The Trump regime should be covered as a criminal enterprise

Many of the major actions Donald Trump has taken as president have one thing in common: They’re flatly illegal.

That’s why such a large number of them are being challenged in court.

It’s not just that he’s offended various constituencies, although he certainly has. It’s that what he’s doing, time and again, is quite obviously contrary to the letter and spirit of the law.

Cutting congressionally-mandated departments? Illegal. Firing federal workers without cause? Illegal. Kidnapping people off the streets and sending them to torture prisons without due process? Illegal. Asserting emergency powers to raise tariffs? Illegal. Siccing the IRS on political enemies? Illegal. Extorting research universities because they respect diversity? Illegal. Denying government access to law firms he doesn’t like? Illegal. Violating court orders? Illegal.

I could go on.

The obvious conclusion is that the Trump/Musk regime is a criminal enterprise. Therefore, everything it does should be covered in that context.

And yet news articles that routinely inform us about Trump’s individual acts, and the ensuing court battles, treat each like a one-off. They describe them as controversial, sure, and sometimes quote critics calling them illegal. But they don’t explain how so much of what he’s doing is illegal that it’s basically his standard operating procedure.

What do I mean?

Let Me Rewrite That For You

Consider this New York Times article by Tyler Pager, Andrew Duehren, Maggie Haberman, and Jonathan Swan, headlined “Trump Threatens Harvard’s Tax Status, Escalating Billion-Dollar Pressure Campaign“.

Here’s the first paragraph:

President Trump threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status on Tuesday after the school rebuffed his administration’s demands for a series of policy changes, a dramatic escalation in the feud between the president and the nation’s richest and oldest university.

But it’s not so much an “escalation” in a “feud” – in fact, it’s not a “feud” at all. It’s an overtly illegal act! The Times eventually says so – in the seventh paragraph!

Federal law prohibits the president from “directly or indirectly” telling the I.R.S. to conduct specific tax investigations, and it is unclear whether the agency would actually move forward with an investigation.

I’d rather have seen something like this in the lead:

President Trump on Tuesday illegally threatened Harvard University’s tax-exempt status after the school rebuffed his administration’s demands for a series of radical policy changes.

Federal law prohibits the president from “directly or indirectly” telling the I.R.S. to conduct specific tax investigations.

The Harvard threat is the latest example of Trump continuing to defy the law despite a growing number of legal defeats in federal court.

DEI Isn’t Illegal; Extortion is Illegal

Or consider this recent New York Times article by Sarah Mervosh and Dana Goldstein, headlined “A Legal Battle Over Trump’s Threats to Public School Funding Has Begun”.

Here’s the first paragraph:

The Trump administration is facing lawsuits and growing pushback over its demand that all 50 states end the use of what it says are illegal diversity programs in public schools or risk losing federal funding for low-income students.

What the Trump administration is doing here is flatly illegal. That’s why there are lawsuits. But amazingly enough, the only use of the word “illegal” in the lead pertains to the bogus accusation that DEI programs are illegal – which they are not!

Here’s the third paragraph:

Arguments in one of those cases was heard in New Hampshire on Thursday, escalating an increasingly tense standoff over the federal government’s role in local education.

Yup, it’s the lawsuits that are “escalating an increasingly tense standoff” – not Trump’s illegal act!

Only way further down in the article do you learn that one lawsuit, for instance, “argues that the Trump administration is violating congressional regulations that say federal agencies cannot dictate matters of local curriculum or instruction.” Which is obviously the case.

I’d rather the top of the article had said something like this:

The Trump administration’s extortionary demand to public schools to stop diversity programs or lose federal funding for low-income students is the latest in a series of clearly illegal governmental actions being challenged in court.

Trump has no authority to withhold Congressionally-appropriated funds, and federal law prohibits the government from interfering with local instruction decisions.

If You Uncover Illegality, Then Say So

And when journalists uncover examples of blatant illegality, they shouldn’t be coy about it – they should shout it out.

Here’s an almost excellent article by Ben Brasch and Danielle Douglas-Gabriel in the Washington Post, headlined: “Trump’s freeze on $2.2 billion to Harvard provided no proof of wrongdoing”.

Here are the first two paragraph:

Harvard University stands to lose billions in federal funding, but the government’s actions against one of the world’s top research institutions were applied with vague accusations and no proof of specific legal violations, documents show.

The Trump administration’s decision Monday to freeze $2.2 billion to Harvard after the school announced it would not yield to demands to change admissions, hiring and governance practices did not follow procedures set out in civil rights law, a Washington Post review found.

Specifically, the article goes on to say:

The administration’s action skipped over requirements that say the government must identify and list violations, offer a hearing, notify Congress and then wait 30 days before applying penalties.

So it’s all illegal, right? Obviously! The Post has caught them violating the law!

Sadly, the Post downplays its own story. The word “illegal” doesn’t appear once in the story. And the what-does-it-all-mean paragraph is sad and mousy:

The actions against Harvard and several other elite colleges reflect the manner in which the administration is handing out other harsh penalties across the government, such as the growing number of undetailed student visa revocations, as well as how President Donald Trump is applying the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants. [My italics.]

“Reflect the manner”? What manner is that, exactly? It’s LAW BREAKING. That’s the “manner”!

Here’s the next paragraph after that one:

The Trump administration’s alleged disregard for federal procedure is part of the basis for separate lawsuits filed by the faculty unions at Harvard and Columbia University.

The “alleged disregard”? They just reported it in the lead of their own story! Argh!

Whiffing on the Alien Enemies Act

Trump’s assertion of the Alien Enemies Act to declare that a gang called Tren de Aragua is actually an invading force from Venezuela is so blatantly unlawful that it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic.

Washington Post reporters John Hudon and Warren P. Strobel nicely advanced the story last week with a story headlined “U.S. intelligence contradicts Trump’s justification for mass deportations”. They wrote:

The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements, according to people familiar with the matter.

But the intelligence finding doesn’t just “contradict” his statements, it makes his assertion of the Alien Enemies Act a lie, and makes the ensuing violations of due process flatly illegal.

The article’s “context” paragraph is, however, weak tea:

The dispute over the group’s ties to Venezuela come amid a larger standoff between the Trump administration and the courts that has alarmed constitutional scholars, the president’s political opponents and some fellow Republicans as the administration challenges judges’ orders arising from this case and others.

I would have liked to see something like this:

Trump’s lie about the group’s ties to Venezuela led to dozens of immigrants being rendered to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process of law. Even some of Trump’s fellow Republicans are increasingly concerned about the administration’s disregard of the laws and the courts.

It’s Not Just ‘Expanding His Power’; It’s Breaking the Law

The Washington Post’s Cat Zakrzewski reviewed Trump’s moves to expand executive power last week in an article headlined: “Trump brushes aside courts’ attempts to limit his power.”

She wrote about how Trump is “emboldened”, how the courts are “challenging” him, and how he is increasingly “disregarding” and “circumventing” them. She wrote:

Trump’s moves are the culmination of a decades-long conservative movement to expand the power of the executive branch after it was significantly curtailed in the wake of Watergate. But many legal scholars and experts are expressing alarm over the heated clashes between the White House and the courts.

That’s all well and good and true enough. But to me, it overlooks the blatant illegality of it all.

The Post story makes it sound like Trump is pushing to expand executive power more or less within the confines of the law. But he’s not. He’s breaking the law and seeing if he can get away with it. There’s a big difference.

Extortion, Ho Hum

Here an Associated Press story by Eric Tucker headlined “Trump reaches deals with 5 law firms, allowing them to avoid prospect of punishing executive orders”.

It’s an incremental story, about the law firms agreeing to “provide hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of free legal services for causes his administration says it supports.”

The words “extortion” or “shakedown” don’t appear once. In fact, the “context” paragraph normalizes what is a flatly illegal threat:

The spate of executive orders directed at the legal community and top law firms over the last two months has been part of a broader effort by Trump to reshape civil society and to extract concessions from entities whose work he opposes. The orders have threatened to upend the day-to-day business of the firms by stripping their lawyers’ security clearances, barring their employees from access to federal buildings and terminating federal contracts held by the firms or their clients.

Only later in the story does the author even mention the fact that three law firms “have won court rulings that have temporarily halted enforcement of most of the provisions.”

How come? Well, finally, in the tenth paragraph, he quotes from a new lawsuit, which states the obvious: “The President is abusing the powers of his office to wield the might of the Executive Branch in retaliation against organizations and people that he dislikes.”

So What’s Holding Them Back?

There are several reasons our major newsrooms don’t call a lot of what Trump is doing illegal.

One reason is that they tend to leave that determination up to a court of law.

When private individuals are involved, I think that’s entirely appropriate.

But I would argue that when government actors are involved, a blatant violation of the law can and should be called illegal by journalists, even without a court ruling.

When the president clearly violates the law, how will the public know if the media doesn’t tell them?

Another reason our newsrooms balk is that there is a distinct possibility in pretty much any of these cases that, if and when they get to the Roberts Supreme Court, the Court will side with Trump.

But I would argue that a Supreme Court this controlled by radical right-wing extremists can’t be trusted to be the arbiter of the legality of political acts.

What we ought to have is a common-sense rule about the law: If the conduct flatly violates the letter of the law, and if pretty much everyone except for a handful of right-wing radicals agrees that it is illegal – like, say, denying due process to residents of the U.S. – then journalists should go ahead and call it that.

And common sense tells us that what Trump is doing, time and time again, is illegal. That’s essential context for our readers and viewers. Denying it to them is journalistic malpractice.

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