On Thursday, President Donald Trump directed his Department of Justice to investigate ActBlue, the Democratic Party-aligned fundraising site that has fueled so many successful challenges against his own party.
The next day, amid a long-running feud with judges who have put some of his initiatives on hold because they may violate the Constitution, Trump’s FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge, alleging she had helped a migrant evade immigration authorities.
The two acts sent shockwaves through the legal and political worlds, which already have been reeling as Trump has used his office to target law firms, media outlets and individuals with whom he disagrees. The investigations are the latest version of a clear pattern in Trump’s second term: The president has harnessed the power of the federal government to punish his enemies and anyone he sees as standing in his way.
“This government has been consistent, from the moment it took office, in weaponizing the government and deploying it against critics,” said Steve Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and the coauthor of “How Democracies Die.” “This is not a surprise. Trump campaigned on it and he’s been doing it since day one.”
The complaint filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on Friday accused Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan of ushering the man, who is accused of being in the country illegally, out the “jury door” of her courtroom. The complaint alleges the judge became “visibly angry” when told there were immigration agents in the courthouse.
Her arrest Friday morning was announced in a post on X by Trump’s FBI director, Kash Patel, a Trump loyalist who before the election had compiled an “enemies list” to target during the president’s second term. Patel later deleted the post.
Shortly after Dugan’s arrest, a few dozen protesters marched outside the courthouse, chanting, “Judge Dugan will be free, no justice, no peace.” Democrats across the country were alarmed.
“There are no kings in America,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said. He called the arrest “a dangerous escalation, an attack on the separation of powers, and we will fight this with everything we have.”
During an appearance on Fox News after the arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi sent a warning to judges across the country. She was addressing the case of Dugan and a retired New Mexico judge, whom the administration also is targeting for allegedly harboring someone in the country illegally. But her words carried extra weight given the administration’s feuds with federal judges who have ruled against them in lawsuits challenging the administration’s actions and executive orders.
“Some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law and they are not, and we’re sending a very strong message today,” Bondi said.
Hours later, she revoked a Biden administration policy protecting journalists from having their records seized in leak investigations.
Trump himself lambasted judges Friday as he flew to Pope Francis’ funeral in Rome, frustrated that they were stalling his deportation plans.
“These are judges who just want to show how big and important they are,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One. “They shouldn’t be allowed to do it. We have hundreds of thousands of people we want to get out of the country, and the courts are holding us back.”
The White House has mocked on social media an order, upheld unanimously at the U.S. Supreme Court, from a federal judge that it “facilitate” the return of a Maryland man it admitted mistakenly deporting to a notorious prison in El Salvador. It mocked another federal judge who ordered planes full of immigrants turned around before they reached El Salvador. In another case, it acknowledged deporting additional migrants despite an order against it, arguing that the judge only forbade immigration authorities — and not the military — from removing the men from the country.
Trump’s allies in Congress and online have urged that judges be impeached if they have ruled against his other initiatives to cut the federal government or unilaterally change elections, or even to ignore orders outright. With the Republican-controlled Congress silent as Trump tries to remake the federal government, the courts have emerged as the only branch of government that is actively challenging the president.
Trump also moved to kneecap one other force challenging him by targeting ActBlue. The website funnels small-dollar donations to predominantly Democratic candidates and has become a powerhouse in helping Democrats stay ahead of Republicans financially in many elections. The GOP set up a site to mimic it called WinRed, but Trump’s order only directs a probe into the Democratic site, not the one run by his own party.
Trump asked Bondi to see if ActBlue was a potential conduit for illegal overseas donations. The site said it followed the law, and it and Democrats condemned the probe as politically motivated.
Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth College, said Trump’s targeting of Democratic Party infrastructure fits a pattern of many authoritarians around the world, who use government power to cripple opposition parties so they can no longer win elections.
“We’re well past Watergate,” he said, referring to the 1972 scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation two years later. “The investigation of ActBlue makes clear that we’re not in a fully democratic country.”
“In a democracy,” Nyhan said, “opposition parties don’t have to fight uphill.”
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Associated Press writer Lisa Mascaro in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.