President Trump Eric Lee/The New York Times
By Michael S. Schmidt
When President Trump returned to office, his rivals feared he would seek revenge by using the Justice Department and the F.B.I. to investigate and even imprison his perceived enemies.
But the retribution effort is far more expansive, efficient and creative than that — and less reliant on the justice system. Trump has found new ways to use his power against foes. And his actions, or just the prospect of them, have led some of his antagonists to fall in line.
Trump has filed lawsuits, signed executive orders, drafted regulations, fired people from government jobs and withdrawn security details to battle those who he believes stood in his way. In many cases, rather than turning to the courts or federal agencies to carry out his demands, he has asserted unilateral executive power. His defenders say the Constitution should be interpreted to give a president centralized, untrammeled control of government.
Trump appears to hold a maximalist view of his powers even if they are disputed or untested. Can he deport people without due process, impound money allocated by Congress or remove appointees from independent agencies like the National Labor Relations Board? He is not waiting to find out. He has imposed costs on those who fail to heed his demands at universities, news organizations and executive agencies. Most recently, major law firms have buckled rather than endure punitive executive orders or fight in court. “They’re all bending and saying, ‘Sir, thank you very much,’” Trump said last recently.
The administration has struck at perceived adversaries in many realms.
Attorneys general in blue states, lawyers and advocacy groups have filed many lawsuits to stop Trump’s policies. In the face of those challenges, Trump issued an order directing the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to “seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States.”
The law firm Paul Weiss is home to many former Democratic officials. Its managing partner is a major Democratic fund-raiser, and another partner prepared Kamala Harris for her debates. Trump barred it from dealing with the government and suggested that its clients could lose their government contracts. Despite believing that what Trump was doing to the firm was wrong and illegal, Paul Weiss made a deal with the Trump administration to reverse the order.
Many alumni of Trump’s first administration later spoke out against him in the 2024 election, including John Bolton, his national security adviser, and Mark Esper, his defense secretary. Both had security protection because, the government believed, Iran might target them for their roles in helping Trump kill a top Iranian general. Trump revoked their security protection. Defense Department officials also withdrew protection for Mark Milley, a former top military officer who worried Trump was staging a “Reichstag moment” during the Capitol riot, and removed Milley’s portrait from the Pentagon.
The Trump administration is investigating government lawyers who prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters — and will do the same for prosecutors who refused to dismiss corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams of New York.
The White House blocked Associated Press reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One because the wire service refuses to use “Gulf of America,” Trump’s preferred term for the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump sued an Iowa pollster who underestimated his support before the election. A Trump appointee has also announced an investigation into the San Francisco radio station KCBS for its coverage of immigration enforcement actions.
Facebook suspended Trump’s account after the Jan. 6 riot. During the campaign, Trump threatened to imprison the company’s founder. After he took office, Meta, the parent company, agreed to pay $25 million to settle a lawsuit on the matter.
Read a list of Trump’s other retributive actions here.
In his first term, Trump tried to get the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. to investigate his rivals. Many of them came under scrutiny, but he was furious that none were charged. When he tried to revoke a former C.I.A. director’s security clearance, for instance, his aides stopped him.
This time, with a more compliant staff, the only people holding him back are judges. Dozens of lawsuits have been filed (The Times is tracking them here), but it is impossible for courts to keep up. A good example came last month at a hearing about an executive order punishing the law firm Perkins Coie. The judge acted immediately with a temporary restraining order. But some of Perkins’s clients had already fled to other firms, and they are unlikely to return to lawyers blacklisted by the president. In other cases, Trump has said judges who rule against him should be impeached.
Claims of executive power follow a pattern, experts say. When one president finds a new and different way to flex it, the next ones follow suit. The next Democratic president, for instance, might decide to fire government lawyers affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society. He or she could end all government contracts with Elon Musk’s companies — or hold back emergency aid from red states that resist new climate regulations.
In the end, Trump’s actions may empower future presidents to use the executive branch as a cudgel of revenge.