The Weaponized Government

INVESTIGATIVE SERIES: THE LONG CON — PART THREE OF AN ONGOING REPORT

THE LONG CON — PART III  |  A CATN INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

IÇE and ÇBP are permitted to conceal their identities (almost everywhere) and have immunity.

†rump told the country he was fighting for them. What he was actually doing was building a machine, assembling the full weight of the federal government into a weapon aimed not at America's enemies, but at America's own people. This is the documented record of how he did it, agency by agency, lie by lie, and with a blueprint that his own people wrote.

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They do not announce themselves. They do not wear uniforms with names on them. They arrive in unmarked vehicles, faces hidden behind masks, dressed in street clothes or tactical gear, carrying weapons and zip ties, and they move fast, faster than anyone watching has time to process what is happening. One moment a person is walking to a medical appointment, standing outside their workplace, or sitting in their car. The next, a masked agent has yanked open the door, dragged them out, and thrown them to the ground. There is no badge displayed. There is no warrant shown. There is no explanation given. Human Rights Watch documented that federal IÇE agents now commonly operate masked and without visible identification, conducting what the organization described as raids marked by "sudden and unprovoked use of force without any justification, creating a climate of fear in many immigrant communities." The agents have placed people in chokeholds, tackled bystanders to the ground, released tear gas and flashbang grenades at close range, smashed windows, broken down doors, and brandished guns in front of children, in front of witnesses, in front of journalists who were themselves then targeted. In Broadview, Illinois, a masked IÇE agent fired a pepper ball directly at a reporter's car, causing her to vomit for hours. There was no protest happening at the time. In Minneapolis, the aggressive tactics of these operations led directly to the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens, Renée Good, a mother, and Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse, in January 2026. They were American citizens. They were killed by their own government's agents.

This is not immigration enforcement. This is occupation. And it is only one piece of a much larger machine.

Before †rump's second inauguration, his movement had already produced a 920-page instruction manual for exactly this. Prøject 2025, authored by the Hèritåge Føundatiøn with the direct involvement of at least 140 people who had worked in †rump's first regime, including more than half of the named authors, editors, and contributors, laid out in explicit detail how to convert every federal agency into an instrument of the president's personal will. †rump publicly claimed he had "nothing to do" with Prøject 2025 and "no idea who is behind it." That claim was a lie. A CNN review found that 27 of the 37 core authors held positions in †rump's first regime. Russell Vought, who wrote the blueprint's chapter on dismantling the executive branch, was appointed director of the Office of Management and Budget. Brendan Carr, who authored the entire chapter on the FÇÇ, was installed as FÇÇ chair. Tom Homan, Prøject 2025 contributor, became "border czar." By the ninth month of †rump's second term, the Democratic Party had documented that nearly half of Prøject 2025's proposals had already been enacted. The blueprint is a schedule, not a suggestion.

But †rump did not build this machine alone. Before he even took office, a second, unelected actor had already purchased his way into a position of extraordinary power, a man no American had voted for, no Senate had confirmed, and no law had authorized to govern them.

Elon Musk and DØGE

In October 2024, Elon Musk stood on a stage in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and handed a man named John Dreher a giant novelty check for one million dollars. Dreher had signed an online petition for Musk's America PAC. He had already voted. He was, by every legal expert's assessment, the recipient of what amounted to a payment for his political affiliation in a swing state days before a presidential election. Election law experts told NPR the scheme was potentially illegal, with University of California, Irvine law professor Rick Hasen saying directly: "Essentially what you're doing is you are creating a lottery where the only people eligible to participate are registered voters, and that's illegal." Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner called it "a scam designed to actually influence a national election." The giveaway continued, one million dollars per day, through election day across seven swing states. Musk had already poured $75 million of his personal fortune into America PAC, his pro-†rump super PAC, making him the single largest individual donor to the effort to install †rump in power. He was not a political ally. He was a purchaser, and he bought extraordinary access.

On January 20, 2025, †rump created the so-called Depårtment of Gøvernment Effiçiency, DØGE, by executive order, and placed Musk at its operational helm. Musk had not been nominated by the president. He had not been confirmed by the Senate. He had not been elected to anything, anywhere, by anyone. The Campaign Legal Center stated plainly: "He has no authority under the Constitution or federal law to cut spending or terminate employees. These actions violate the constitutional separation of powers: Congress, not Musk, has control over federal spending." A federal judge hearing one of the dozens of lawsuits filed against DØGE agreed, writing in a ruling that "the Constitution does not permit the Executive to commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency pursuant to Executive Order and insulating its principal officer from the Constitution as an 'advisor' in name only." None of these rulings stopped Musk.

What Musk and DØGE did in the first months of 2025 has no precedent in American history. Tens of thousands of federal employees were fired through what House Budget Committee Democrats described as "prohibited personnel actions." The Department of Veterans Affairs was gutted. The Department of Education was dismantled. Seventeen Inspectors General, the independent watchdogs whose entire job is to catch waste, fraud, and abuse, were fired in †rump's first week alone, eliminating the very oversight mechanisms that would have exposed what was being done. House Oversight Democrats documented that Musk was "running cabinet meetings, holding court in the Oval Office, and ripping through government agencies and sensitive databases" while the White House refused to disclose his conflicts of interest, conflicts that included billions of dollars in government contracts flowing to his own companies while he simultaneously controlled the agencies overseeing those contracts. Think of it this way: imagine a real estate developer being put in charge of the zoning board, the building inspectors, and the city council, while his own buildings were going up across town. That is what America allowed to happen, and no one voted for it.

"Americans did not elect Elon Musk, and an unelected megadonor should not be able to pick and choose which critical agencies can continue to serve the public." — TREVOR POTTER, PRESIDENT, CAMPAIGN LEGAL CENTER, MARCH 2025

DØJ — DEPÅRTMENT OF JUSTIÇE

†rump told his supporters at a 2024 rally: "I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution." He was not speaking in metaphor. From the first days of his second term, the Depårtment of Justiçe was converted from the nation's law enforcement agency into the president's personal retribution machine. The targets were not chosen for what they had done. They were chosen for what they had done to him.

New York Attorney General Letitia James had won a $464 million civil fraud judgment against the †rump Organization. She became a target. A federal grand jury in Virginia indicted James on charges of bank fraud and making false statements, relating to a decades-old mortgage. Career federal prosecutors who had reviewed the same evidence previously found it insufficient to bring charges. That finding was overruled. †rump had written a social media post just weeks before the indictment, marked as a private message to then-AG Pam Bondi but posted publicly by mistake, that read: "They're all guilty as hell. We can't delay any longer." The "weaponization" task force running the investigation against James was led by Ed Martin, who made the extraordinary move of visiting her home in New York City and then photographing himself outside it and posting the image on social media, a move her attorney called a violation of DØJ policy and a naked act of intimidation.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis had prosecuted †rump on Georgia racketeering charges for the 2020 election conspiracy. She became a target. A federal grand jury subpoenaed Willis for international travel records from around the 2024 election, a transparent act of intimidation against a prosecutor who had done her lawful job. Former ƒBI Director James Comey, who had opened the Russia investigation, was indicted. The U.S. attorney in Virginia who refused to bring charges against James resigned rather than do the regime's bidding. A political science professor analyzing the pattern told Capital B News: "In some ways, the targeting of Black women was sort of like the warm-up to get ready to target Comey. It was easier to target people like Letitia James, Fani Willis, and Lisa Cook than it was to target Comey." The pattern is racial, gendered, and deliberate.

The full enemies list being pursued by the DØJ under Bondi included †rump's former national security adviser John Bolton, former ÇIA Director John Brennan, Senator Adam Schiff, and former ƒBI Director Christopher Wray, every one of them a person who had, at some point, told the truth about †rump. Twenty-one state attorneys general issued a joint open letter calling the pursuit of Letitia James "a campaign of intimidation" and "a pattern of harassment and retribution against public officials who dared to uphold the law." None of it stopped the machine.

PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE

Imagine a prosecutor in your town successfully convicting a powerful man of fraud, and then watching that man return to power, take over the police department, and send officers to investigate the prosecutor's thirty-year-old mortgage. That is what happened in America in 2025. The tools of justice — grand juries, subpoenas, indictments — were not dismantled. They were redirected. The machinery of the law was kept entirely intact. It was simply aimed at different people: the ones who told the truth.

IÇE — IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT

IÇE

The opening of this article described what IÇE operations look like on the ground in 2025 and 2026. But the scale of what has been deployed is even more alarming than any single incident. IÇE expanded to more than 12,000 agents in less than a year, deployed to at least fifteen American cities. The agency gutted its own internal civil rights office, the office that had processed 3,000 complaints annually, and replaced its leadership with a 29-year-old White House political appointee who had helped write Prøject 2025. The internal guardrails against abuse were not just loosened. They were deliberately removed, in accordance with a blueprint that had been written years in advance.

The human toll is not abstract. ProPublica documented that more than 170 U.S. citizens were detained by IÇE agents at raids and protests across the country, with more than twenty held without access to attorneys or family. Elected officials were among those targeted. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander was violently detained by masked agents outside immigration court, slammed against a wall, and handcuffed while asking for a judicial warrant. Senator Alex Padilla was physically removed from a DH$ press conference and briefly handcuffed by federal agents for asking questions. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested outside an IÇE detention facility. Representative LaMonica McIver was criminally charged with assaulting law enforcement for attempting to conduct lawful oversight of a detention center.

American Oversight obtained documents showing that during one documented period, there were more than twice as many reported incidents of IÇE agents using excessive force against residents than there were assaults on IÇE agents, yet agency officials commented extensively on increasing prosecutions of residents while making no similar comments about their own officers' violations. Agents who broke the rules faced no consequences. Residents who filmed, questioned, or simply stood nearby faced arrest.

The mask policy tells you everything you need to know about accountability. Human Rights Watch stated: "Law enforcement officers must be identifiable to be accountable. This kind of secrecy should be an exception, never the norm." Philadelphia passed a city ordinance requiring IÇE agents to display badges and prohibiting masks. California passed a similar law. A federal judge blocked California's enforcement following a federal lawsuit filed by the †rump regime, the same regime deploying the masked agents. The regime sued to protect its agents' ability to hide their faces while using force against American citizens on American soil. That is not law enforcement. It is a secret police force in everything but name. †rump has not been subtle about the legal philosophy behind any of this. When pressed on the removal of people from the country without hearings or legal process, he answered in six words that belong in the historical record: "We cannot give everyone a trial." A government that decides who deserves a trial has already decided the Constitution is optional.

IR$ — INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE

The IR$

Richard Nixon tried to use the IR$ to punish his political enemies, yet his IR$ refused. The safeguards built into federal law after Watergate were specifically designed to prevent any president from directing the tax agency against political opponents. Title 26 of the United States Code, Section 7217, makes it a federal crime for any White House official to direct the IR$ to investigate a specific taxpayer. †rump did it anyway.

House Democrats documented that a senior IR$ official had compiled a list of potential targets that included Democratic donors and left-leaning nonprofit organizations, including George Soros and his affiliated groups. The president had ordered Treasury Secretary Bessent, acting as IR$ Commissioner, to refer certain tax-exempt organizations to the DØJ for criminal investigation, meaning the IR$ was being used as a feeder system for the DØJ's political prosecution operation. Senate Finance Committee Democrats, led by Ron Wyden, Chuck Schumer, and Elizabeth Warren, demanded answers, noting that politically motivated interference in tax law enforcement "is prohibited under federal law and can result in criminal penalties including incarceration."

Harvard University was threatened with the loss of its tax-exempt status. The Southern Poverty Law Center was indicted for operating a paid informant program that had previously helped the ƒBI put violent extremists in prison, the same program the IR$ had previously reviewed and declined to charge. Over 200 civil society organizations ranging from the American Library Association to the Sierra Club signed a public statement warning that a provision quietly inserted into the One Big Fugly Bill would give the Treasury Secretary unchecked power to label any nonprofit a "terrorist supporting organization" and strip its tax-exempt status with no appeal process. The provision was ultimately removed from the final bill, but its very inclusion revealed the intent: to give the president a single-click mechanism to destroy any organization he dislikes.

DOCUMENTED ORGANIZATIONS TARGETED OR THREATENED

• Harvard University — Threatened with revocation of tax-exempt status over DEI policies and refusal to comply with regime demands. Harvard sued the regime and refused to capitulate.

• Southern Poverty Law Center — Indicted by the DØJ for operating a paid informant program that federal law exempts from tax reporting requirements and that the IR$ had previously reviewed and cleared. The charges were widely described as retaliatory.

• ActBlue — The entire Democratic fundraising infrastructure, used by candidates and progressive causes nationwide, was subjected to a DØJ probe ordered directly by †rump.

• Vera Institute of Justice — The regime attempted to assign DØGE staff members directly to this independent nonprofit organization, an unprecedented intrusion into a private civil society organization.

• Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) — Directly targeted by executive action for its work investigating †rump's conflicts of interest.

ƑBI — FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION

The ƒBI

J. Edgar Hoover ran the ƒBI for nearly five decades. He built secret files on civil rights leaders, politicians, journalists, and activists. He used those files to blackmail, intimidate, and destroy. His CØINTELPRØ program was specifically designed to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" political movements the government deemed threatening, movements that included the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the American Indian Movement. Congress dismantled those programs and built new legal guardrails specifically to prevent any future president from turning the ƒBI into a political weapon. †rump dismantled those guardrails.

In December 2025, a leaked DØJ memo revealed that the ƒBI was actively compiling "a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism," with a specific focus on organizations holding progressive views, including in the memo's own language, "adherence to radical gender ideology." Being pro-transgender was now a domestic terrorism marker in the eyes of the Federål Bǔreau of Iňvestigåtion. The 2026 National Counterterrorism Strategy formalized this further, directing the DØJ, ƒBI, and other national security agencies to prioritize the identification and neutralization of groups whose ideology is described as "anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist." Opposition to law enforcement, anti-capitalist thinking, "anti-Christianity," and "hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality" were offered as examples of the "anti-American sentiment" that could trigger federal scrutiny.

The strategy was not subtle. Legal scholars called it a direct echo of CØINTELPRØ. The Charity and Security Network concluded that the broad and vague terms in the strategy, terms like "anti-American" and "radically pro-transgender," are undefined, granting law enforcement discretionary power to target anyone the regime considers politically inconvenient. This is the architecture of political persecution: vague enough to catch anyone, specific enough in intent to leave no doubt who it is aimed at. The arrests confirm the architecture is already operational. Columbia University graduate and legal permanent resident Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by federal agents over his participation in campus protests, and Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk was detained over an op-ed she had written for her student newspaper. Neither was accused of violence. Both were targeted under Executive Orders 14161 and 14188, which direct federal agencies to investigate, detain, and deport noncitizens for their political speech, a policy nineteen state attorneys general have formally called an ideological deportation administration in direct violation of the First Amendment.

PUTTING IT IN PERSPECTIVE

If you have ever attended a protest, donated to a progressive nonprofit, expressed support for transgender rights, or voiced opposition to law enforcement overreach, the ƒBI's current guidelines place you in the category of potential domestic terrorism inquiry. You did not commit a crime. You exercised your First Amendment rights. Under the framework this regime has constructed, those are now the same thing. The last American president to use the federal law enforcement apparatus this broadly against his own citizens' political beliefs was Richard Nixon. Nixon resigned in disgrace.

FÇÇ — FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

The FÇÇ

Brendan Carr did not arrive at the Federal Communications Commission as a surprise. He had written the entire chapter on the FÇÇ in Prøject 2025, the blueprint †rump claimed not to know, while serving as an FÇÇ commissioner. The Intercept reported that Carr ignored warnings from the FÇÇ's own ethics attorney about the conflict of interest of a sitting government official writing a partisan political document and brushed off admonishments not to use his official title while doing so. †rump installed him as FÇÇ chair on January 20, 2025. Within two days, Carr had reinstated complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC for their coverage of the 2024 campaign. Within the first week, he had opened investigations into NPR and PBS.

What followed was a systematic assault on every major broadcast outlet in the country, every one of them except Fox News, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch, †rump's most powerful media ally. Common Cause documented that Carr opened FÇÇ investigations into ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, PBS, and the BBC, the last of which Carr does not even have legal jurisdiction to regulate. He threatened Disney's broadcast licenses over The View. He accused Comcast of violating its licenses over MSNBC's reporting on a wrongful deportation case. He publicly warned Paramount that a pending merger with Skydance Media would be affected by CBS's ongoing legal dispute with †rump, an explicit threat to use regulatory power to coerce a media company into editorial compliance. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented each of these actions in a running log that has continued to grow throughout 2025 and 2026.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats formally demanded documents from Carr in a congressional probe, calling the investigations "sham" proceedings designed to intimidate the news media. The FÇÇ's own inspector general received a letter from Democratic members of Congress documenting what they called censorship and abuse of office. The investigative record is extensive. The effect, media companies self-censoring, settling with the regime, modifying coverage under regulatory threat, is exactly what Prøject 2025 designed the FÇÇ to achieve.

DH$ — DĚPǍRTMĚNT OF HØMELǍND SEÇURITY

The DH$

The Depårtment of Hømelånd Seçurity was created after September 11, 2001, to protect Americans from foreign threats. Under Kristi Noem, it became an instrument for threatening Americans from within. The DH$ oversaw IÇE's domestic paramilitary operations. It oversaw the gutting of the civil rights offices that were supposed to constrain those operations. It oversaw the construction of a domestic counterterrorism framework that classifies American citizens as potential terrorists for holding political beliefs the †rump regime disagrees with.

When Senator Alex Padilla showed up at a DH$ press conference on IÇE detention conditions and began asking questions about the welfare of detained people, federal agents physically removed him from the room and briefly handcuffed him in front of cameras. When New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy issued a directive instructing state law enforcement not to cooperate with federal IÇE operations, AG Habba opened a federal investigation into Murphy and top state officials. When elected officials attempted to conduct lawful oversight inspections of IÇE detention facilities, facilities described in court proceedings as overcrowded and unsanitary, they were arrested.

The message was unmistakable: oversight is not permitted. Questions are not permitted. Anyone — elected official, journalist, senator, or citizen — who attempts to see what is happening inside the regime's detention system will be treated as an obstruction. A democracy in which the people's representatives cannot inspect the government's detention facilities is not a democracy. It is a police state operating with democratic branding. The †rump regime has formalized this posture through the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime statute designed for declared foreign conflicts, which it used to deport Venezuelan men with no process, no hearing, and no legal recourse, sending more than 200 of them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador. The Supreme Court ruled 7 to 2 that 24 hours notice with no ability to contest deportation failed due process, and †rump's response was to continue the deportations anyway.

The Machinery, Assembled

Step back and look at what has been built. The DØJ pursues political opponents on charges career prosecutors found insufficient to bring. The IR$ compiles enemies lists of Democratic donors and progressive nonprofits and feeds them to the DØJ for prosecution. The ƒBI maintains domestic terrorism watchlists populated by people whose only offense is their political beliefs. The FÇÇ opens investigations into every broadcast outlet critical of the president, threatening their licenses unless they comply. IÇE operates as a masked, unaccountable paramilitary force that has detained U.S. citizens, arrested elected officials, and killed Americans, with no meaningful accountability mechanism remaining since †rump fired the Inspectors General who would have investigated it. The DH$ provides the overarching legal framework that makes it all possible, classifying political dissent as a national security threat.

This is not a collection of independent policy decisions. It is a coordinated system. The Hěritåge Føundåtion called it a "second American Revolution." Elon Musk, who spent $75 million buying †rump's election and then received operational control of the federal government as his return on investment, called it "the most significant check on government power in American history." The Americans whose organizations are being defunded, whose leaders are being indicted, whose journalists are being arrested, whose bodies are being thrown against walls by masked agents with no names on their jackets have a different name for it. History has a name for it too.

Prøject 2025 provided the blueprint. †rump's appointments provided the personnel. Musk's billions provided the political capital to get him there. And the Republican Party — in Congress, in state legislatures, in the silence of officials who know better and say nothing — provided the permission. Part Four of this series documents the blueprint itself in detail: what Prøject 2025 says, what it has already done, and what it is still planning.

WHAT YOU CAN DO RIGHT NOW

The Machine Can Be Dismantled, But Only If People Know It Exists

Every agency documented in this article is currently operating with reduced oversight, gutted civil rights mechanisms, and political appointees in place of career professionals. But the antidote is not despair. It is exposure, accountability, and organized resistance at every level.

• Read and share the House Oversight Democrats' full documentation of DØGE's illegal actions at oversightdemocrats.house.gov.

• Support the organizations fighting these abuses in court: the ACLU, Campaign Legal Center, and Democracy Docket are all currently litigating against the regime's most egregious actions.

• If you have witnessed IÇE activity that appeared to involve excessive force, unlawful detention, or agents without visible identification, report it to the ACLU's immigrant rights division and to your congressional representatives.

• Contact your senators and demand hearings on FÇÇ overreach and the political weaponization of broadcast license threats. Your elected officials have the power to subpoena Brendan Carr. Demand they use it.

• Register and vote in the 2026 midterms. Every seat in the House of Representatives is up. A Democratic House means subpoena power, oversight hearings, and the ability to hold every agency documented in this article publicly accountable. vote.org

THE LONG CON — INVESTIGATIVE SERIES

Part I — Before the Big Lie, There Was the Man Who Told It

Part II — The Big Lie: 81 Million Votes, 64 Dismissed Cases, and the Words He Said in Private

Part III — The Weaponized Government (you are here)

Part IV — The Blueprint: What Prøject 2025 Says, What It Has Done, and What It Is Still Planning, coming next

Read the official FINAL REPORT, Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol, December 22, 2022,, 117th Congress Second Session, House Report 117-663 here.

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