Dissidence & Defiance
2019
2019-09-16 Trump faced numerous allegations of violating the Constitution’s Foreign and Domestic Emoluments Clauses by keeping ownership of businesses while in office, accepting gifts, and business entanglements with foreign officials.
2022
2022-12-03 Trump claimed on social media that the election results were a massive fraud and allows for termination of rules found in the Constitution. He wrote, “So, with the revelation of MASSIVE & WIDESPREAD FRAUD & DECEPTION in working closely with Big Tech Companies, the DNC, & the Democrat Parter, do you throw the Presidential Election Results of 2020 OUT and declare the RIGHTFUL WINNER, or do you have a NEW ELECTION? A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great “Founders” did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-63851751
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/donald-trump-claims-grounds-termination-us-constitution-twitter/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/03/politics/trump-constitution-truth-social
2024 April
2024-04-16 A judge admonished Trump for juror intimidation in the hush money trial.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/16/trump-new-york-hush-money-criminal-trial
2024-04-30 Trump violated a gag order.
2024 May
2024-05-06 Trump violated a gag order again. Trump violated ten separate gag orders.
https://www.opb.org/article/2024/05/06/trump-second-gag-order-fine/
2024 September
2024-09-10 Trump claimed the Harris debate was “rigged” and threatened ABC after their moderator fact-checked Trump’s claim that migrants were eating pets. Prior to the debate, Trump went on Fox News Town Hall with Sean Hannity and preemptively accused ABC of not being fair by saying “They’re very nasty, and I think a lot of people are going to be watching to see how nasty and unfair they are”.
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/09/11/trump-harris-debate-rigged-abc-should-lose-license.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/09/trump-debate-plans-00177885
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/11/trump-debate-winner-fox-00178611
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn9l9500vg7o
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6361528433112
2025 January
2025-01-22 The U.S. Constitution temporarily disappeared from the White House website following Trump taking oath. This would be the first of two instances the public would notice it disappearing in 2025.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/government-websites-vanish-trump-constitution-dei-rcna188522
2025-01-28 The Trump administration began freezing funds that were already pre-approved by Congress; Eric Schmitt said on video he supported this.
2025 February
2025-02-09 In a tweet, JD Vance incorrectly claimed that judges were not allowed to check executive power. Vance wrote, “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power”.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/10/jd-vance-judges-trump
2025-02-27 The Trump administration targeted legal oversight of military lawyers, stating their enforcement of law were potential “roadblocks” to Trump’s orders.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/15/politics/pentagon-lawyers-sidelined-jags
https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/are-military-lawyers-being-sidelined
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5162069-pentagon-officers-fired/
https://www.execfunctions.org/p/the-decaying-legal-culture-in-the
https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-hegseth-firing-chairman-lawyers-6bead3346b1210e45e77648e6cbc3599
https://www.newsweek.com/how-pete-hegseths-cull-of-military-lawyers-could-hurt-us-soldiers-10819597
2025 March
2025-03-16 Ignoring a ruling to turn a deportation plane around, Tom Homan said “I don’t care what the judges think”. Trump also responded to the ruling, demanding to impeach the judge who ordered the turnaround. President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele posted an obnoxious “oopsie, too late” followed by a laugh-cry emoji.
https://x.com/nayibbukele/status/1901238762614517965?lang=en
2025-03-23 News outlets reported an “unprecedented degree of resistance” to court rulings and a forceful attack on the American judiciary.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/23/judges-trump-court-rulings
2025 May
2025-05-04 Trump said he didn’t know whether he had to hold up the Fifth Amendment. When asked if he had to hold up the Constitution, he replied, “I don’t know”.
2025-05-12 Steve Bannon called out a “Constitutional Crisis” during an interview. He said, quote, “If they can hold it together they can control the government for 50-75 years”
2025-05-20 During a hearing Kristi Noem fumbled with the definition of Habeas Corpus and misinterpreted the type of approval needed to activate the suspension clause.
https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1948380052635180
2025 August
2025-08-07 The public noticed portions of the U.S. Constitution had temporarily disappeared from the Library of Congress for a second time. This time the White House blamed it on a coding error.
2025 September
2025-09-09 News outlets reported on a possible Heritage Foundation agenda to change the Constitution.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/09/us/politics/heritage-foundation-constitution-book.html
https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained
https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/11/politics/trump-allies-project-2025/index.html
2025-09-21 California Governor Newsom signed a law banning law enforcement from wearing masks, but the acting US Attorney stated they would not comply.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/09/21/us/california-mask-ban-law-enforcement-newsom
https://www.cbsnews.com/losangeles/news/essayli-newsom-federal-agent-mask-ban/
2025 October
2025-10-01 The White House began a series of childish digs during the shutdown, adding horrendous messages to all government sites blaming Dems for the shutdown. By October 14, Kristi Noem released a new video for TSA employees, also blaming Democrats for the shutdown. The Trump administration used federal resources for political coercion which is a violation of the Hatch Act. The White House website pages all were headed by “Democrats Have Shut Down the Government”. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was headed in bright red captioning, “The Radical Left are going to shut down the government and inflict massive pain on the American people unless they get their $1.5 trillion wish list of demands. The Trump administration wants to keep the government open for the American people”. And source headlines read, “These 13 Airports Won’t Air DHS Video Blaming Democrats for Shutdown”.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/government-shutdown-clock/
2025 November
2025-11-03 Against judge orders, Trump refused to release contingency funds for SNAP benefits. He also refused to dip into other pots to fund the $8B needed to continue benefits through November, stating he would only release partial funds but that it “could take months”. Unrelated but for context on the US economy at this time, we had just paid $20B in bailouts to Argentina, meanwhile the US reached a record high in national debt, and the president had just thrown a massive Great Gatsby party for his billionaire friends.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/trump-defies-court-snap-ruling
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/03/g-s1-96296/trump-deadline-contingency-funds-snap
2025-11-03 Despite judge rulings, the Trump administration announced they will restart SNAP benefits but will only pay out half the amount people normally get.
https://www.npr.org/2025/11/03/nx-s1-5596121/snap-food-benefits-trump-government-shutdown
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-administration-partially-fund-snap-months/story?id=127138175
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/04/trump-snap-funding-shutdown-food-aid-00635141
https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/07/politics/trump-administration-supreme-court-snap-benefits
2025-11-09 Former U.S. Federal Judge Mark Wolf resigned after his 50-year tenure under the Regan administration, stating he could no longer stay silent about the “White House assault on rule of law” and calling it “deeply disturbing”.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/11/federal-judge-resignation-trump/684845/
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/10/federal-judge-wolf-resigns-trump-letter-atlantic
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/federal-judge-resigns-letter-trump_n_69121c3ae4b0b840aac12569
https://www.notus.org/courts/ronald-reagan-appointed-federal-judge-resign-quit-trump
2025-11-12 Due to Republican defiance, Adelita Grijalva was only finally sworn in seven weeks after she won a special election in Arizona. She would then become a key member set to vote to release the Epstein files.
https://grijalva.house.gov/media/press-releases/taking-the-oath-of-office
https://time.com/7333146/adelita-grijalva-johnson-house-swearing-in-epstein-government-shutdown/
2025 December
2025-12-08 The Supreme Court gathered to hear arguments to expand presidential power which would allow the president to fire anyone for any reason regardless of merit. The vote was poised to take place later in June 2026, and the decision could restructure the checks and balances of power within the federal government.
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/08/nx-s1-5626876/supreme-court-trump-ftc-unitary-executive
https://www.fox5dc.com/video/1753194
2025-12-10 According to Reuters, the Trump administration demanded that the International Criminal Court amend its founding documents – the Rome Statute – to ensure that Trump and his senior officials would not be investigated or prosecuted for any war crimes, and threatened sanctions if the ICC didn’t comply.
2025-12-20 The DOJ released only part of the Epstein files, and what they did release was heavily redacted and incomplete. Some news outlets reported that some of the files that had included Trump quickly disappeared from the DOJ website. Since this date, the DOJ had repeatedly violated and ignored the Epstein Files Transparency Act by redacting, hiding, or “forgetting” to include documents that referred to Trump, and waited until March 2026 before releasing three pages related to a sexual assault allegation from a 13-year-old girl against Trump.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/4405
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/epstein-files-redaction-over-500-pages-entirely-blacked-out/
2026 January
2026-01-26 Despite a judicial warrant signed by a judge, federal agents defied the order and continued to block the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension from accessing the scene to the fatal shooting of Alex Pretti.
2026 February
2026-02-03 Trump called on Republicans to push to nationalize future elections.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/02/politics/trump-calls-on-republicans-to-nationalize-future-elections
2026-02-17 Just as the White House violated the Hatch Act in October 2025 during the first shutdown, the official Department of Homeland Security website headlined, “Another Democrat Government Shutdown Dramatically Hurts America’s National Security”.
2026-02-20 During the State of the Union, Trump accused the Supreme Court of being unpatriotic and disloyal to the Constitution, and a disgrace to our nation, after the justices ruled 6-to-3 to invalidate his illegal tariffs. The next day he raised the global tariff to 15%.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1287_4gcj.pdf
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-raises-global-tariff-15-percent
2026-02-20 Mark Zuckerberg and his entourage wore Ray-Ban smart glasses during court proceedings.
https://www.theverge.com/tech/882030/smart-glasses-in-court-meta-mark-zuckerberg
https://epic.org/the-verge-smart-glasses-in-court-are-a-privacy-nightmare/
2026-02-27 Trump tried pushing an Executive Order to grant him emergency oversight of upcoming elections, claiming once again that the 2020 elections were fraudulent and China tampered with them.
2026 March
2026-03-02 During a briefing, Pete Hegseth vowed there would be no “stupid” Rules of Engagement concerning the war in Iran.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/hegseth-insists-the-iran-conflict-is-not-iraq-and-is-not-endless
2028-03-22 During a GOP fundraising event Trump told the audience that if you call it a “military operation” instead of a “war” you don’t have to ask for permission. He said, quote, “They don’t like the word ‘war’, because you’re supposed to get approval, so I’ll use the word ‘military operation’, which is really what it is”. He has also referred to the war as “an excursion”.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cpac-republicans-trump-iran-war-bannon/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/29/cpac-maga-anxiety-iran-war
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/cpac
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xMqVQbctsmo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYZC0-FKEJM&t=16s
2026-03-27 During CPAC Franklin Graham said we have to get Trump re-elected for a third term. Later on he said in a statement to reporters that he “mis-spoke” and meant we had to get Trump’s policies re-elected.
https://www.newsweek.com/cpac-crowd-urged-to-do-everything-we-can-to-get-trump-reelected-11743902
https://churchleaders.com/news/2215561-franklin-graham-trump-reelection-cpac.html
https://www.christianpost.com/news/franklin-graham-says-he-misspoke-in-cpac-speech.html
2026-03-31 Trump signed an Executive Order to force a federal voter list. It instructs DHS to gather a list of voters in each state and have the USPS transmit ballots ONLY to persons enrolled in the list. It forces nationalizing voting, puts the postal service in the role of an election enforcement agency, creates a huge financial strain, challenges the Constitution, complicates mail-in ballots and forces the case to eliminate mail-in ballots (a third of US voters use mail-in ballots). It’s just another GOP attempt to suppress and interfere with votes. There has been no proof of voter fraud. The GOP simply wants to tamper with results because they can’t win a fair election and they have no integrity.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/31/nx-s1-5508948/trump-voter-list-mail-ballots-executive-order
https://coloradosun.com/2026/04/01/trump-signs-executive-order-in-hope-of-tightening-mail-in-voting/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/mar/31/trump-order-election-voting-explainer
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/trump-mail-in-ballots-voting-executive-order.html
2026 April
2026-04-01 Hegseth nullified the investigation into the pilot who used an Apache helicopter to perform a low fly-by of Kid Rock’s mansion. So now MAGA leaders are undermining Army control over investigations into military matters. In an X post Hegseth wrote, “Pilots suspension LIFTED. No punishment. No investigation. Carry on patriots”.
https://www.stripes.com/branches/army/2026-04-01/kid-rock-apache-helicopter-hegseth-21246722.html
https://x.com/PeteHegseth/status/2039109100282196436
https://www.npr.org/2026/04/01/nx-s1-5769800/suspension-lifted-helicopter-pilots-kid-rock
https://abc7.com/post/army-says-reviewing-helicopters-flying-low-hovering-kid-rocks-home/18816103
https://www.thedailybeast.com/hegseth-makes-shock-announcement-after-cringe-kid-rock-stunt/