The Department of Justice announced the creation of the “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” described by Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche as “a lawful process for victims of lawfare and weaponization to be heard and seek redress.” The fund, worth $1.776 billion (a transparently political statement in spite of declarations to the contrary), was established as part of a settlement in which President Trump and his family dropped their $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns.

The fund is structured to potentially compensate nearly 1,600 individuals charged in connection with the January 6 Capitol attack, as well as others who claim harm from what the administration characterizes as political prosecution under prior administrations. A five-member commission, appointed by the Attorney General, would issue monetary awards by majority vote. Trump’s attorneys filed to dismiss the IRS case in a way that would bar the presiding judge from analyzing whether the settlement was legally valid or from dismissing it. A group of 93 members of Congress filed a brief teeing up a legal challenge to the arrangement.

The fund represents a significant escalation in the administration’s effort to use the Justice Department as an instrument of political reward rather than independent law enforcement. Sources told ABC News that DOJ lawyers had originally attempted to craft a legal justification for compensating Trump directly, but the White House sought to avoid the most obvious conflict-of-interest problems. The arrangement uses a settlement to redirect public funds toward political allies while insulating the process from judicial review. Ultimately, it could be used to pay those who were involved in the January 6 insurrection — and thereby reward them for their violent efforts to overturn a free and fair election.

The War Powers Resolution of 1973 requires a president to get approval from congress — or withdraw U.S. forces — within 60 days of notifying Congress that fighting has begun. We hit that deadline  on May 1, 2026, after Trump launched the war with Iran on February 28 with no authorization. Rather than comply with the law, Trump wrote to congressional leaders claiming the hostilities had “terminated” — a claim his own administration contradicted by launching a new military operation. He also suggested the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional and said he would not seek authorization because it had never been sought “before” by other presidents — a claim that is false.

Congress, meanwhile, has put up no resistance to Trump’s ongoing actions in the Iran War. A War Powers Resolution failed in the House of Representatives after it resulted in a tied vote, a clear signal that Congress is not planning to exercise its constitutional prerogatives in this area. The result is a war that Congress has tacitly endorsed, one that the president continues to wage unilaterally in spite of its deep unpopularity with the American people.

On the evening of April 25, a gunman armed with multiple weapons charged a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton, where President Trump, Vice President Vance, and nearly the entire Cabinet were attending the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.

While the investigation is ongoing, it appears that this may have been the third attempt on the president’s life in the last two years. A spate of killings, attacks, and threats against prominent figures in both parties underscores the enormous risks now inherent in American public life. Political violence against any public official is an unacceptable assault on democratic self-governance. When citizens use force to substitute for the ballot, they corrode the foundational premise of democracy, which is that political disagreements are settled through persuasion and elections, not intimidation and bloodshed.

Political leaders in a democracy have a responsibility to uphold norms of nonviolence and eschew inflammatory rhetoric. The president and those around him have not always met that standard. Trump has called his political adversaries “vermin” and blasted the press as “enemies of the people.” When he has been confronted with that language, the pattern has been consistent: a brief note of unity followed by a swift pivot to partisan attack. This time proved no different: within 24 hours, Trump argued in a 60 Minutes interview that peaceful protesters at No Kings rallies contributed to the attacker’s actions, treating constitutionally protected dissent as a precursor to violence. A president who condemns violence against himself while continuing to describe his opponents as enemies — and who treats peaceful protest as a gateway to terrorism — is not lowering the temperature.

It’s important to remember, too, that there are things we can do to lower the temperature:

• We can condemn political violence, regardless of whether it’s directed at figures we support or vehemently disagree with.
• We can intentionally avoid spreading false narratives, fueling conflict, or providing platforms to extremists.
• We can use legal tools to hold those accountable who spread dangerous misinformation, put others at risk, or threaten those engaged in the political process.

We can all collectively choose to obtain our information from trusted, official sources, avoiding the contentious and inaccurate information that often circulates online.

On Fox News Sunday, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed without evidence that “there’s a ton of evidence that the 2020 election was rigged” and that the Department of Justice has “multiple investigations going on in Arizona, in Georgia, in Fulton County, Georgia” focused on determining whether “the right people voted.” Blanche offered no specific evidence to support the claim, acknowledged that the investigation has taken more than five years because supposed election-riggers are “very good at hiding what they’re doing,” and declined to provide any timeline for results.

No court, audit, or law enforcement investigation — including those conducted by officials appointed by and loyal to the Trump administration — has produced credible evidence that the 2020 election was stolen or rigged. What makes Blanche’s statement distinct from prior disinformation is its source: it is the sitting head of the Department of Justice, using the authority of that office to validate claims the legal system has repeatedly rejected.

As Protect Democracy’s Executive Override report documents, the administration has made election denialism official federal policy — using investigative and enforcement powers to manufacture the appearance of fraud and flood the public with disinformation designed to erode confidence in the 2026 midterms. Blanche’s Fox News appearance fits squarely within that strategy. The report warns that conspiracy theories and bogus investigations serve not only to deceive voters now, but to lay the groundwork for the administration’s final gambit: contesting or overturning 2026 election results that the administration doesn’t like. Lending the DOJ’s institutional credibility to election disinformation accelerates both goals simultaneously.

The investigation into the Southern Poverty Law Center, when combined with the news that former FBI Director James Comey was being indicted for a second time and that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is still trying calling for investigation Senator Mark Kelly, is a reminder of the sweeping efforts this administration has made to silence dissenting voices. These three investigations are all targeting different pillars of dissent, from civil society to politicians of the opposing party, but each of them meets the three-part standard we laid out in our tracker on retaliatory actions:

1. Evidence suggesting political interference with an investigation
2. Political opponents being treated differently than those similarly situated
3. Courts or other legal validators questioning the actions of the DOJ

These actions, then, are designed not to enforce the law, but to punish those who speak out against the administration. They are efforts to quash dissent and the ability to participate freely in the public square before an election.

But thankfully, they are being met with resistance. The SPLC filed motions accusing acting AG Blanche of making false public statements on Fox News about the case (the government effectively conceded one of those points), and signaled it will pursue a vindictive-prosecution defense like those asserted by Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. Comey and Kelly, meanwhile, both resisted initial attempts to silence them, which is why they are being investigated a second time. Even as the administration actively works to stamp out dissent, those being targeted are reminding us how powerful resistance can be.

ICE has now formally set a target of 1 million deportations per year in its congressional budget justification. The pace of deportations reflects that ambition: through the first six months of fiscal year 2026, ICE carried out 234,236 removals — roughly 74% more than at the same point in either of the two prior years.

On May 12, though, news broke that one of the signature detention centers of the second Trump administration, “Alligator Alcatraz,” was set to close after rising costs, reports of inhumane conditions, and legal challenges. “Alligator Alcatraz” was more important for the administration and its supporters symbolically than as an actual detention facility, but that’s precisely what makes its closure so meaningful.

Even as the administration continues to target communities across the country in immigration raids, their state partners are facing the meaningful realities of keeping detention centers up and running amidst backlash from taxpayers wondering where their money is going. One facility closing does not change the overall picture, but it does speak to how unsustainable this aspect of the authoritarian project is.

The threats to free and fair elections documented throughout this tracker do not go unanswered. On May 16, 2026, thousands of Americans traveled to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama for the “All Roads Lead to the South” National Day of Action, organized by a coalition of more than 90 civil and voting rights, faith, labor, and community organizations in direct response to the Supreme Court’s April 29 ruling in Louisiana v. Callais. The day began at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma — a bridge with decades of history related to voting rights — and will kick off a summer of coordinated action to encourage voting in the South.

The scale and urgency of the response is a reminder that the last line of defense for democracy is the civic power of ordinary Americans. As Pastor Kenneth Sharpton Glasgow told organizers in Montgomery, “this moment is bigger than Democrats or Republicans — this is about democracy itself.” History bears that out: the Voting Rights Act itself was born from marches on these same streets, and every expansion of American democracy has come when citizens organized in the face of retrenchment. The organizing coming in the months ahead is among the most crucial checks our democracy has.