In the months since Donald Trump's return to the White House, the administration has orchestrated an unprecedented weaponization of federal power against its perceived enemies. The targets are varied—former officials, political critics, journalists, activists, and ordinary citizens. What distinguishes this moment is not merely that a president is pursuing political opponents, but the brazen manner in which the administration has dismantled the institutional guardrails that once constrained such impulses.
The question is no longer whether Trump will deploy the Justice Department as a tool of partisan warfare. The question now is how far this administration will go, and which foundational democratic norms it will dismantle in pursuit of absolute dominance.
When Trump signed executive orders early this year, targeting Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security official, and Christopher Krebs, a top cybersecurity official, he escalated what his own administration characterizes as a 'retribution campaign,' directing the Justice Department to investigate both men who had criticized him as appointees in his first term.
Taylor, who famously wrote an anonymous New York Times op-ed titled "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration" in 2018 and later authored the tell-all book A Warning, also launched a group called REPAIR (Republican Political Alliance for Integrity and Reform) and endorsed former President Joe Biden in 2020. In signing the investigative order, Trump claimed Taylor was guilty of "treason."
Krebs, meanwhile, served as Trump's election security director during his first term before being fired via Twitter in 2020 for correcting claims about voter fraud. Following January 6, Krebs stated that Trump should be convicted for inciting an insurrection.
The executive orders stripped security clearances from both former officials and their work associates, including people at University of Pennsylvania and SentinelOne.
The most recent target of Trump's ire is John Bolton, the President's former national security adviser. Bolton has been indicted on eighteen criminal charges, including eight counts of transmission of national defense information. Prosecutors allege that Bolton retained and shared classified materials with family members, using personal email and messaging applications to do so. While Bolton's case might appear to be about document mishandling—a charge that could theoretically apply to anyone in government—the timing and specificity of the prosecution invite skepticism about its true motivations.
More troubling still is the case of Ashley Tellis, a policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Tellis has been arrested and charged with unlawfully retaining national defense information and allegedly meeting with Chinese officials, with prosecutors asserting that he accessed classified Air Force documents, renamed and printed sections of over 1,000 pages of a classified document, and placed sensitive materials in his personal briefcase. Prosecutors also allege that Tellis met with Chinese officials multiple times, including a dinner in September 2025 where he arrived with a manila envelope but left without it. Tellis denies the charges, with his lawyers asserting they will "vigorously contest the allegations, particularly any suggestion he was operating on behalf of a foreign adversary."
Dissent can extend beyond political exclusion, and into criminal prosecution, in Trump's second term. Yet the administration's crackdown extends far beyond individual prosecutions. The apparatus of state power has been redirected wholesale toward the suppression of dissent and the criminalization of protest.
In Chicago, immigration agents used tear gas on protesters and journalists who gathered to oppose ICE raids. This comes mere days after a federal judge temporarily barred federal agents from using riot control weapons like tear gas and pepper spray on reporters and protesters who posed no immediate threat.
In 2025, the Trump administration expanded its use of immigration enforcement to target foreign nationals, particularly students, researchers, and legal residents—some accused of engaging in or merely being adjacent to pro-Palestinian activism. Trump has been using a 1798 wartime law—in peacetime—to follow through on suppression of dissent.
The degradation of institutional norms extends into the everyday machinery of government itself. During a recent government shutdown, the Trump administration used taxpayer dollars to blame Democrats through internal federal agency communications and public websites, with messages stating any funding lapse would be "forced by Congressional Democrats." The Department of Veterans Affairs deployed particularly inflammatory language, stating that "radical liberals in Congress" would be responsible for service disruptions and were trying to "shut down the government to achieve their crazy fantasy of open borders, 'transgender' for everybody and men competing in women's sports." What constitutes a violation of the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity, has been rendered almost meaningless under this administration.
Perhaps the most audacious expansion of state power yet comes in the form of visa revocations targeting foreign nationals who criticized—even after his death—conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The State Department announced this week that it had revoked visas from at least six individuals who allegedly 'celebrated' Kirk's assassination. The agency also catalogued some examples in case anyone had doubts about what would constitute 'celebration'. Consular officials have been tasked with monitoring social media activity to identify individuals who praise, rationalise, or joke of Kirk's death. It goes without saying that the manner of revoking visas constitutes a clear violation of the First Amendment. The Department of State, however, keeps stating that "The United States has no obligation to host foreigners who wish death on Americans."
Trump's America no longer functions on the rule of law. It weaponizes, politicizes, and deploys law to suit the President's own whims and fancies. There's a broader project clearly at play here. And what's getting brandished now as 'America-First' state action is a simple warning to those who may consider turning against the autocracy that Trump is plotting. Institutions are being rendered incapable of any resistance. Thought is getting plucked right where it begins to take shape. And brainless nods are the only gestures that Trump will permit in response to his executive orders rooted in a performative high-ground.
