Feb. 9, 2026
By Jacob Collins Dodd
Staff Writer
When President Donald Trump began serving his first term after winning the 2016 presidential election, American democracy had not yet declined, and the Republican Party had not yet reorganized itself around Trump and ultraconservative politics.
During his first term, Trump operated within established rules and governed alongside senior officials and moderate Republicans, who limited his ability to concentrate power. In his second term, none of this is true.
Trump now dominates the Republican Party and has selected a presidential cabinet that has normalized his authoritarian behaviors and reinforced his ideologies.
Since Trump’s inauguration just over a year ago, his administration has made unprecedented changes to how the American government operates. This includes weaponizing state institutions, pressuring American universities, suppressing journalists and shifting the country towards authoritarian governance — all of which have actualized during his second term.
Trump has also attacked prestigious universities and media outlets that have publicly opposed his actions and administration.
He has paramilitarized Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency, known as ICE, at an alarming rate, many times against U.S. citizens, making 2025 ICE’s deadliest year in two decades, according to The Guardian newspaper.
According to the nonprofit news organization ProPublica, documented instances of immigration agents breaking vehicle windows during raids increased by about 500% during the first six months of Trump’s second term compared to the previous decade.
As a direct result of ICE’s protocols that encourage aggressive, military tactics as enforcement, Renée Good, a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, was killed in Minneapolis on Jan. 7 when a federal immigration agent shot three times into her vehicle.
A video from the scene showed Good driving away, not attacking officers, during what the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called Operation Metro Surge, ICE’s biggest, most widespread operation yet.
Less than three weeks later, on Jan. 24, federal agents shot and killed Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old veterans’ nurse, as he nonviolently recorded masked federal agents during an immigration operation in Minneapolis.
In June 2025, Trump federalized and deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles, which a federal judge ruled violated the law. ICE agents raided several neighborhoods to arrest individuals supposedly involved in illegal immigration. They used tear gas, flash bangs and bullets on protesters who peacefully demonstrated against ICE’s unauthorized immigration crackdowns.
Since then, Trump has launched major immigration operations in cities including Newark and Washington, D.C., deploying thousands of agents in some cases. He has repeatedly threatened to militarize government agencies as part of his immigration raids in Chicago and New York City, actions both cities have condemned publicly.
Trump has also attacked prestigious universities and media outlets that have publicly opposed his actions and administration.
ILLUSTRATION BY BETHANY RANERO
Notably, in March 2025, the Trump administration attempted to pressure Harvard University, a prestigious Ivy League institution in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to eliminate any curricula addressing race, gender and inequality, and to replace them with what Trump described as “patriotic” teachings. When Harvard refused to comply, he repealed $2.2 billion in federal funding.
Mounting high-dollar legal challenges against prominent media organizations, including ABC, CBS, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal for their critical coverage of him and his administration, Trump has tried to pressure journalists and their employers.
Last month, during a large-scale military extraction in Venezuela, he ordered the U.S. Army Special Forces to capture the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, without receiving congressional approval.
Not only do Trump’s actions function as intimidation tactics and political weapons, they mirror the very actions of historically authoritarian regimes. The question is: What’s next?
