He has withdrawn the US from the Paris climate accords and the World Health Organization. He has pardoned not just some, as promised, of those convicted for their role in attempting to overturn a democratic election on 6 January 2021, but all 1,500, including those guilty of violence, much of it directed at police officers. He has sought to end the right, enshrined in the constitution, to automatic citizenship of those born in the US.
He has reversed measures to address the climate crisis, ending incentives to buy electric vehicles and pausing all leases for offshore windfarms. He has sent thousands of US troops to the southern border, as he prepares for mass deportations of immigrants without documents. If local officials try to stand in the way of the dawn raids and roundups, he has ordered federal prosecutors to subject them to criminal investigation.
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Similar thinking surely motivates the sweeping pardon for the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021, those Trump unforgivably refers to as “the J6 hostages”. By that move, he has essentially licensed political violence, so long as it is committed in support of him. Those released will now “stand by”, as he once requested of the far-right Proud Boys, eager to serve as a well-armed praetorian guard ready to do whatever the leader tells them needs to be done.
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Whether it’s the obvious abuse of power involved in stripping a former adviser and ally of personal security because he dared criticise Trump or in profiting from high office by issuing a cryptocurrency meme coin on the eve of the inauguration, the picture is clear: the most powerful office in the world is becoming the court of an emperor, untrammelled by alliances, the constitution or the law. The task is to see it.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jan/24/donald-trump-executive-orders-autocrat-limitless-power
