This Week in Democracy – Week 49: The Supreme Court Finally Hands Trump a Significant Loss
Another (half) week of Zeteo's project to document the ongoing growth of authoritarianism in Trump's second term.
More Epstein files – though still not all of them, as legally mandated. Another likely illegal strike on an alleged drug boat. And more turmoil at CBS News under “editor in chief” Bari Weiss. We’ve only documented the last four days, and ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 49’ is already one for the history books.
From the ongoing Epstein cover-up to ramping up tensions with Greenland to seizing Venezuelan oil tankers, Donald Trump and his cronies were busy yet again, harming democracy, hurting Americans and free societies worldwide, and undermining the Constitution.
There was unexpected good news, however: A Supreme Court that has let Trump get away with just about anything finally handed the president a major loss, ruling that, at least for now, he cannot send hundreds of National Guard members to Chicago over the objections of Illinois officials.
We’re sending ‘This Week in Democracy’ a bit early this week, so Team Zeteo can take some time away for the holidays. But we won’t stop documenting all the undemocratic things that Trump and his allies do while we’re away. We’ll include the days we missed in our first ‘This Week in Democracy’ in the new year.
Until then, here’s our last edition of 2025, a year that, when looking at the last 49 weeks, was quite possibly worse than we all could have imagined. It’s on the record:
Saturday, December 20
On Twitter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted footage of the US Coast Guard and the Defense Department apprehending an oil tanker she said was last docked in Venezuela. Noem noted that the US “will continue to pursue the illicit movement of sanctioned oil that is used to fund narco terrorism in the region,” adding, “We will find you, and we will stop you.” In a statement, the Venezuelan government described the apprehension as theft and hijacking, and accused the US of forcibly disappearing the crew on board the tanker.
The Justice Department removed at least 16 Epstein-related files from its website, including a photo that showed an image of Trump alongside his wife, Melania, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell. The DOJ later reposted the image after “further review.”
Sunday, December 21
CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss pulled a ‘60 Minutes’ segment on the Trump administration sending immigrants to El Salvador’s megaprison, CECOT, where they were held in what Human Rights Watch has described as “inhumane conditions” and subjected to torture and sexual violence, without due process and in violation of a court order. (Read more about the move in Zeteo’s First Draft.)
AP reported that the US Coast Guard pursued another oil tanker in the Caribbean, with one US official saying the pursuit involved “a sanctioned dark fleet vessel that is part of Venezuela’s illegal sanctions evasion.”
Asked on ‘Meet the Press’ about why Ghislaine Maxwell was moved to a lower-security prison facility days after he interviewed her, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche seemingly acknowledged he approved Maxwell’s transfer, noting that “every decision” made by the Bureau of Prisons “lands on my desk.”
On Truth Social, Trump named Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry as what appears to be the first-ever US special envoy to Greenland, noting that Landry “understands how essential Greenland is to our National Security.” Later, the prime ministers of Denmark and Greenland issued a joint statement responding to Landry’s appointment, saying, “You cannot annex other countries,” and the US “must not take over Greenland.”
Monday, December 22
On Fox, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the Trump administration would triple the “bonus” her department is offering undocumented immigrants to “self-deport” using the CBP Home App to $3,000 through the end of the year.
MS Now (formerly MSNBC) reported that FBI Director Kash Patel is being driven around in armored luxury BMWs at the expense of taxpayers, after requesting the agency purchase a small fleet of them, which he claimed would help him be more “covert” than the bulkier Chevrolet Suburbans normally used by the FBI.
NOTUS reported that inspectors general are seeing a dramatic increase in complaints and reports, specifically surrounding alleged retaliation against whistleblowers, with the Energy Department’s IG opening nine times as many whistleblower retaliation cases this year compared to 2024, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s IG opening about six times as many.
In a statement, a group of 19 survivors of Jeffrey Epstein-related abuse accused the Justice Department of breaking the law by failing to release the entirety of the Epstein files by the mandated deadline, and for redacting information unrelated to his victims, but failing to redact the identities of numerous victims in portions of the files, “causing real and immediate harm.”
Meanwhile, in a statement, a spokesperson for former President Bill Clinton called on Trump to direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to release any remaining material in the Epstein files “referring to, mentioning, or containing a photograph” of Clinton, accusing the Justice Department of trying to “protect” someone or something, and that Clinton “need[s] no such protection.”
The New York Times reported that, of 346 donors who in total contributed more than $500 million to Trump-backed groups since the 2024 election, more than half of the donors have either personally benefited or are in industries that have benefited from the Trump administration’s policies or actions, including pardons, legal cases being dropped, regulatory decisions that favored the companies, access to the president, jobs in the administration, and government contracts.
The Justice Department sued DC and its Metropolitan Police Department, arguing its gun laws that ban AR-15 style weapons, which have been used in the deadliest mass shootings in the US, are “unconstitutional” and violate the Second Amendment.
A federal judge ruled that ICE is prohibited from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia through the Christmas holiday. During the hearing, the judge pressed government lawyers about whether they plan to pursue removal proceedings against Abrego Garcia and questioned whether Trump administration officials would follow court orders, saying, “This is an extremely irregular and extraordinary situation.”
Judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to either help facilitate the return of 137 Venezuelan men who were deported to El Salvador’s megaprison in March before being sent back to their home country or allow them to challenge their removals in US courts. Boasberg ruled that their deportations, carried out under the Alien Enemies Act, were illegal and violated the men’s due process rights.
At Mar-a-Lago, Trump announced his latest vanity project, a new class of US battleships named after himself, which are expected to have nuclear capabilities.
The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration will start garnishing the wages of people in default on their student loans early next year for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio), an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center Board of Trustees, sued the Trump administration to block the Center’s name change, calling the move a “flagrant violation of the rule of law.”
ProPublica reported that Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche still held more than $150,000 in crypto investments when he issued a memo one month into his tenure to end investigations into crypto companies, dealers, and exchanges that were initiated during the Biden administration, a move one former White House ethics lawyer called “an obvious conflict of interest.”
On Twitter, the US Southern Command announced that, at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the US military conducted a strike on a boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing one person.
Reps. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) and Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) sent a letter to the Justice Department demanding an investigation into the Sept. 2 double-tap strike that killed two survivors in the Caribbean, arguing the order to conduct the strike constituted either a war crime or premeditated murder. In the letter, the Democratic lawmakers wrote that giving and carrying out a general order to kill any survivors constitutes a war crime, and that outside of war, “the killing of unarmed, helpless men clinging to wreckage in open water is simply murder.”
The Department of Veterans Affairs issued a memo announcing it will no longer provide abortion or abortion counseling. Additionally, the memo notes that employees can request to opt out of providing “any aspect of clinical care based on their sincerely held moral and religious beliefs, observances, practices, or exercises.”
In a letter to the chief judge of Florida’s Southern District Court, former CIA Director John Brennan’s lawyer accused Trump’s Justice Department of leaking grand jury information and possible judge shopping in an effort to ensure a future prosecution against Brennan will be overseen by the same judge who issued favorable rulings to Trump in his classified documents case. Brennan appears to be the target of a grand jury investigation into a 2017 intelligence assessment about Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
In a late-night post on Truth Social, Trump called the New York Times a “serious threat to the National Security of our Nation,” and added, “Their Radical Left, Unhinged Behavior, writing FAKE Articles and Opinions in a never ending way, must be dealt with and stopped.”
Tuesday, December 23
The Justice Department released its third batch of Epstein files, which included a January 2020 email from a federal prosecutor in New York who claimed that flight logs showed Trump flew on Epstein’s plane at least eight times in the 1990s, “including during the period we would expect to charge in a [Ghislaine] Maxwell case.” On Twitter, the DOJ claimed that some of the documents “contain untrue and sensationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the 2020 election,” adding, “To be clear: the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.”
Meanwhile, the DOJ said it was investigating the validity of a 2019 letter signed by “J. Epstein” to convicted sex offender Larry Nassar included in the latest batch of the Epstein files, which read in part, “Our President also shares our love of young, nubile girls.” Just two hours later, the DOJ said the letter had been confirmed to be fake, and added in a tweet that it “serves as a reminder that just because a document is released by the [DOJ] does not make the allegations or claims within the document factual.”
On Twitter, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department will impose visa restrictions on “leading figures of the global censorship-industrial complex” from entering the US. A press release from the State Department noted that the Department of Homeland Security can also initiate removal proceedings against individuals already in the US.
The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops in Illinois as part of his mass immigration crackdown, ruling that the government “failed to identify a source of authority that would allow the military to execute the laws in Illinois.”
Did you miss previous weeks? Catch up here.
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Looks like we're never short of outrageous actions by the Trump administration. Bari Weiss stopped the CBS '60 Minute' CECOT program from airing, but it somehow it made it onto the Canadian Globel TV affiliate airwaves for a short time. Now some part of it can be seen on YT.
As a president, POSOTUS has been a monumental, unparalleled, epic failure. As a purveyor of corruption, destruction, lies, and distortions, POSOTUS has been a towering success. The only possible benefit of POSOTUS’s presidency would be a re-birth of our alleged values in response to his depredations. But so far, POSOTUS is winning. Bigly.