Trump promised the East Wing project would be 100% privately funded with an estimated cost of $300 million. The cost has soared to $600 million, half of which is coming from taxpayer dollars.

After the attempted shooting at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner, Republicans in Congress tried and failed to allocate $1 billion in government funding for the East Wing. Since the funding wasn’t provided, in June, the White House disbursed approximately $350 million in taxpayer dollars to the Secret Service, drawing on funds allocated by Congress in last year’s reconciliation package for personnel, training facilities, programming, technology, and bonuses for Secret Service Agents. As recently as March, Trump has claimed that there are no taxpayer dollars being spent on the project, but internal documents show funds being disbursed for the project from the Secret Service, the White House military office, and the executive residence, all of which are taxpayer funded.

The White House argues that security upgrades for a hospital beneath the ballroom and a rooftop drone center are separate projects from the ballroom.

Triumphal Arch

Another capital project is the Triumphal Arch, which would stand 250 feet tall near the military’s Arlington Cemetery. Last year, Trump said the arch would be paid for with unused funds raised from the ballroom, but public funds will be used although there is no cost estimate yet. It’s unclear what funds will be left over from the East Wing project, if any, since they’re already tapping into public funds.

Freedom 250

There was a confusing mix of events celebrating America’s 250th birthday this year. A decade ago, Congress began planning for America 250 celebration events. But Trump put together his own set of events under the Department of Interior and called them Freedom 250. These events included a state fair on the National Mall, a UFC fight on the White House lawn, a fireworks show, and the “Patriot Games” high school athletics competition. At least $68 million in taxpayer funding was directed to the Department of Interior for “A250 events” and to “support significant events to commemorate the nation’s semiquincentennial.” Corporate donors with conflicts of interest including government contracts, such as Palantir, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and United Airlines purchased sponsorship packages with benefits including branding, speaking opportunities, and access to Trump at a private reception. Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee called Freedom 250 a “hotbed of corruption and self-enrichment” and accused the organization of criminal fraud. Lawmakers have also alleged that the Trump Administration illegally allocated $150 million intended for America 250 towards Trump’s Freedom 250 events.

Reflecting Pool

Trump’s original estimate of the cost of the Reflecting Pool renovation was $1.5 million. But 20 days before he made that announcement, Atlantic Industrial Coatings was granted a no-bid contract to line the pool for $6.9 million, and Green Water Solutions was granted a no-bid contract for $1.7 million for a new pump system. Atlantic Industrial Coatings was paid an additional $7.7 million in taxpayer dollars in June, for a total of more than $16 million. But the job didn’t stick and the pool had to be drained again, after Trump claimed without evidence that vandals cut football field sized gashes in the lining.

Qatari Jet

The jet that Trump was gifted by Qatar will serve as Air Force One until Boeing delivers on a new plane in two years, and then will be donated to Trump’s future presidential library. The Air Force has stated that the cost to taxpayers to retrofit the aircraft came in under the $400 million value of the plane itself and that they spared no risk for security concerns. But after Trump took the newly renovated plane to Turkey for a NATO summit this month, he flew back on the old Air Force One due to security concerns at the advice of the Secret Service, according to reporting by the New York Times which has become the target of an FBI investigation over that reporting. It’s unclear what upgrades were made to the jet, but it appears that further upgrades will be needed to address apparent security concerns.

Helipad

Construction began recently without Congressional or review panel approval on the White House South Lawn, where Lockheed Martin subsidiary Sikorsky is building a helipad to accommodate helicopters purchased by the Obama Administration. The newer helicopters have been used over the years, but not typically to transport the President to and from the South Lawn due to damage to the grass caused by their more powerful engines. The helipad will be made of granite, rather than poured concrete, and engraved with a presidential seal. The cost is estimated between $5 and $6 million, which Sikorsky has donated to the National Park Service. However, the project has been sped up with a goal of completion before Chinese President Xi Xinping’s state visit in September which would increase the cost to taxpayers by $875,000 according to reporting by the Washington Post.

Here’s the bottom line of Trump’s speech according to Fox News:

Trump did not claim China changed votes or altered election results.

No votes were altered in recent elections, according to what the President didn’t say.

“We know that they can change voter registration and your vote. We know it’s possible,” Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said this morning. He offered no details, and did not say that any voter registrations or votes were changed.

The President also mentioned China’s “attempt to manufacture illegal ballots for Joe Biden.” Based on what he didn’t say, the attempt presumably failed.

The President described a world in which foreign powers are trying to hack election systems. That’s true and concerning. But at least when it came to altering votes in past elections, any attempts failed. (He did mention votes being changed — only a thousand miles away in Venezuela.)

No mass non-citizen voting

He also discussed finding “278,000 non-citizens who are registered to vote” in California and three other Democratic states.

But the President did not say that they voted, and although fraudulently registering to vote is illegal and one of his top priorities, he still did not announce any prosecutions. DHS Secretary Mullin promised this morning that they would look at who votes in the 2026 elections later this year and pursue “prison time” for state officials who do not purge voter rolls.

Fox News described the “278,000” finding as a “preliminary review.” That’s probably because there is no direct correlation between voter registration records and immigration records. Name mixups, naturalization, and states registering people who didn’t ask to be registered are common.

Expect only a small fraction of that count to turn out to be voter registration fraud, and an even smaller fraction of that might have improperly voted — far, far fewer than could alter the outcome of an election.

The SAVE America Act might prevent these improper non-citizen voter registration in the future, but until Trump finds mass non-citizen voting, the bill’s most significant impact would be to make voter registration harder for married women (or anyone else) who changed their name.

Breach of voter registration information

The President also disclosed intelligence that China had obtained 220 million voter files and that election systems are “vulnerable and they’re easily compromised.”

As one of our readers wrote to us this morning, every computer is hackable. That’s not being flippant. It’s a deeply serious concern, and it’s unfortunately not a shocker anymore when a major data breach like this is announced.

And yet:

• The President did not announce restoring funding he cut for cybersecurity assistance for state and local elections officials.

• The President did not announce appointing bipartisan officials to the Election Assistance Commission, restarting the agency, to push higher standards for election systems.

The President offered no policy proposal to prevent a future data breach or hack. In his speech this morning, DHS Secretary Mullin referred to a policy announced last week that grants to prevent or respond to terrorism would be withheld from states that don’t comply with new election security demands. Mullin also promised a new election infrastructure security plan in 30 days.

Fortunately, the President didn’t say that any voter registrations had been altered. And according to an analysis of the newly declassified reports by Just Security, the President's claims about hacked voter files may be overblown:

the documents reviewed thus far are too heavily redacted to show how the claim involving 220 million voter files was derived, how the data was obtained, how much came from protected election systems rather than public or commercial sources

Voter registration information is widely circulated already. Every candidate and party already gets access to voter information. That’s how they know whose doors to knock on and who to target with mailings.

In fact, DHS Secretary Mullin said they would enforce voter fraud laws using “public records” of who voted, in his speech this morning. Voter registration information is, unfortunately, not much of a secret.

And much of the same information has already been stolen from commercial sources, like the 2017 Equifax breach of credit information of 147 million people, or can be purchased from data brokers. China could have gotten voters’ information any number of ways, unfortunately.

China worked to prevent Trump’s election

We said that Wednesday. It was known since the first Trump Administration that China was attempting to influence U.S. elections against Trump.

The President conveniently didn’t mention the efforts by Russia or Iran, much of which was in support of Trump’s reelection. Foreign influence is a national problem, not a partisan one.

Yet the President did not address why he closed the Foreign Influence Task Force at the Department of Justice early last year, and he did not offer any new solutions to combat China’s foreign influence. To the contrary, he downplays foreign influence when it helps him, as in last night’s address.

A coverup and Michigan voter registration fraud

The President also discussed government employees burying some of this information from his briefings and “fraud by a large scale voter registration operation in Michigan”.

If these were true and as serious as the President implied, one would expect that the President would have announced that individuals were already fired or announced unsealed criminal indictments. He did neither, promising those actions in the uncertain future.

The threat of foreign influence and interference is real and has been happening for years, as we wrote Wednesday. Both federal and state officials work to keep elections secure, and that must continue. But President Trump’s speech last night shows that our elections have been successful despite those threats — at least so far — and offered no new solutions to the very real cybersecurity threats we face.

Foreign influence and interference

The threat of foreign interference is real, with cyberattacks, foreign propaganda, and straw donors all strategies being used by U.S. adversaries. This has been widely reported over recent years, so you’re probably familiar with it — in which case, jump to the voting machines section below. Otherwise, here’s a recap:

During the 2016 presidential campaign between then-candidate Donald Trump and candidate Hilary Clinton, Russia hacked and released damaging Democratic emails through WikiLeaks. That year a “Russian government attorney” met with Donald Trump’s son Don Jr. to provide “information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia,” according to emails sent before the meeting (which was the widely reported 2016 Trump Tower meeting). Later during the campaign, WikiLeaks communicated with Trump advisor Roger Stone about the hacked emails before they were publicly leaked, and with Don Jr. about publicizing the hacked emails. 12 Russian intelligence officials were indicted for the hack that exfiltrated the emails. Separately, an individual connected to Russian intelligence messaged with Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort about polling data.

(The Steele Dossier, opposition research commissioned by Clinton’s campaign to discredit Trump, especially around Trump’s relationship with Russia, and which was largely discredited, was leaked by U.S. journalists in 2017. But after unsubstantiated claims that it was a part of a Russian intelligence operation, the Trump Administration’s prosecution of one of the sources failed when a jury acquitted the source on all charges. It wasn’t foreign interference.)

In 2020, the Trump Administration concluded that foreign powers were seeking to influence the 2020 presidential election on both sides: “China prefers that President Trump … does not win reelection”, “Russia is using a range of measures to primarily denigrate former Vice President Biden,” and “Iran seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions.” Iranians were later charged in 2021 for threatening Democrats to vote for Trump, hacking a state voter registration website, and attempting to pin the hack on the Democratic Party. In 2024, Iran attempted to discredit the Trump campaign by stealing and leaking campaign documents.

Russian agents were sanctioned by the Treasury Department in 2020-2021 for influence operations. In 2024, the Department of Justice indicted Russians for propping up an American media company as a front for Russian propaganda: It was a right-wing media company featuring well-known commentator Benny Johnson and others.

These operations mostly targeted public opinion. Media manipulation, including through social media and AI-generated answers, is likely to be a significant issue in the years ahead.

In 2019, individuals were also charged in a straw donor and laundering scheme to route money from a Russian national to U.S. state and federal political campaigns. (Lev Parnas, who separately worked with Trump to research allegations against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, was one of the individuals convicted of the scheme.) In 2025, a Russian and an Uzbekistan man living in Florida submitted 132 fraudulent voter registrations — they both pleaded guilty.

In a highly unusual move, former Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard attended an FBI raid of election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia early this year, suggesting a foreign connection to a crime. That might be the subject of Trump’s address. Little more is known about the raid, and Gabbard resigned in June.

Voting machines have been secure, so far

Hacking electronic voting machines became a national issue 20 years ago when a college classmate of mine demonstrated manipulating vote totals in voting machines made by Diebold in 2006 (the machines were not part of an actual election).

But voting machines have come a long way since then, with paper records of votes and audits, and hacking voting machines usually requires physical access to each machine, precinct by precinct. It’s impractical to manipulate enough votes that way to change the outcome of an election. That’s the hope.

And the evidence supports that, so far. A 2019-2020 report by Senate Republicans found that while the Russian government targeted U.S. elections infrastructure from 2014-2017, “The Committee has seen no evidence that any votes were changed or that any voting machines were manipulated” by Russia.

Voting machine irregularity conspiracy theories have been thoroughly debunked: Fox News agreed to pay voting machine maker Dominion nearly $1 billion in 2023 to settle a defamation lawsuit over Fox personalities’ extensive fabrications that Dominion machines flipped votes from Trump to Biden in 2020. Newsmax settled with Smartmatic, another voting machine maker, and admitted it lied about the company’s machines and ties to Venezuela. Smartmatic also won a similar case against Mike Lindell and MyPillow for their lies and is in ongoing litigation with Fox.

Cases of tampering with voting equipment, at least the ones that are found out, are rare. In 2024, a Colorado county clerk was convicted of tampering with the county’s voting machines, and Trump advisor Sidney Powell pleaded guilty to a similar charge in Georgia. They were, after the election, fishing for evidence in support of Trump’s claim that the 2020 election was rigged.

In the two decades since the Diebold demonstration, most states have moved to paper-based systems with machinery used for tabulation and accessibility support, along with auditing election results. As of 2025, only Louisiana uses direct recording electronic systems exclusively according to Ballotopedia. More on that below.

Although Trump has been crying “rigged” since losing a state primary election in 2016, neither the Department of Justice nor any state has yet brought charges against anyone — foreign or domestic — for large scale election crimes of any sort. That’s really all you need to know to see what’s real and what’s not. See if he announces an indictment Thursday night.

Trump hamstrings federal agencies that support elections

The threat on voting machines remains anyway. That’s why the U.S. Election Assistance Commission in 2025 recommended that states use “voting systems that are auditable and software-independent … that have a paper record of every vote, such as paper ballots. . . . While most jurisdictions already use voting systems that produce a paper record of every vote, the EAC has adopted this policy to encourage the few remaining election offices to follow their lead.” The EAC is a legally-bipartisan federal agency that supports states in enhancing their voting systems through research and grants. In 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the EAC to “protect the integrity” of elections (ostensibly). Yet early this month Trump fired all of the agency’s remaining commissioners, leaving the agency unable to take any further action.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency within the Department of Homeland Security, which Trump created in 2017, provides cybersecurity support to state and local elections officials. Last year, Trump cut CISA’s funding for election security, and the agency’s director position is vacant with no one currently nominated for Senate confirmation. (In a case brought by Republican states against CISA and other agencies for collaborating with social media companies to ban election-related (and other) misinformation, the Supreme Court ruled in 2024 against the Republican states deciding that CISA had not coerced the social media companies.)

Early last year, the Trump Administration also closed the Foreign Influence Task Force at the Department of Justice.

What if something did happen

The best time to secure an election is before it starts. The next best time is to challenge a result in court before the counts are certified.

When that’s not possible, individuals can be prosecuted for election-related crimes. Legislators in Congress can be expelled by a 2/3rds vote. The president can be impeached and removed by Congress. Or, more commonly, they can resign.

Back in 2012, former Rep. Michael Grimm was investigated for improperly seeking assistance from a foreign national in soliciting campaign contributions, among other crimes. Grimm resigned and served time in prison for unrelated tax fraud (for which Trump issued a pardon much later). In 2023 Rep. George Santos was expelled from Congress and in 2024 he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and identity theft after it was discovered that he had egregiously lied during his campaign and fraudulently solicited political contributions. (His federal sentence was later commuted by Trump.) In 2024, Sen. Bob Menendez was convicted of bribery and other charges, and then he resigned from the Senate. These recent cases are rare, however.

There is no process of recall by voters for legislators in Congress or for the president.

If foreign interference or improper vote tabulation is discovered, in which an elected legislator had no role, unprecedented questions would arise about the right response. Did the interference definitively change the outcome of the election? How would we prove it? Are the legislator’s constituents best served by the legislator remaining in office or without any representation in Congress until the seat is next filled? Would vacating the seat be giving the foreign power the outcome they wanted? There won’t be any good answers. And the bottom line is that elections must be decided by the votes. Anything else wouldn’t be democracy.

What you can do

We recommend working in the next election. Poll workers are trained to administer elections. There’s nothing like seeing how the process really works to put any concerns you might have about voting integrity to rest. It’s certainly a better use of your time than listening to politicians and talking heads stoking fears.

Corrections:
I originally wrote that “In 2020, the Biden Administration concluded that foreign powers were seeking to influence the 2020 presidential election on both sides.” But that report was at the end of the first Trump Administration. Apologies.

Trump Administration settles sham case with Donald Trump

Trump sued the IRS earlier this year for $10 billion over the leak of his tax information by an IRS contractor between 2018 and 2020. Then four months later his appointees at the Department of Justice agreed to settle the case. It was called a “fraud on the court” by a bipartisan group of former judges who challenged the settlement. The bulk of the settlement agreement was the creation of an anti-weaponization fund to dole out nearly $2 billion to those who claim to have been unfairly investigated by the U.S. government, i.e., January 6 rioters and Trump himself. The slush fund was halted by a federal judge before the Administration dropped the plans. Trump’s personal-lawyer-turned-acting-Attorney-General Todd Blanche testified during a Congressional hearing that the plan had been abandoned, but said he was not committed to putting anything in writing to affirm that statement.

Trump grants himself tax immunity

In addition to the anti-weaponization fund, Blanche announced that the Trump Administration had agreed as a part of the settlement to permanently bar the government from prosecuting Trump, his sons, or the Trump Organization for violations of tax law. Trump floated the idea of releasing his tax returns, which has refused to do in the past, now that he is reportedly shielded from prosecution.

Dell Technologies scheme

In February, Trump’s investment portfolio purchased between $1 million and $5 million in Dell stock. Nine days later, Trump told a crowd in Georgia to “go out and buy a Dell computer.” But that’s not all.

Michael and Susan Dell, the founder of Dell Technologies and his wife, pledged $6.25 billion to the Trump Accounts program last year. Then this year, after Trump’s personal investment in their company, Dell was awarded a $9.7 billion contract with the Pentagon to provide software for the military. Dell’s revenue has increased more than 80% year over year and its stock has tripled in the past year.

Cronyism in Green

The Trump Administration paid a contractor to paint the base of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in an unsuccessful attempt to address the algae issue that has persisted since the pool’s construction. The no-bid contract was awarded to Atlantic Industrial Coatings for more than $14 million in taxpayer funds, seven times the original estimate. The contract was awarded on April 3. On April 23 and May 6, Trump said that the contractor had worked on pools for him in the past. But on May 12 he said he didn’t know the contractor and was not a part of the contract award.

In addition to the new paint job, the government awarded another no-bid contract to Green Water Solutions, a company owned by Trump donor John Cafaro. The contract was for $1.7 million for a new filtration system in the reflecting pool. Cafaro has pleaded guilty to financial crimes in the past, including campaign finance violations and bribery of Rep. James Traficant in 2001. Not only has he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump’s fundraising committees, he has also done work on at least one Trump Organization property.

Trump family members benefit too

The cronyism isn’t limited to those outside of the Trump family. Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner reportedly floated real estate projects along with an investment fund for Iran if a deal could be reached. The Memorandum of Understanding that has been negotiated includes $300 billion in funds for reconstruction and economic development for Iran. Kushner has made no secret of the intertwining of his role as an envoy to the Middle East and his personal financial dealings. Now a member of the executive board of Trump’s Board of Peace, Kushner has sought real estate deals in Gaza, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, telling 60 Minutes in January that “what people call conflicts of interest, Steve [Witkoff] and I call experience and trusted relationships.”

Since Trump won the 2024 election, Donald Trump Jr. has joined the boards of at least two companies directly benefitting from the current administration: PublicSquare, an e-commerce company which was being investigated for violating state consumer protection laws until the Trump administration dropped the investigation; and BlinkRx, a digital pharmaceutical company that stands to benefit from the development of TrumpRx. He has also invested in or joined the advisory boards of Unusual Machines, Polymarket, Kalshi, and Mixed Martial Arts Group:

• Unusual Machines sold drone parts to the Pentagon.

• Polymarket and Kalshi stand to benefit from a drastic shift in regulatory policy. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has historically taken a hard-line stance on prediction markets as another form of gambling, but current CFTC chairman Michael Selig stated that these markets “provide significant benefits to individuals, businesses, and the broader economy.” As a result, concerns of Don Jr.’s influence in policy-making and of insider trading have proliferated. Legislators on both sides of the aisle have proposed bills that would regulate bets (or event contracts, as the industry would call them) allowed on apps like Kalshi.

• This year, Mixed Martial Arts Group has sought taxpayer funded contracts for military and law enforcement training. It’s unclear whether any contracts have been awarded so far.

In August 2025 Don Jr.’s venture capital firm 1789 Capital invested $65 million in Vulcan Elements for an undisclosed stake in the company, a startup manufacturer of rare-earth magnets. In November 2025 the Pentagon announced that it would loan $620 million to the startup at the suggestion of Peter Navarro, White House advisor the the President and a friend of Don Jr.’s. The funding on this type of loan would typically take months, but this deal was rushed through in a matter of weeks. At the time of the loan announcement, Vulcan Elements had fewer than 50 employees and said they would use the funds to scale a new factory. Their valuation increased ten-fold from around $200 million to $2 billion.

Eric Trump and Don Jr. have tried to sell drone technology to Gulf countries during the war in Iran. They also both have an ownership stake in Skyline Builders which merged with a mining company in Kazakhstan this year. The Export-Import Bank of the United States, a government corporation that finances U.S. exports, issued a Letter of Interest for up to $900 million in project financing for mining operations in Kazakhstan which includes the largest known undeveloped Tungsten supply in the world.

Crypto meme scheme (or, token hokum)

Of course, the Trump family continues to profit off of cryptocurrency ventures as well. According to Reuters, the Trump family has gained $2.3 billion from crypto since the middle of 2024, including by dumping their own “tokens” – resulting in outside investor losses. A recent Public Financial Disclosure Report made to the U.S. Office of Government Ethics for Trump’s 2025 financials documented more than $635 million in earnings from a cryptocurrency licensing agreement for “Celebrational Coins”, $236 million in crypto token sales, and more than $300 million between equity sales and income reported from World Liberty Financial, a Trump family crypto company. According to Forbes, Trump’s net worth has risen to $6.5 billion as of March 2026, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

The extent to which the Trump family is willing to publicly profit off of Trump’s second term sets an alarming precedent. And as for Congress, it relentlessly investigated Hunter Biden for profiting off of his father’s presidency but has turned a blind eye to the profiteering of the Trump family.

The first was Kristi Noem, who was fired in March from her role as the Department of Homeland Security Secretary. In April, Pam Bondi resigned from her role as Attorney General and Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned from her position as Secretary of Labor. All three faced scandals shortly before their ousting. In May, Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her position as the Director of National Intelligence effective June 30. (Though she cited her husband’s health, pundits had speculated that she might resign after the strikes on Iran on February 28 due to her strong opposition to foreign interventionism.) This pattern goes beyond the Cabinet.

Brookings tracks turnover of high-level positions in the Executive Branch and puts it in historical context. During Trump’s first term, 14 of his 15 cabinet members vacated their roles. The next-highest turnover rate within the cabinet since Reagan was George H.W. Bush with eight. Cabinet members don’t typically resign within the first year of an administration, a pattern Trump bucked in his first term but held to in his second. So while they got a lot of media coverage, it’s not shocking to see turnover. Four resignations within three months, however, is a rapid pace. The most cabinet-level resignations Trump has had in a single year is five.

The second Trump Administration has also experienced significant turnover of other high-level non-cabinet positions in its first year. When compared to Trump’s first term, the turnover rate is lower so far. But when compared to other administrations going back to Reagan, Trump’s turnover levels are extraordinarily high.

Of the “A Team” positions tracked by Brookings, six resigned and eight were pushed out, resigning under pressure. Trump takes first and second place in recent history, doubling the next runner-up, Reagan, for first-year turnover rates. Historically, this turnover rate often increases significantly in the 2nd year, though in Trump’s first term turnover in these positions peaked in the first year. The National Security Council, in particular, experienced a wave of firings early on in Trump’s second term after many were deemed insufficiently loyal to the President. The purge followed a meeting between President Trump and right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who had posted on social media about the disloyalty of some of those who were fired.

Some have voluntarily resigned due to policy disagreements such as Joe Kent, who resigned from his role as National Counterterrorism Center Director due to the war with Iran. Others have been forced to resign after public scandals that humiliated the President, such as National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, who included a journalist on a What’sApp chat used to plan classified military operations, and Gregory Bovino who was leading the Border Patrol charge for Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis when Reneé Good and Alex Pretti were killed. Public disagreement with the Administration can also lead to oustings. Elon Musk, the public face of the spectacularly ineffective cost-cutting agency DOGE, was pushed out after initiating a public feud with Trump over the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025 which increased government spending.

Some level of turnover is to be expected in any administration. People move to other positions or resign for any number of personal reasons. But some administrations see more turnover due to internal conflict and scandal than others. Reagan had six National Security Advisors, three of which resigned due to scandal (one for bribery and the other two for the Iran Contra Affair when the U.S. illegally sold arms to Iran and diverted funds to the Contras, an insurgent group in Nicaragua) while the other two were promoted to his cabinet. Biden had an unusually low turnover rate in his cabinet, with only two members not serving for his full term, and both resignations were for personal reasons. But Biden’s turnover rate in high-level non-cabinet positions was average compared to previous administrations.

The Justice Department also experienced significant turnover in 2025. Thousands of workers left the Department last year, both through firings and resignations, leading to lower hiring prerequisites for federal prosecutors and FBI staff as they struggle to keep up with their workloads. Reports have indicated that the FBI is having trouble filling positions and as a result has promoted agents with less experience than is standard for their roles. The causes of these staffing shortages are resignations and retirements due to politicization of the department and firings of individuals who aren’t deemed sufficiently loyal to President Trump.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has fired dozens of senior military officers and, paired with high-level resignations, the result is a loss of experience and expertise within the Department of Defense. Hegseth has made it clear that he will not put up with what he calls “woke” ideology or diversity, equity, and inclusion (e.g. by refusing promotions to qualified women and Black officers). Many retired military officers have concerns for the long-term impacts of these firings and forced retirements on the Department as a whole. Some worry that with loyalty to the President rather than the Constitution as a top requirement, the culture and effectiveness of the department could suffer.

Overall, the second Trump Administration has seen slightly less high-level turnover than in the first, but still more than any other president in recent history. As Trump’s popularity continues to crater, there is reason to expect continued turnover at cabinet and below-cabinet levels.

Artemis III is projected to take place in 2027 and will test docking capabilities between NASA Orion spacecraft and commercial landers from SpaceX and Blue Origin. Artemis IV would follow in 2028 to test the transfer of astronauts onto commercial landers and the first moon landing since 1972. Artemis V is projected for late 2028 to land astronauts on the moon where NASA will begin building a base.

The Executive Order emphasizes a focus on national security infrastructure such as threat detection and countering including missile defense technologies and installation of nuclear weapons in space, a commercial space economy including the private sector replacement of the International Space Station (ISS) by 2030 and placement of nuclear reactors on the moon, and U.S. leadership in the management of space traffic and defense systems, technology development, and lunar infrastructure.

The Outer Space Treaty, signed by the U.S. in 1967 prohibits the installation of nuclear weapons in orbit or on the moon, as well as the installation or testing of weapons and conduction of military maneuvers.

At the same time, Trump’s budget proposal for fiscal year 2027 aims to cut NASA’s budget by nearly 25% ($5.6 billion), dashing more than 40 space programs and NASA initiatives such as the replacement of the ISS. But the President’s budget proposal to Congress is one of many factors Congress considers when appropriating funds to federal agencies.

Recently confirmed NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman supports the cuts, noting that Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill last year earmarked $10 billion for human spaceflight exploration — a mixed message. The Planetary Society, a non-profit organization involved in political space advocacy, called the cuts an existential threat, “adding needless uncertainty and disruption to NASA’s workforce.”

A new Executive Order issued in November created an initiative “Fostering the Future” to be spearheaded by First Lady Melania Trump to improve child welfare and foster systems across the country.

It calls for a modernization of child-welfare tracking systems, including use of artificial intelligence with predictive analytics to improve foster placements, and a state-level grading scale to evaluate outcomes. It also calls for partnerships between state welfare agencies and non-profits, schools, and churches to improve outcomes for those aging out of the foster system.

Some children’s rights advocates worry that increasing faith-based involvement could put LGBTQIA+ youth at risk, and point out that the order doesn’t mention any efforts to maintain or reconnect separated children with their families, despite poverty accounting for a broad portion of child neglect cases. And artificial intelligence has been proven to produce biased results–in 2022 AI was found to flag a disproportionate number of Black children for mandatory neglect investigations in a Pennsylvania county, which social workers disagreed with one-third of the time. Social workers were able to override the tool, but the discovery raised red flags as similar models were spreading across the country. Proponents are concerned about social workers’ personal biases.

Addiction treatment

The Great American Recovery Initiative was created in January and is staffed with various heads of federal agencies. They are tasked with recommending necessary steps in coordinating a federal response to addiction, increasing awareness and fostering “a culture that celebrates recovery”, advising other agency heads on how to implement programs in the public sphere including in public health, criminal justice, workforce, education, housing, and social service systems, directing grant funding, and consulting with state and local jurisdictions and tribes, community and faith-based organizations, as well as private sector and philanthropic entities.

The order was signed just weeks after the Administration announced the elimination of almost $2 billion in federal grants for substance abuse programs nationwide. The grants were reinstated within 24 hours after backlash, but there was no explanation provided about why the grants were targeted to begin with. After Trump signed this order, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. announced an initiative meant to kick off the Great American Recovery which would allocate $100 million to combat long-standing homelessness and opioid addiction, and to expand treatment that “emphasizes recovery and self-sufficiency”.

Existing addiction recovery organizations have concerns that methods of treatment detailed in Kennedy’s announcement, such as Assisted Outpatient Treatment (AOT) have produced mixed evidence for effectiveness and may shift funding away from science-backed addiction treatment and harm reduction strategies. They welcome new funding streams and national prioritization, but worry that existing programs may not be given the opportunities to engage with the new initiative.

Rescheduling fentanyl and cannabis

Trump deemed fentanyl, in illicit contexts, a weapon of mass destruction, in an Executive Order in December. Fentanyl used in an approved medical setting is not subject to this classification. Jonathan Caulkins, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University whose research focuses on drugs, crime, terror, and violence said that “neither terrorist organizations nor militaries are using fentanyl as a weapon.” The new designation could drastically intensify drug enforcement efforts both domestic and abroad.

In contrast, Trump signed an Executive Order to advance the process of re-scheduling cannabis to a lesser drug category, also in December. In April, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order reclassifying licensed medical marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III.

Grocery prices are continuing to rise and in December 2025 Trump signed an Executive Order instructing the Attorney General and Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to establish a Food Supply Chain Security Task Force to investigate food-related industries for anti-competitive behavior.

In January 2025, just before Trump took office, President Biden’s FTC filed a complaint alleging that PepsiCo had colluded with Walmart to drive up prices for Walmart’s competitors for more than a decade. PepsiCo’s internal documents revealed coordination with Walmart to increase prices for other grocers and provide lower wholesale pricing to Walmart. Trump’s FTC dismissed the case in May 2025.

But after the unredacted complaint was released to the public in December, a class-action lawsuit was filed on behalf of people across the U.S. who purchased PepsiCo products at retailers other than Walmart since January 2015. The FTC, however, has not reconsidered its decision to drop the case. As of this writing, the FTC has not brought any new cases on grocery price fixing.

Scam centers and cyber-crime

To combat fraud, President Trump signed an Executive Order in March which sought to address the targeting of vulnerable Americans by scam centers and cybercrime activities run by Transnational Criminal Organizations (TCOs). It was signed in tandem with the release of the National Cyber Strategy which is intended to tighten defensive and offensive cyber operations in the government and private sector, emphasize the right to privacy of Americans and their data in “common sense regulation”, modernize government networks and critical infrastructure, maintain technological superiority, and develop a strong foundation of cybersecurity talent.

Protecting federal programs from fraud

In January, the Center for Medicaid Services announced withholding and deferral of huge sums of federal Medicaid funds to states related to alleged fraud. Then Trump signed an Executive Order also in March establishing the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. In the order, Trump claims that there is “strong reason to believe that . . . problems exist” in several states (namely California, Illinois, New York, Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota), including allowing “illegal aliens, criminals, foreign gangs, bureaucrats, state and local officials, non-governmental organizations, and ineligible providers” to exploit federal programs administered by states such as Medicaid, and SNAP (formerly known as foodstamps). The task force is made up of representatives from several cabinet agencies and instructed to improve verification and fraud detection controls and mechanisms, promote information-sharing between administering jurisdictions and the federal government, audit programs for compliance, and determine ways for funds to be withheld from jurisdictions with anti-fraud requirements the federal government deems insufficient.

In a court case over the original deferral of funds, a district judge denied Minnesota’s request for a preliminary injunction (a temporary block of government action) in May, so the deferral of Medicaid funding will continue as the litigation plays out. As the task force sets to work, other states are likely to see similar actions.

“Made in America” fraud

Trump is also focused on fraudulent claims of goods being made in America. He signed an Executive Order encouraging enhanced FTC enforcement of “made in America” claims, including consideration of regulations to be established for online marketplaces. In April, the FTC announced enforcement actions against three companies: TouchTunes, Americana Liberty, and Oak Street.

Trump continued his campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives by signing an Executive Order requiring language in federal contracts to guarantee that the contractor and any subcontractors will not engage in any practices promoting DEI, and will report any contractors they’re aware are engaging in said practices. Contract violations may result in termination of the contract and potentially prosecution under the False Claims Act. The False Claims Act states that anyone who submits a false claim to the government (such as agreeing to not engage in DEI and then violating that agreement) would be subject to three times the government’s damages, plus a penalty. The government has already come to a settlement under the False Claims Act for $17 million against IBM.

Trump also signed an Executive Order instructing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Department of Labor (DOL) to increase oversight and regulatory enforcement of proxy advisors, which are firms hired by investors to provide research and recommendations to assist investors in decision-making processes. These advisors don’t vote on behalf of investors, they only advise them on data and make voting recommendations, but critics say they still have too much influence. Trump specifically mentions the Institutional Shareholder Services Inc. (ISS) and Glass Lewis & Co., two of the largest proxy advisor firms, alleging that they use their influence to promote “radical politically motivated agendas” like DEI and environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues. ISS and Glass Lewis have already begun to adjust their practices in anticipation of enhanced regulatory scrutiny, taking a more measured approach to recommendations for environmental and social proposals.

DEI refers to a range of workplace policies or practices ostensibly meant to reduce workplace discrimination and other barriers based on race, gender, disability, ethnicity, religion, and so on.

College sports

The landscape for college athletes has changed drastically in recent years with name image and likeness compensation and expanded player eligibility and transfer rules. Trump claims in an April executive order that college sports as a whole is at risk from an “out-of-control financial arms race” among colleges. The Order instructs governing bodies over college sports such as the National College Athletic Association (NCAA) to update their rules on eligibility, student transfer, medical care, revenue sharing, and name image and likeness (NIL) contracts to the detriment of student athletes and smaller athletic programs. The Director of the Office of Management and Budget is instructed to issue guidance to federal grantmaking agencies to suspend or terminate grants to schools that violate the rules, even potentially debarring them from future funding. And the Attorney General is instructed to take measures to invalidate state laws that conflict with the athletic governing body rules.

The order has drawn wide support from college sports institutions who have been calling for federal action in the form of legislation. However, major questions remain about whether it can be enforced and the likelihood of challenges in court for the stipulation of unrelated federal funding and encroachment on state regulatory functions.

Trump also used an Executive Order to demand that the annual Army-Navy football game be given an exclusive window to televise the game.

And he signed an Executive Order to schedule an INDYCAR street race in D.C. in celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

Settling a railroad worker labor contract dispute

An Emergency Board was established by an Executive Order in January to settle the labor contract dispute between the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR), a commuter rail in New York City’s suburbs (the largest commuter rail in the nation), and five of its union partners.

Both sides of the dispute, LIRR and a coalition of unions, were required to submit offers to the emergency board which would choose which offer was the most reasonable. In March the board sided with the union coalition due to the work rule changes required by LIRR in their offer, but the LIRR rejected the recommendation. If an agreement isn’t made by May 16, the unions could strike or be locked out.

Union leaders have indicated that while they don’t want to strike, they’re prepared to bring the busiest commuter railroad in the country to a halt if LIRR doesn’t come back to the negotiation table in good faith.

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

In December Trump signed “Ensuring a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence” which encourages Congress to ensure US AI dominance and sets up a task force to litigate state-level regulations of AI. It threatens grant funding for states that attempt to regulate AI, and calls for legislative recommendations from agency heads to nationalize AI policy to preempt state or local attempts to limit its use and expansion.

In March, the White House released these recommendations to Congress in a National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence defined by seven specific goals. While some areas contain seemingly contradictory instructions that may be difficult to adopt, others are likely to garner bipartisan support, such as protections for children, the workforce, and consumer energy costs. Below is a summary of the Administration’s goals.

1. “Protecting children and empowering parents”: Congress should build on the Take It Down Act which passed in 2025 requiring platforms to take down sexually explicit deepfakes (AI generated images, video or audio intended to believably impersonate someone). They should empower parents to control and manage their children’s privacy and content exposure, and require AI tools to establish age verification requirements, implement features to reduce the risk of sexual exploitation and self-harm, and limit data collection and targeted advertising. It should be done through laws that don’t create “open-ended liability” for AI companies, and without infringing on states’ abilities to enforce laws that protect children.

2. “Safeguarding and strengthening American communities”: Congress should ensure that electricity costs don’t go up for Americans due to the construction or operation of AI data centers, but also streamline the permitting process for AI infrastructure construction and encourage data centers generating their own power. (Many data centers are using gas power on-site which is air pollutant and greenhouse gas heavy. Cleaner on-site alternatives are possible, but requiring these sources would mean a less streamlined permitting process.) They should also ensure that the national security community is empowered to understand and mitigate national security concerns stemming from AI technological advancements and increase efforts to combat fraud and scams performed with AI, and provide grants and tax incentives to small businesses that implement AI to ensure deployment across all industries.

3. “Respecting intellectual property rights and supporting creators”: Congress shouldn’t pass legislation to clarify whether training AI models on copyrighted materials violates copyright laws, because the Administration believes it does not. Rather, they should consider creating licensing frameworks for owners of copyrighted materials to receive compensation from AI companies, but if they go this route it shouldn’t contain any requirements for the use of such licensing. Congress should also consider a federal framework preventing unauthorized distribution of AI-generated deep-fakes, but with exceptions for things like parody, satire, news reporting, and other First Amendment protected works. These would be broad exceptions, with news reporting posing a particularly concerning threat to an already deteriorating public trust in news media.

4. “Preventing censorship and protecting free speech”: Congress should prevent the government from coercing tech companies to “ban, compel, or alter content based on partisan or ideological agendas” (except when they do it) and provide a way for Americans to seek “redress” when the government tries to censor expression or information provided by an AI platform.

5. “Enabling innovation and ensuring American AI dominance”: Congress should establish regulatory sandboxes (these are testing environments for companies to examine the performance of AI technology under designated rules) and provide resources to translate federal data sets into AI-ready formats for use in training models. They should not create any new federal rulemaking bodies to regulate AI. Instead, the uniform national approach to AI regulation should be distributed among existing regulatory bodies.

6. “Educating Americans and developing an AI-ready workforce”: Congress should use non-regulatory methods such as guidelines, strategic plans, or funding programs and incentives to incorporate AI into education and workforce training programs. They should also study the impact of task automation on worker employment to inform policies supporting the American workforce, and ensure land-grant institutions can provide AI youth development and education programs.

7. Establishing a federal policy framework: Congress should do all of the above while superseding state laws that attempt to regulate AI, without limiting states’ abilities to enforce child and consumer protections, zoning laws, and state/local governmental use of AI. However, states should not be able to regulate AI development, restrict lawful use of AI by Americans, or penalize AI companies for the way a third party (e.g. a user) uses their platforms. Under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, federal law supersedes state laws when a contradiction exists, but the Supreme Court decision in Altria Group v. Good in 2008 determined that ambiguity around the preemption of state laws should be considered in favor of the state law. This means preemptions should be well-defined by Congress in any legislation.

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.

Streamlining mortgage lending

Another instructs federal regulators to review and potentially revise financial regulations around mortgage lending with the goal of establishing a more modernized and cost-effective mortgaging process. The order suggests provisions to streamline the mortgaging process (such as modernizing disclosure laws and signature requirements to allow for more digital processes), shift the focus of oversight towards ability-to-repay instead of technical compliance, and adjustments to capital requirements (the amount of liquid cash a bank has to have on-hand compared to the amount of its total loan portfolio).

The order doesn’t change any rules, but advises regulators to consider these changes, so it remains to be seen how new rules might influence access to mortgages. Community banks, credit unions, and associated industries have been asking for these types of changes for a long time, and appear optimistic about the implications of incoming changes. However, consumer advocacy groups warn that reductions of regulatory oversight could enhance vulnerabilities that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis, and that reducing some reporting requirements limits data collection which is used to determine whether banks are engaging in discriminatory lending. CATO Institute calls it “better than nothing”, acknowledging that it has the right idea in identifying some of the issues with current lender requirements, but misses the mark on truly addressing some of those concerns.

Making residential development less expensive

A third order instructs federal agencies to find ways to reform, eliminate, or otherwise limit enforcement of some regulatory requirements that increase the cost of the development of housing. The goal is to lower the costs and shorten the timelines associated with building housing, making these projects more appealing to developers and investors and lowering ownership costs. Some environmental requirements involve lengthy permitting processes and expensive efficiency baselines. This order instructs the Environmental Protection Agency to review requirements related to bodies of water to reduce construction costs and barriers to insurability, and other agencies to consider eliminating rules that constrain residential development. Trump recommends elimination or reform of several programs related to affordable housing, including rules on development density, Reconnecting Communities Pilot Program, Pathways to Removing Obstacles to Housing Program, and guidelines for lending on manufactured homes and low-balance mortgages.

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.

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.