Trump announced he has ordered the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland to suppress protests outside immigration detention facilities — at least the third such deployment in just over eight months. Before this administration, the military had been used to quell civil unrest or enforce domestic law only 30 times in the nation's entire history. Trump’s routine use of the military in U.S. cities breaks sharply with American traditions and principles. We must not let these abuses start to feel normal, no matter how frequent they are becoming.

While political favoritism and self-dealing are not new to the presidency, this administration has taken the entanglement of money, public power, and personal gain to unprecedented extremes. After soliciting campaign contributions from fossil fuel executives, the president is now advancing industry-backed policies that come at the expense of millions of Americans. Major donors have also received pardons and favorable legal treatment. To restore trust and ensure that government serves the public good, not private profit, we urgently need stronger ethical rules, limits on the influence of big donors, and greater transparency.

The State Department has said that all 55 million visa holders in the United States will be subject to continuous surveillance for potential violations that could lead to deportation, including monitoring their social media. Tracking every digital move made by such a large population is unrealistic, and it represents a massive, troubling expansion of the surveillance of legal immigrants. A Brennan Center expert brief examines what this policy actually entails, the operational obstacles to carrying it out, and how the illusion of total oversight threatens free speech without improving security.