn’t offer to vote for it. Democrats didn’t accept the symbolic offer, but negotiations in the Senate continue. House Republicans in any case said they would not negotiate until the shutdown ended. (Democrats didn’t ask for funding for illegal immigrants, contrary to lies from the other side.)

Republicans expected Democrats to concede rather than be blamed in the public eye for the shutdown. Neither happened.

The shutdown doesn’t prevent Congress from being in session, and since the shutdown began the Senate has been working: The Senate passed a bipartisan full-year defense spending bill, passed bills to end Trump tariffs and reverse Biden-era regulations, confirmed a handful of Trump nominations for federal judges, agency leaders, and military positions, and voted several times on (failed) proposals to end the shutdown. And Senate leaders from both parties have been negotiating an end to the shutdown.

The House of Representatives, on the other hand, has had the lights off. Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson sent House Republicans home a week before the shutdown began until Democrats accede to the Republican proposal. Rather than actually being in recess, every few days a token representative gavels the chamber in and then a few minutes later gavels it out as if there is nothing to do. Most representatives are not in D.C., nor holding town halls in their districts, or apparently doing any work at all.

With the chamber technically in session, the Constitution would like a word: Johnson has refused to seat a representative elected in September. It’s unprecedented, and it’s to avoid a vote on an issue that would embarrass the President: Seating Rep.-elect Grijalva could trigger a vote on releasing DOJ’s Epstein files. (This is the second time the Speaker has kept the House out of session to avoid the Epstein issue.)

We’re here because of the filibuster rule in the Senate.

The Senate’s 3/5ths threshold to end debate is why 52 Republicans now need 8 Democrats in the Senate, or 60 senators, to advance legislation to end the shutdown. Republicans are down one vote of their own because Sen. Rand Paul has been voting against the Republican plan for its increase of the deficit. (Numerically, President Trump could align with Democrats and 13 Republicans instead, which is actually how government shutdowns were avoided in his first term, or legislators could come together without Trump, but none of that is likely.)

In March, Trump did find 10 Democrats to join Republicans to pass a continuing resolution (CR). But funding levels have dramatically changed since that last CR: Republicans used special rules that give a simple-majority vote for their signature bills earlier this year: The One Big Beautiful Bill which made most of the changes to federal spending mentioned above and the bill that defunded foreign aid (USAID) and public broadcasting (CPB) followed special simple-majority procedures. With a simple majority, they could pass those bills without Democratic support. Those rules don’t apply to the shutdown.

Or they could change the filibuster rule. Trump has told Republicans to do so, just as he did in 2017 to confirm his Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. So far, Senate Republicans have not taken that route this time. Changing the filibuster would open the door to more extreme legislation not only now but also if Democrats take back the Senate.

Republicans have indicated they might use those simple-majority rules again next year to undo whatever deal is reached to end the shutdown (similar to how those rules were used to undo the CR that Trump himself signed into law a few months prior). That gives Democrats little incentive to negotiate and is why they want a guarantee that Republicans will stick with the deal for the whole fiscal year.

Soon House Republicans are going to reach the end of their bluff because no proposal is on the table for funding beyond November 21. They will have to come back to the Capitol to vote on a proposal for what’s next, which might be extending the stalemate, offering a concession to win Democrats’ votes, or the Democrats folding. And it looks like we may be repeating this all over again in Februrary rather than having funding for the whole fiscal year.

For now though, we’re where we’ve been since October 1: Democrats demanding a revised continuing resolution that extends health care subsidies and House Republicans refusing to entertain any negotiation until after Democrats approve the continuing resolution as it is.

(Two more thoughts: Half of the federal budget isn’t on a yearly cycle and so is mostly unaffected, like social security and Medicaid. Federal workers are supposed to get back-pay per a bill President Trump signed into law after the last shutdown, but Trump has floated the idea of ignoring that law. You might think furloughed workers don’t deserve to be paid, but they aren’t permitted to get another job while still a federal employee.)