The war in Iran has heightened the unusual dynamic between the Trump and the military. Although he did not follow through on his threats to cripple Iran, the threat itself raised serious questions about whether the illegal orders would have been followed by troops on the ground.

This comes as Secretary of Defense Hegseth has interfered numerous times with the promotion of senior members of the Armed Forces, often for reasons that appear discriminatory, and fired the Secretary of the Navy over what appears to be a personal conflict. An apolitical, professional military is one of the great strengths of our democracy, and this administration has been working to undermine that mission since entering office.

At the same time, Trump is trying to do an end-run around Congress to pay all DHS employees, a clear attempt to usurp the federal legislature’s funding authority.

What began in summer 2025, when President Trump urged Texas Republicans to redraw congressional districts to protect the GOP’s narrow House majority, has since grown into one of the largest coordinated attempts to redraw congressional districts in modern American history. As of April 2026, six states — California, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Utah — have new congressional maps, with several more in flux.

On April 21, Virginia voters narrowly approved a constitutional amendment to redraw congressional districts in Democrats’ favor, only to see a circuit court judge block certification of the results — a challenge now before the state supreme court. That same day, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared Texas’s redrawn map over a lower court finding of illegal racial gerrymandering. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis then called a special session to consider new maps, since passed by the legislature, that analysts say could produce a 24–4 Republican advantage in the state’s congressional delegation.

On April 29, the Supreme Court worsened the crisis. In Louisiana v. Callais, the Court’s 6-3 majority effectively gutted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act — the last meaningful federal check on racially discriminatory maps. It removes the guardrail that made extreme gerrymandering legally risky, and could undercut the representation of millions of minority voters. Since the decision, the governor of Louisiana has suspended an ongoing Congressional primary by executive order (which has since been challenged in litigation) and state officials in Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia are attempting to rush gerrymanders in time to enact racially discriminatory maps that could flip additional majority-minority seats. This impact will unfold even further over time — analysts estimate up to 19 majority-minority seats could be removed as a result of the Callais decision through the 2028 election. What is happening is not normal political competition. It is a coordinated attempt — initiated by a sitting president and now enabled by the Supreme Court — to lock in congressional majorities for a single party through map manipulation.

In the days following a shooting incident at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, the White House is trying to use the episode to renew pressure on ABC and its parent company Disney to dismiss late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. The controversy traces to a Thursday night sketch (days before the assassination attempt) on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which Kimmel performed a mock host’s speech and joked that first lady Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”

Both President Trump and the first lady suggested Kimmel should be fired. But most troublingly, Brendan Carr, the chairman of the FCC, has also taken action against ABC in the days since Kimmel’s joke aired, formally calling for ABC to defend its license to broadcast. This is not an isolated incident. In September, ABC and two of the country’s largest TV station owners — Nexstar Media and Sinclair — suspended Kimmel’s show after Carr threatened affiliates following comments Kimmel made about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Protect Democracy has been fighting back. Just this week, we filed a legal action in the D.C. Court of Appeals, seeking to force the FCC to respond to a formal petition filed last fall calling on the FCC to rescind the news distortion policy. The policy is one of the enforcement levers that Carr has abused to censor protected speech, and when the petition was filed, Carr responded by tweeting “How about no”. The petitioners behind this action include a bipartisan coalition of former FCC chairs, commissioners, and senior-level staff, joined by the Radio Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). The stakes extend beyond one television host. As former Republican FCC Chairman and petitioner Mark Fowler warned, the government has no legitimate role in deciding what speech is acceptable.

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.

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.

Meanwhile, the physical infrastructure of mass deportation keeps expanding. DHS is converting warehouse space across the country into mega-detention centers, including an 1.2 million-square-foot facility in Social Circle, Georgia — a town of 5,000 people — that could hold up to 10,000 detainees.

Most troublingly, the pattern of sweeping up U.S. citizens continues: a Denver-born U.S. citizen was deported to Mexico on April 7 after a traffic stop, according to a Univision journalist who contacted him directly, with Morales saying agents pressured him into signing voluntary removal papers out of fear of imprisonment. 

On April 28, former FBI Director James Comey was indicted for a second time, on charges of making a threat against the president and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce — stemming from a photo of seashells he posted on Instagram.

This is the administration’s second attempt to prosecute Comey. The first indictment, brought in September on charges of lying to Congress, was dismissed late last year by a federal judge who found that the interim U.S. attorney who secured the indictment had been improperly appointed. The pattern of retaliation is not subtle: Trump publicly urged then-Attorney General Pam Bondi to take action against Comey, writing in a public post on Truth Social that “we can’t delay any longer.”

The Justice Department exists to enforce the law impartially, not to prosecute the president’s critics. Twice now, the administration has sought to use federal criminal charges against a man whose primary offense appears to be his public opposition to the president. The first indictment collapsed in court. The independence of the federal judiciary, and the citizens who serve as jurors, remain the last meaningful check on this pattern of abuse.

As the administration continues to perpetuate the Big Lie and spread misinformation about the midterms, the White House has installed election deniers in key offices across the federal government. This effort is gaining traction. A Reuters/Ipsos poll suggests that 46% of Americans believe there is widespread fraud in American elections. As efforts to seize ballots in states across the country indicate, the administration is determined to create an environment where misinformation about elections can thrive.

This misinformation is the groundwork for attempts to dispute the results of the election after the votes are counted. Elections in the United States remain free and fair, but we each have to do our part to keep them that way.