This Week in Democracy – Week 26: Soft on Child Abuse, Tough on Public Broadcasting
Zeteo's project to document the ongoing, week-by-week growth of authoritarianism in the Trump second term.
This week, congressional Republicans caved – again – to Donald Trump, ceding Congress’ power of the purse to the president, and in doing so, dealing one of the most significant blows to the press yet. Who needs a Constitution, separation of powers, anyway?!
The bill they passed, which is now headed to Trump’s desk, cuts all federal funding – $1.1 billion – that Congress had already approved for public media for the next two years, significantly impacting NPR, PBS, and particularly their member stations, which provide critical information and news to the public, as well as crucial disaster warnings in rural areas.
Yes, as CBS News shifts to the right in the wake of its settlement with the president and the pending Skydance/Paramount merger, the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress are now declaring war on public broadcasting. Independent media? Who needs that either, right?!
Meanwhile, this week, the president also continued to block the release of the Epstein files, refused to appoint a special counsel on the issue, and even fired the US attorney who prosecuted Epstein.
Here is Zeteo’s complete list of the myriad ways in which Trump and his allies undermined the Constitution, hurt press freedoms and free societies, and harmed American values over the past seven days. From making detained immigrants ineligible for bond hearings to advancing the judicial nominations of manifestly unqualified reactionaries to pushing for more partisan gerrymandering, here’s your ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 26’:
Saturday, July 12
At the right-wing Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon said he is “a big believer that President Trump will run again in 2028,” despite being constitutionally prohibited from doing so. “We will figure this out, right?” he added.
Speaking to reporters after conducting an oversight tour of “Alligator Alcatraz,” Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz spoke out about the conditions at the new immigration detention facility, saying that detainees are “living in cages” with 32 people per cage. She added that there are only three toilets per cage, and the sink is attached to the toilet unit, meaning, “they get their drinking water and they brush their teeth where they poop.”
Trump lost it in an unhinged 400-word Truth Social post about the backlash against his administration after the DOJ closed the president’s former close friend and sex predator Jeffrey Epstein’s file last week, writing, “We have a PERFECT Administration, THE TALK OF THE WORLD, and ‘selfish people’ are trying to hurt it, all over a guy who never dies.”
He added that the FBI and its director Kash Patel should focus instead on “investigating Voter Fraud, Political Corruption, ActBlue, The Rigged and Stolen Election of 2020, and arresting Thugs and Criminals,” rather than “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein, somebody that nobody cares about.”
Also on Truth Social, Trump claimed he is “giving serious consideration” to taking away the US citizenship of Rosie O’Donnell, who has been a vocal critic of the president for decades. Trump called O’Donnell, who moved to Ireland after he was elected for his second term, “a Threat to Humanity.” (It should go without saying, but Trump cannot legally take away O’Donnell’s citizenship.)
Sunday, July 13
The Miami Herald reported that more than 250 people detained in “Alligator Alcatraz” have no criminal record, despite officials claiming the detention facility would be reserved for the “worst of the worst.”
Monday, July 14
After suffering a humiliating and decisive defeat against Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary, former Governor Andrew Cuomo announced he will continue campaigning in the general election as an independent candidate. In a video posted to Twitter that was heavily ratioed (i.e. a Mamdani reply got significantly more retweets/likes), Cuomo attacked Mamdani, saying he “offers slick slogans but no real solutions.”
The DOJ’s senior ethics attorney, Joseph Tirrell, said he was fired last Friday without cause by Attorney General Pam Bondi. He wasn’t the only one fired that day. Separately, Bondi also fired more than 20 DOJ employees who had been involved in investigating Trump.
Reuters also reported that nearly two-thirds of the DOJ staff responsible for defending the Trump administration in cases challenging its policies have resigned since he was elected in November.
On Fox, Mehmet Oz suggested that recipients of Medicare and Medicaid – the programs he overseas – need to “stay healthy” themselves, and advised that they “don’t eat carrot cake” and “eat real food,” just over a week after Trump signed a bill cutting hundreds of billions of dollars in funding for the programs.
The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration implemented a policy last week that makes undocumented immigrants no longer eligible for a bond hearing while they challenge their deportation proceedings in court, a policy reversal that will affect millions of immigrants. Now, only DHS officials can release detainees on parole, rather than judges.
NPR reported that the Trump administration fired 15 immigration judges last week and two more on Monday, despite the GOP tax and spending bill allocating an additional $3 billion in immigration-related funding to the Justice Department, including funds to hire about 100 more immigration judges.
The Supreme Court granted an emergency appeal from the Trump administration, allowing it to move forward, for now, with gutting the Department of Education by firing nearly half of the agency’s workforce.
The Atlantic reported that the Trump administration ordered the incineration of nearly 500 metric tons of emergency food, which is enough to feed about 1.5 million children for a week, after it reaches its expiration date on Tuesday. The food, which was allocated for children in Afghanistan and Pakistan, sat in storage for months as the administration gutted the US Agency for International Development.
The Trump administration filed an appeal to overturn a federal judge’s ruling that blocks the Department of Homeland Security from arresting people based on factors related to racial profiling, like race, accent, and the type of work they do. The ruling, issued in the wake of discriminatory ICE raids in California, only applies to Los Angeles and surrounding areas.
A federal appeals court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending Temporary Protected Status for nearly 12,000 Afghans living in the US on the same day their work permits and deportation protections were set to expire.
ProPublica reported that Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s office refused to turn over emails between Abbott and his staff and Elon Musk and Musk’s companies, saying some contain "intimate and embarrassing” information that is “not of legitimate concern to the public.”
Trump’s NASA announced that it will not publish major Congress-mandated climate change assessments and reports on the agency’s website, after saying earlier this month that it would do so.
House Republicans voted down an amendment introduced by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.
The DOJ asked the Supreme Court to reject an appeal from Epstein associate Ghislane Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence for her role in aiding Epstein’s sexual abuse of minors.
The journal Nature reported that the National Institutes of Health plans to dismiss dozens of scientists slated to serve on advisory panels that approve grant applications and replace them with others who are more aligned with Trump administration policies, a move the outlet called “unprecedented.”
A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from using the president’s June proclamation banning people from 12 countries to prohibit 80 refugees who have already been vetted from entering the US, noting that the order “expressly states” that it doesn’t limit efforts to seek refugee status.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to provide the watchdog advocacy group Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington with written answers and documents about the so-called Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting efforts and make its administrator, Amy Gleason, available to testify.
Bondi announced a new Justice Department guidance to limit “non-essential multilingual services [and] redirect resources toward English-language education and assimilation” in an effort to comply with Trump’s executive order designating English as the official language of the US.
Tuesday, July 15
A group of more than 75 former federal and state judges urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Trump’s nomination of his former attorney and current top Justice Department official Emil Bove to serve as a federal appeals court judge, writing that his “egregious record of mistreating law enforcement officers, abusing power, and disregarding the law itself disqualifies him for this position.”
ProPublica reported that the IRS is developing an “on-demand” digital system to share the confidential tax data of millions of people with ICE, as well as the home addresses of individuals the agency seeks to deport. The outlet also revealed that the acting general counsel at the IRS refused to turn over the addresses of 7.3 million people to ICE last month, telling ProPublica there were multiple legal “deficiencies” in the request.
Senate Republicans and the White House reached an agreement to reverse a proposed $400 million cut to PEPFAR, the global HIV and AIDS relief program, as part of Trump’s $9 billion recissions package.
Speaking to reporters, Trump ludicrously claimed that the Epstein files were “made up” by former FBI Director James Comey, along with former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, comparing it to investigations of the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.
Trump called for a “simple redraw” of the Texas congressional map that would likely result in House Republicans picking up five seats in the 2026 midterm elections. He also said there are “a couple of other states where we will pick up seats also” due to redistricting.
During a court hearing, DHS agents who executed arrests of pro-Palestinian international students and academics testified that the orders they received were highly unusual. One agent said he contacted a department lawyer after receiving a request to arrest Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk to confirm it was legal, and noted that he “didn’t see anything in the op-ed [she wrote] that suggested she’d committed a crime.” Another agent involved in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil said his office was directed to surveil him and “establish a pattern of life” for his capture, and added that he also sought to confirm there was a legal basis for Khalil’s arrest.
The Senate voted to confirm Anthony Tata to serve as the Pentagon’s undersecretary for personnel and readiness. Tata, a former Fox commentator, once called Barack Obama a “terrorist leader” and spread conspiracy theories that a former CIA director tried to overthrow Trump during his first term and even have him assassinated.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called for the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, saying, “We should put everything out there and let the people decide it.” Johnson’s comments came just hours after he voted with fellow House Republicans to block another attempt by Democrats to release the files.
Meanwhile, Wired reported that nearly three minutes of footage were cut from the so-called “full raw” surveillance video released by the Justice Department and FBI of Epstein’s prison cell the night before he was found dead, according to metadata from the video.
The Trump administration sued three members of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting more than two months after the president tried to fire them. The corporation provides funding to PBS and NPR, two public broadcasters that Trump defunded later in the week.
The Pentagon announced it would end the deployment of 2,000 National Guard troops in Los Angeles after they were sent to the city in early June in the wake of mass protests against Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. Approximately 2,000 additional National Guard members and 700 Marines remain deployed in the city. One National Guard official told the New York Times that “The moral injuries of this operation, I think, will be enduring,” adding that the deployment “is not what the military of our country was designed to do, at all.”
On Twitter, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin announced that the Trump administration deported five immigrants to the small landlocked African country of Eswatini, a nation none of them have ties to.
Wednesday, July 16
The Washington Post reported that the Commerce Department halted work on a tool to help the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predict extreme rainfall.
The Post also reported that the Justice Department has asked at least nine states to turn over copies of their voter rolls as part of an effort by the Trump administration to assemble election data and examine voting equipment.
On Truth Social, Trump ranted about the Epstein backlash, which he calls a “Hoax,” saying his “PAST supporters have bought into this ‘bullshit,’ hook, line, and sinker,” called them “weaklings,” and said he doesn’t want their support anymore.
The Transportation Department announced it would cut $4 billion in federal funding for California’s high-speed rail project, with Trump calling it a “HIGH SPEED TRAIN TO NOWHERE,” a “boondoggle,” and a “SCAM” on Truth Social. Federal funds make up less than a quarter of the project’s funding.
CBS News reported that Trump asked a group of House Republicans on Tuesday if he should fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a move that the group voiced their support for. Trump, who later told reporters he was “surprised” Powell was appointed despite being the one to appoint him, can only remove him “for cause.”
CBS News also reported that Trump’s presidential library is set to receive up to $63 million from multimillion-dollar settlements in lawsuits against Meta, ABC News, Twitter, and Paramount.
The Trump administration abruptly fired federal prosecutor Maurene Comey from her post in the Southern District of New York. Comey, the daughter of former FBI Director James Comey, helped prosecute Epstein. In an email circulated to colleagues, Comey warned, “If a career prosecutor can be fired without reason, fear may seep into the decisions of those who remain. Do not let that happen.” She added that fear is “the tool of a tyrant, wielded to suppress independent thought.”
A group of immigrants and legal advocates sued the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and ICE as part of a class-action lawsuit arguing that the arrests of thousands of people at courthouses violate immigration law and the Constitution.
A coalition of 20 states sued the Trump administration over multibillion-dollar cuts to a Federal Emergency Management Agency grant program that provides funds to upgrade infrastructure to be more resilient against natural disasters.
The New York Times reported that the Justice Department is moving forward with a bribery case against Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar, who was indicted last year alongside his wife for allegedly participating in a $600,000 bribery scheme involving Azerbaijan and a Mexican bank (he’s denied wrongdoing). However, the department is expected to drop other charges against him related to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal announced she would introduce legislation to block ICE from detaining and deporting US citizens.
In a sentencing memo, the Justice Department requested a one-day prison sentence and supervised release for a white former Kentucky police officer convicted of violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman who was killed when police served a no-knock warrant during a 2020 raid in Louisville, Kentucky. The maximum sentence the former officer could get is life in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for next week.
Thursday, July 17
Congress voted to approve a $9 billion recissions package that will effectively defund public broadcasters PBS and NPR, as well as cut federal funds from foreign aid. It was the first time in decades that Congress approved a recissions package.
Wired reported that DOGE’s effort to terminate the IRS’s free tax filing tool Direct File came just days after a single meeting with tax software lobbyists.
AP reported that the Trump administration will give ICE the personal data of approximately 79 million Medicaid recipients, which includes their home addresses and ethnicities, in an effort to help officials track down undocumented immigrants.
ABC News reported that a group of 10 Republican senators sent a letter to the Trump administration calling for the reversal of a $6 billion funding freeze for the Department of Education, arguing that the funds were already allocated by Congress and the freeze is “contrary to President Trump’s goal of returning K-12 education to the states.”
The Wall Street Journal published a bombshell report that revealed Trump sent a “bawdy” letter and a drawing of an “outline of a naked woman” with the now-president’s signature appearing below her waist “mimicking pubic hair” to Epstein for his 50th birthday in 2003, with the letter concluding, “Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret.” Trump told the Journal he did not write the letter or draw the picture, and said he would sue the newspaper “just like I sued everyone else.”
Following the publication of the WSJ report, Trump snapped on Truth Social, claiming Rupert Murdoch, the newspaper’s owner, told him the article wouldn’t be published. He also called the piece a “false, malicious, and defamatory story.” He announced that he would sue the Journal, NewsCorp, and Murdoch “shortly,” saying in a loosely-veiled threat that “the Press has to learn to be truthful, and not rely on sources that probably don’t even exist,” while going on to falsely claim that he won the presidency three times.
Trump subsequently said he asked Attorney General Pam Bondi to release grand jury testimony related to Epstein’s prosecution, “subject to Court approval,” writing on Truth Social that “This SCAM, perpetuated by the Democrats, should end, right now!” But as the Washington Post pointed out, grand jury testimony is confidential by law, and even if released, only makes up a “fraction” of the evidence in the Epstein files.
Before the Journal’s article was published, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters Trump would not recommend a special prosecutor in the Epstein case.
CNN reported that Rep. Robert Garcia, the top ranking Democratic member on the House Oversight Committee, sent a letter to Fox Corp executives accusing the company of editing a 2024 interview with Trump on “Fox & Friends Weekend” to omit key portions of a question about releasing the Epstein files, a move he says misled the public and distorted his position.
Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to advance the nomination of Emil Bove for a federal appeals court judgeship, despite widespread concerns, including a letter signed by more than 900 former Justice Department attorneys calling him a “leader in this assault” related to the department leadership’s “recent deviations from constitutional principles and institutional guardrails,” as well as “senseless attacks” on “dedicated career employees.” Democrats walked out of the hearing prior to the vote in protest of the decision of Senator Chuck Grassley, the Republican chair, to ram through the vote without allowing more time for debate.
Republicans on the committee also voted to advance former Fox commentator and staunch Trump ally Jeanine Pirro’s nomination to serve as the US attorney in DC. Democrats
Reuters reported that Secretary of State Marco Rubio advised US diplomats to avoid commenting on the fairness or integrity of foreign elections, adding that the State Department won’t be issuing election-related statements or social media posts moving forward unless there is a “clear and compelling” foreign policy interest.
The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said that the Trump administration wasted nearly 800,000 mpox vaccines for African countries after Trump gutted foreign aid programs and shuttered the US Agency for International Development, which administers most of them.
The Miami Herald reported that a 15-year-old boy with no criminal record was detained and held in custody for three days at “Alligator Alcatraz,” a move a spokesperson for the Florida Division of Emergency Management claimed happened after the teenager “misrepresented their age.”
A federal judge dismissed a case brought by FBI agents, including some who worked on investigations related to the Jan. 6 insurrection, who were concerned about retaliation from the Trump administration, saying the agents “failed to allege any adverse action that is ‘imminent’ and ‘certainly impending.’”
A group of young immigrants sued the Trump administration over the US Citizenship and Immigration Services’ termination of the Special Immigrant Juvenile Status last month, which gave them protection from deportation and the ability to work legally in the US.
Friday, July 18
On Truth Social, Trump gloated about the cancellation of CBS’ ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,’ who earlier this week called the settlement of his network’s parent company, Paramount, with Trump a “big, fat bribe” on air.
Meanwhile, the Writers Guild of America raised concerns about the cancellation possibly being a “bribe,” saying that “cancelations are part of the business, but a corporation terminating a show in bad faith due to explicit or implicit political pressure is dangerous and unacceptable in a democratic society.” The guild called for the New York State attorney general to investigate the move.
Axios reported that Trump’s plan to reopen a maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island could cost approximately $2 billion.
Axios also reported that the director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency visited DC this week to ask the White House for help in convincing countries to take in hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza. The spy chief reportedly told White House envoy Steve Witkoff that Israel has been speaking to countries including Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Libya.
Trump sued Dow Jones, News Corp, Rupert Murdoch, and two Wall Street Journal reporters for libel in response to their coverage of his “bawdy” letter to Epstein in 2003.
A federal judge dismissed Trump’s $50 million lawsuit against journalist Bob Woodward for publishing tapes from their interviews as part of an audiobook for his 2020 best-seller, Rage.
ABC News reported that the Trump administration reinstated more than $1 billion in federal funding for after-school and summer education programming after it was paused on July 1.
Democratic Senator Dick Durbin sent letters to the Justice Department and FBI saying that his office received information that approximately 1,000 FBI agents were assigned to investigate the Epstein files earlier this year and “flag” any documents that mentioned Trump.
The Justice Department formally requested the unsealing of grand jury transcripts related to federal investigations into Epstein.
ProPublica reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is planning to terminate seven major investigations and cases involving alleged housing discrimination and segregation, including some where the agency already concluded civil rights violations had occurred. The cases include allegations that state and local governments discriminated against people of color by building industrial plants and low-income housing in their communities, while shifting similar developments from white communities.
El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele announced on Twitter that the approximately 250 Venezuelan migrants held in his country’s megaprison were transferred to their home country in a prisoner swap that saw 10 US citizens and permanent residents returned to the US. Many of those migrants complained of daily “beatings” and torture in the El Salvador prison.
In a news release, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard announced that her agency would be turning over documents to the Justice Department for criminal referral that claim Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and his national security cabinet members “manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump” to subvert his 2016 presidential victory.
The EPA said it was eliminating its research and development arm and laying off thousands of scientists and other staff, despite saying for months that it wouldn’t do so, per the New York Times.
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I keep saying this, but I lived through all of this, and I can't remember it all. Thank you for putting these newsletters together so I can be reminded of the criminality and stupidity of the past week. These newsletters are a gem!!!!
Excellent week summary- Sadly, each week is a horrific dismantling of our country and democracy.