The war in Iran has heightened the unusual relationship between the president and the military. Although he did not ultimately follow through on his threats to cripple Iran, the threat itself raised real 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. 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.

Although ICE raids are no longer dominating the news, ICE has continued to detain immigrants across the country. There are now more than 73,000 immigrants in ICE custody — and 70% of them have no criminal record. What’s more, the agency had its deadliest year in more than 20 years in 2025.

Mass deportations were a core element of the president’s 2024 campaign, and he is following through on that promise, targeting people haphazardly across the country, and rounding up United States citizens in the process.

In a recent interview on Fox Business, President Trump said that he planned to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell if he didn’t resign at the end of his term as chair. ​​“Then I’ll have to fire him,” the president said.“If he’s not leaving on time — I’ve held back firing him. I’ve wanted to fire him, but I hate to be controversial. I want to be uncontroversial.”

The Federal Reserve’s independence is crucial to the stability of the American economy, and Trump’s threats represent an attempted power grab of a key economic lever.

Florida. Governor Ron DeSantis recently signed a law that would give him the power to label groups as foreign or domestic terrorists and expel state university students who support those groups. The law could suppress legitimate speech at campuses across the state of Florida and provide a template for other states who want to suppress disfavored speech.

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.

Since President Trump signed an executive order that purports to create federal voting lists that can be used to control who receives a mail-in ballot, the order has been challenged in court multiple times. Those challenges, when taken with the news that the administration’s attempts to consolidate state voter files are facing roadblocks in court, are a reminder that the courts still play a robust role in defending our right to vote.

Trump’s attempts to tilt our elections are far-reaching, however, and not all of them need to succeed to undermine voters’ confidence in the system. Between the mail-in executive order, the demands for state voter file data, and Trump’s declining approval rating, the administration seems to be gearing up to attack the safety of our elections on multiple fronts.

Although ICE deployments are still a real threat to American freedoms, court challenges to these deployments across the country speak to the meaningful resistance they’re facing. Last week, we sued to defend the Fourth Amendment rights of citizens after a leaked memo from January suggested that ICE had given agents the authority to break into people’s homes without a warrant.

The Fourth Amendment was drafted by our Founders to protect against the general warrants used under British colonial rule, where British officers could rummage through people’s homes at will. This is part of a much larger effort by the Trump administration to use immigration enforcement as a tool to violate our constitutionally-protected freedoms.