This Week in Democracy – Week 20: Travel Ban, Cuts, and Setbacks as Trump and Musk Feud
Zeteo's project to document the ongoing, week-by-week growth of authoritarianism in the Trump second term.
It finally happened: Donald Trump and his once-shadow president, Elon Musk, broke up.
The petty name-calling, threats, and jabs may be amusing. But it’s what Trump and his current allies did this week that harmed democracy and American values that we really should be paying attention to.
If you missed the president’s latest attacks on academic freedom, or journalists, or immigrants, or his rivals, amid the Trump-Musk messy divorce, Zeteo has you covered. As we do every week, we documented the many actions the Trump administration took that underscore the growth of authoritarianism in the US and harm civil rights. We also included a few wins for democracy, thanks to the brave lawyers, judges, and others fighting for justice and accountability.
Here’s your ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 20’:
Saturday, May 31
On Truth Social, Trump shared an unhinged, conspiratorial post that claimed Joe Biden was “executed in 2020” and the 46th president was “clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities.”
Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman, a Musk ally, as his nominee to lead NASA, saying on Truth Social he made the decision following “a thorough review of prior associations” and added he “will soon announce a new Nominee who will be Mission aligned and put America First in Space.” The New York Times reported that Isaacman came under fire with Trump associates due to his history of donating to Democratic campaigns. Isaacman later suggested his nomination was rescinded because of his ties to Elon Musk.
NBC News reported that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is working to “revamp” Trump’s daily intelligence briefing, with one idea being the creation of a video version that mirrors a Fox News broadcast. The concept would see a Fox producer help create it and one of the network’s personalities present it. A DNI spokesperson called the reporting “laughable.”
After Elon Musk tweeted that he isn’t taking drugs and that the New York Times “was lying their ass off” in their recent report about his drug use, the Times responded on Twitter, writing that Musk “is just lashing out because he doesn’t like our article. We provided Musk with multiple opportunities to reply or rebut this reporting before publication and he declined, opting instead to try to distract with a social post and no evidence.”
Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler issued a statement after a staff member in his Manhattan office was briefly detained by Homeland Security officers days earlier, writing that Trump and DHS are “sowing chaos,” and said the incident “demonstrates a deeply troubling disregard for proper legal boundaries.”
Sunday, June 1
On CNN, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought said the administration is considering using impoundment — the withholding or delaying of allocated federal funds — to push through spending cuts from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, bypassing Congress in the process – which would likely violate the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.
On Fox, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem baselessly claimed that Harvard University “has perpetuated Chinese Communist Party priorities and students on their campus,” and accused students of “feeding information” back to China.
Monday, June 2
On Truth Social, Trump attacked author Michael Wolff, who has penned several books about the president, after Wolff claimed that Trump is targeting Harvard University because he didn’t get into the school and that he has a “grudge” against the institution. Trump denied Wolff’s claim, calling him a “Third Rate Reporter, who is laughed at even by the scoundrels of the Fake News.”
A US trans woman filed an asylum claim in Canada, claiming she has a well-founded fear of persecution in her home country based on Trump’s efforts to restrict the rights of trans people.
Reuters reported that David Richardson, the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), said he didn’t know the country has a hurricane season, a remark that left staff members “baffled.”
On Twitter, the FBI encouraged citizens to report hospitals, clinics, or practitioners who perform gender-affirming care on minors.
The Trump administration filed another emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, this time asking justices to overturn a block on the president’s efforts to fire tens of thousands of employees and reorganize the federal government.
The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to California school districts warning that the state’s Interscholastic Federation is violating the Constitution’s equal protection clause by allowing trans student-athletes to participate in girls’ sports.
Reuters reported that the Trump administration launched an investigation into Biden’s final pardons during his presidency, which included five members of his own family, Dr. Anthony Fauci, and members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee. In an email, Martin wrote that the investigation seeks to determine if Biden “was competent and whether others were taking advantage of him through use of AutoPen or other means.”
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting a Venezuelan man under the Alien Enemies Act because it didn’t provide due process. However, the judge also found that Trump’s authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act is “close to ‘unlimited.’”
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration likely broke the law when it canceled a union contract covering 50,000 transportation security officers and removed their ability to unionize and engage in collective bargaining.
The family of a 4-year-old girl with life-threatening short bowel syndrome was granted humanitarian parole from deportation for one year by US Citizenship and Immigration Services after her doctor warned that she could die “within days” without life-saving medical care. The move comes after the Trump administration recently revoked the child’s humanitarian parole, a move met with a huge outcry.
Tuesday, June 3
On Truth Social, Trump warned that his administration will be imposing “large scale fines” against California after a trans athlete won two high school sporting events last week.
Former Homeland Security official Miles Taylor filed an Inspectors General complaint against Trump in response to the president’s memo directing the Justice Department to investigate him in relation to his New York Times op-ed and book he wrote under the pseudonym “Anonymous.” In a new op-ed published in Time Magazine, Taylor called Trump’s memo an “unconstitutional order that targets a citizen not for a crime but for dissent.”
Newark Mayor Ras Baraka sued Alina Habba, the interim US Attorney for the District of New Jersey, over his May 9 “false arrest” outside of an ICE detention facility, accusing Habba of “malicious prosecution” and the promotion of a “false and defamatory narrative” to politicize the incident.
Fresh off his stint at the White House, Musk called Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” a “disgusting abomination,” and added, “Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
The Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era guidance that used a federal law to require hospitals to perform emergency abortions, even in states where abortions are illegal.
Reuters reported that a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official who helped oversee COVID-19 vaccine recommendations resigned from the agency, writing in an email to colleagues that she believes she is “no longer able to help the most vulnerable members” of the US population after Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the removal of COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.
A federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by the Democratic Party to block an executive order it believed could undermine the independence of the Federal Election Commission. But the judge wrote, “This Court’s doors are open to the parties if changed circumstances show concrete action or impact on the FEC’s or its Commissioners’ independence.”
CBS News reported that the US Navy is planning to rename the USNS Harvey Milk, which was named after the gay rights icon and Navy veteran, as part of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s DEI purge. The report also named multiple other vessels on the Navy’s renaming “recommended list,” including USNS Thurgood Marshall, USNS Harriet Tubman, USNS Medgar Evers, and USNS Ruth Bader Ginsberg.
Vice President JD Vance met with far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe Laura Loomer at the White House.
The Trump administration sent a series of funding cut requests to Congress in an effort to rescind previously allocated funding totaling $9.4 billion. The White House said $8.3 billion would be cut from the State Department and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), while NPR and PBS would lose direct and indirect federal funds. The cuts also include $500 million to programs that the administration baselessly said were “antithetical to American interests and worsen the lives of women and children,” like “family planning,” “reproductive health,” and “LGBTQI+ activities.”
Trump signed a proclamation doubling tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from 25% to 50%.
On CNBC, Donald Trump Jr. repeated baseless claims that his father won the 2020 presidential election.
During a White House press briefing, Fox reporter Peter Doocy held up copies of some of Biden’s final pardons, suggesting some of them are not “authentic.” Press secretary Karoline Leavitt encouraged him to bring the copies to her office, saying she would like to “take a closer look” at them.
Also at the press briefing, Leavitt confirmed the White House would not issue a proclamation for the month of June, which is widely recognized as Pride Month throughout the US.
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from cutting off gender-affirming care for trans people in federal prisons.
NBC News reported that ICE arrested more immigrants Tuesday than any other single day in its history, detaining more than 2,200 people, hundreds of whom had been enrolled in ICE’s Alternative to Detention program. ICE has a new tactic of arresting migrants as they come to their appointments at immigration courts.
AP reported that Kari Lake, Trump’s appointee who is in charge of the agency that oversees the Voice of America, sent a letter to Sen. James Risch outlining mass layoffs at the federally-funded news organization, which would see VOA shrink from over 1,000 employees to just 81.
The Telegraph reported that senior State Department official Darren Beattie is married to a Russian woman with ties to the Kremlin.
Wednesday, June 4
Trump signed a proclamation banning people from 12 countries from entering the US: Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen. The entry of people from seven other countries — Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, will be partially restricted as well. In a video posted on Truth Social, Trump said, “We will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm.”
Trump issued a memo ordering an investigation into whether officials “conspired to deceive the public about Biden’s mental state and unconstitutionally exercise the authorities and responsibilities of the President” by using an autopen. In a statement, Biden said, “Let me be clear: I made the decisions during my presidency. I made the decisions about the pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations. Any suggestion that I didn’t is ridiculous and false.”
Trump also signed a proclamation suspending Harvard University from the student visa program, effectively banning international students from attending the school, a move Harvard called an “illegal retaliatory step.”
Mother Jones reported that pardon attorney Ed Martin is considering granting clemency to dozens of fake electors, even dead ones, who participated in Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The pardons would be largely symbolic as none of them have been charged with federal crimes.
The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights claimed that Columbia University has failed to meet the standards for accreditation due to violations of federal antidiscrimination laws, with Education Secretary Linda McMahon saying in a statement that following Oct. 7, “Columbia University’s leadership acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students on its campus.” A spokesperson for the school said, “Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus,” adding, “We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it.”
Judge James Boasberg ruled that nearly 140 Venezuelan men sent to El Salvador in March under the Alien Enemies Act were illegally deported. However, Boasberg didn’t order the Trump administration to facilitate their returns to the US. He also gave the administration one week to propose a plan for the men to challenge their deportations in US courts.
On Truth Social, Trump again claimed that aside from the “RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020, THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!”
A federal judge ruled that Kilmar Abrego Garcia can seek sanctions against the Trump administration for failing to comply with discovery requests.
The Trump administration returned a Guatemalan man to the US after deporting him to Mexico, where he had been previously held for ransom and raped, without due process.
An appeals court rejected an effort by the Trump administration to overturn a judge’s ruling blocking mass firings at the Department of Education.
A federal judge blocked a decades-old Texas law allowing undocumented college students to pay in-state tuition. The order came just hours after the Trump administration sued to block the law, a move state Attorney General Ken Paxton told the court his office supported.
Politico reported that the Trump administration delayed and redacted a farm trade report because an analysis predicted an increase in the country’s trade deficit in farm goods, a finding that was “disliked” by administration officials.
On Fox Business, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz (aka Dr Oz) defended the Republicans’ reconciliation bill, saying people who would face new work requirements to remain eligible for Medicaid should “prove that you matter.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration from eliminating the Job Corps, the largest job training program for low-income youth in the country.
The ACLU and other immigrant rights organizations sued the Trump administration on behalf of a class of noncitizens who are being detained at Guantanamo Bay, who the ACLU says are “surrounded by military personnel, have no in-person contact with legal counsel, and are subject to punitive conditions of confinement and retaliation.”
Faculty members and researchers at the University of California filed what NBC News called a “first-of-its-kind” class action lawsuit against the Trump administration over its massive cuts to research funding.
The Justice Department launched an investigation into Rhode Island’s diversity in hiring practices, accusing the Democratic-led state of engaging in racial discrimination.
Thursday, June 5
Trump and Musk’s falling out quickly escalated after the president told reporters he was “very disappointed” in Musk and suggested he had “Trump derangement syndrome.”
In response, Musk claimed Trump would have lost the 2024 presidential election without him, before going on to endorse a tweet that the president should be impeached. Musk also claimed Trump is “in the Epstein files.” On Truth Social, Trump said Musk was “wearing thin” when he asked him to leave his administration and floated the idea of terminating his government contracts.
Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon told the New York Times that the Trump administration should investigate Musk’s immigration status, saying he believes Musk “is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately.”
Two House Democrats on key oversight panels sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel requesting clarification about whether Musk’s accusation that Trump is part of the “Epstein files” is true. They also asked the officials to provide information about the delays in declassifying and publishing documents in the case.
Immigrant advocacy groups sued the Trump administration over the State Department’s deal with El Salvador to house immigrants arrested in the US in that country’s mega prison, arguing it violates the Constitution.
House Oversight Committee chair James Comer subpoenaed Joe Biden’s doctor to testify on June 27 as part of the committee’s investigation into whether Biden faced a cognitive decline while serving as president. The doctor, Kevin O’Connor, rejected a request to testify in May, arguing it would violate patient privilege and the American Medical Association’s code of ethics.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US imposed sanctions on four International Criminal Court judges, saying they “have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel.”
A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s proclamation prohibiting international students from entering the US to study at Harvard University.
The Miami Herald reported that a coalition made up of about 70 law professors, attorneys, and former Florida Supreme Court justices filed an ethics complaint against Attorney General Pam Bondi with the Florida Bar, accusing her of “serious professional misconduct that threatens the rule of law and the administration of justice.” The allegations include threatening Justice Department lawyers with discipline or termination if they failed “to zealously pursue the President’s political objectives.”
Friday, June 6
CNN reported that the Trump administration is preparing to cancel a significant amount of federal funding for California, as agencies are being directed to identify grants that can be withheld.
The Trump administration filed an emergency appeal with the Supreme Court to allow mass layoffs at the Department of Education.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump administration is urging Senator Lindsey Graham to “significantly weaken” his bill to place sanctions on Russia.
Five leaders of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group the FBI said has ties to white nationalism, sued the Justice Department for $100 million in restitution for their convictions related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, claiming their constitutional rights were violated. The plaintiffs, four of whom were convicted of seditious conspiracy, were among the hundreds of Capitol riot defendants that Trump pardoned in January.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia was transferred back into US custody and returned to the country, nearly three months after he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Upon his return, Abrego Garcia is expected to face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the US. Since April, the Trump administration had refused to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release despite a Supreme Court order, blaming El Salvador for not wanting to release him.
On Truth Social, Trump railed against the New York Times and the Washington Post, claiming that their polls are “RIGGED” and “corrupt as hell.”
The Supreme Court granted an emergency request by the Trump administration to allow the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to have access to sensitive Social Security records.
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This is real reporting thank you for everything you do.
"The Trump administration rescinded a Biden-era guidance that used a federal law to require hospitals to perform emergency abortions, even in states where abortions are illegal."
maybe this is dense--but it's not computing in my mind I guess...so what exactly is supposed to happen? And how is this helping women have babies in this falsely named "pro-life" regime? I Don't get how that is comparable with doctor's first do no harm...? If they're goose-stepping their way to rid birth control or a basic medical procedure to help women in need, then sex will just cease to happen cuz for women it can lead to death, circa a rule like this...?
I digress...ugh.
Thanks Zeteo for the roundup of the horrendous shit taking place so that eggs could cost cheaper. (okay rant officially done-sigh).