This Week in Democracy – Week 66: Trump Targets Legal Immigrants While Weaponizing the DOJ. Again.
Zeteo's weekly round-up, documenting the growth of authoritarianism in Trump's second term.
Donald Trump and his cronies reek of desperation. As the president’s favorability numbers continue to plummet, his administration has intensified its weaponization of the Justice Department to go after its critics and perceived enemies.
Just this week, the Justice Department appointed an election denier to lead a probe into officials who investigated Trump, demanded Michigan’s biggest county hand over 2024 election data, and indicted a civil rights group in a move critics called “nakedly political.”
And that’s just a taste of what Trump and his allies did this week that hurt democracy, undermined the Constitution, and harmed Americans – and the world.
From the Justice Department’s latest targets to reportedly preparing an effort to denaturalize hundreds of Americans, here’s ‘This Week in Democracy – Week 66’:
Saturday, April 18 – Trump Loyalist to Lead Ridiculous ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Probe
The Justice Department announced it tapped staunch Trump loyalist Joe diGenova to lead a Florida-based federal probe into intelligence and law enforcement officials who investigated Trump.
In 2020, diGenova didn’t just peddle conspiracy theories about the results of the presidential election; he was part of a legal team, which included Rudy Giuliani, tasked with challenging and trying to overturn the results. He also reportedly worked with Giuliani in 2019 to find potentially damaging information on then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from Ukrainian officials.
Sunday, April 19 – Trump’s Military Hits Another Boat in the Caribbean
On Twitter, the US Southern Command announced that, at the direction of General Francis L. Donovan, the US military conducted a lethal strike on a boat it claimed was trafficking drugs in the Caribbean Sea, killing three people.
Since September 2025, the Trump administration has hit more than 50 boats, killing at least 181 people. The strikes have been widely condemned as violations of international law.
Monday, April 20 – Trump Admin Expands Election ‘Oversight’
Multiple outlets reported that Trump’s Justice Department sent a letter to the Wayne County Clerk’s Office in Detroit, Michigan – a city the president has long targeted by spreading debunked claims of massive fraud in the 2020 presidential election – demanding all ballots, envelopes, and receipts from the 2024 election, arguing they are needed to ensure “federal election laws were not violated.”
Governor Gretchen Whitmer called the DOJ’s demand a “poorly disguised attempt to justify more doubt and misinformation about our elections.” The letter gave a 14-day deadline to turn over the materials before the Trump administration could seek a court order against the clerk’s office.
Tuesday, April 21 – DOJ’s Latest Target: The SPLC
Trump’s Justice Department indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center on federal fraud charges.
The indictment alleges the civil rights group defrauded donors by secretly paying informants more than $3 million to infiltrate white supremacist and other extremist groups, including the Ku Klux Klan – a tactic USA Today dutifully noted has been used by the FBI and other federal agencies for decades.
Wednesday, April 22 – Patel Had a NYT Reporter Investigated by the FBI
The New York Times reported that Trump’s FBI launched an investigation into one of its reporters, Elizabeth Williamson, last month after she published an article detailing Kash Patel’s use of an agency SWAT team to escort his girlfriend.
The Times’s executive editor, Joseph Kahn, called the probe “alarming” and “unconstitutional,” and added that it was both an attempt to “criminalize routine reporting” and to “prevent journalists from scrutinizing” the Trump administration.
Thursday, April 23 – Revoking Citizenship Still a Priority
On Truth Social, Trump reposted a transcript of a racist segment from right-wing Newsmax that referred to China and India as “hellhole[s],” and immigrants from those countries as “gangsters with laptops” who have “stepped on our flag.” The segment also called for a national referendum on banning birthright citizenship, rather than leaving it to the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the New York Times reported that Trump’s Justice Department is set to assign civil litigators to file denaturalization cases against 384 people, as part of an effort a DOJ spokesperson said was to pursue “the highest volume of denaturalization referrals in history.”
Friday, April 24 – DOJ Drops Criminal Probe of Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell
US Attorney for DC Jeanine Pirro announced that the Justice Department dropped their criminal investigation into the Federal Reserve and its Chair Jerome Powell, over renovations to the central bank’s headquarters in Washington.
Pirro noted that the Inspector General has been asked to “scrutinize” the project, and added she wouldn’t hesitate to restart a criminal probe “should the facts warrant doing so.” The IG has already reviewed the project twice…and found no evidence of wrongdoing.
Did you miss previous weeks of ‘This Week in Democracy’? Catch up here. And check out more of Zeteo’s reporting from this week below:
Coincidence? I think not. Sen. Tom Tillis has made it clear that he will not confirm the nomination to replace Powell, unless the case against Powell is dropped. He said that yesterday, today the incompetent joke that is Pirro, drops the 'investigation'. Cute. Looks like the nominee for the Fed Chair is just another trump lapdog, who will do trump's bidding, tanking our economy further into the drenches. So, what else is new?
The criminal Trump organization thinks everyone abuses their power and the law like they do so they keep filing charges that go nowhere.
Bombing suspected drug boats has killed nearly 200 people. This amounts to General Francis L. Donovan and the US military following illegal orders.