“I have the right to do anything I want to do. I'm the president of the United States,” Trump told reporters recently. According to reporting in Axios, “Trump has consolidated vast power by following a clear playbook: Capture what he can, contest what he can't and punish those who resist. Trump has exerted decisive control over every inch of the executive branch, leaving little pretense of independence anywhere in the federal bureaucracy.”
Trump declared himself — not the attorney general — as America's “chief law enforcement officer,” and he's stacked the DOJ with loyalists who are now leading criminal investigations into Democrats, Obama-era intelligence officials and other Trump critics. Intelligence staff have been cut dramatically. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth even fired the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency after a preliminary assessment by the DIA suggested Trump's Iran strikes were less successful than he claimed.
Using executive orders, Trump moved all formerly independent regulatory bodies under White House control, resulting in the gutting of the consumer Financial Protection Bureau and U.S. Agency for International Development.
