The war in Iran has heightened the unusual relationship between the president 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.

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. 

The Trump administration filed an appeal on April 15 seeking to reinstate its freeze of $2 billion in research funding to Harvard University — directly challenging a federal judge’s finding that the original freeze was unconstitutional retaliation for Harvard’s exercise of free-speech rights. If the appeals court sides with the administration, it would dramatically expand the government’s leverage to coerce universities into suppressing speech it doesn’t like.

At the same time, journalists covering immigration protests continue to face physical interference from state and federal law enforcement, with at least one incident in Los Angeles where a reporter was shoved and threatened with arrest by the LAPD — despite California law explicitly protecting journalists at protests.

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 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.

The Department of Justice announced that it was dropping its investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, privately acknowledging that they had no evidence Powell committed any crimes. This news comes as President Trump’s nominee, former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, vowed that monetary policy would remain “strictly independent” and that Trump never asked him to pre-commit to lower rates during his confirmation hearing. Dropping this investigation clears the way for Warsh to be confirmed as the new chair.

Because of Warsh’s nomination, though, democracy advocates should continue to monitor the independence of the Fed in the months to come. The Iran war has driven energy prices higher, pushing inflation to its fastest pace in nearly two years, which only makes the independence of the Fed more important.

The Department of Justice has demanded 2024 election ballots and records from Wayne County, Michigan in its latest attempt to seize voter data and other materials. These efforts are part of a broader scheme designed to subvert the 2026 elections and sow misinformation about the security of elections in the United States.

Specifically, these voter data grabs are laying the groundwork for three very dangerous outcomes: purges of eligible voters, election subversion in 2026, and the invasion of fundamental privacy rights. States should continue to be in control of their own voter data, and in partnership with the ACLU and CREW, we sued the DOJ to make sure that remains the case.

The lawsuit, on behalf of Common Cause and individual voters in states cooperating with the DOJ’s data demands, would block the DOJ from illegally stockpiling millions of Americans’ confidential voter data and creating a national voter database for the reasons outlined above. The complaint argues that the DOJ’s actions are unconstitutional, illegal, and a key component of the Trump Administration’s attempts to take over elections from states and subvert the 2026 midterms.