Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump

The administration’s retribution campaign continued, targeting New York Attorney General Letitia James, who had successfully prosecuted a civil-fraud case against Trump and his company in 2024. The lawsuit, which threatened Trump’s wealth and business empire, placed James at the top of his enemy list. To carry out the vendetta, the administration enlisted Bill Pulte, an heir to a homebuilding fortune and a Trump donor who had sought the position of secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development but ultimately accepted the directorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Pulte used his position to make a criminal referral to the DOJ, accusing James of mortgage fraud.

The chapter then details another front in the war against perceived disloyalty, orchestrated by far-right activist Laura Loomer. During an Oval Office meeting, Loomer presented Trump with a list of national-security officials she claimed to be disloyal. Her evidence was scant, but Trump was enraged and, over the objections of National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, ordered the officials fired. Among the targets were National Security Agency Director Timothy Haugh and Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Alex Wong. The episode revealed the administration’s new standard for personnel decisions, whereby unsubstantiated accusations from an internet provocateur could override formal vetting processes.

The incident contributed to the downfall of Waltz, who was already on shaky ground with Trump’s inner circle. Trump reassigned him to be the ambassador to the United Nations, a move framed as a promotion. Secretary of State Marco Rubio was then given the additional title of national security advisor, further consolidating his power. The authors note the growing influence of Roger Stone, a longtime political operative and mentor to figures like Pulte and Loomer—though Stone and Loomer would later turn against each other—whose fringe ideas now found a receptive audience in the second-term White House.

This chapter details the administration’s exploration of radical executive powers to implement its mass-deportation policy, focusing on the internal debate over suspending the writ of habeas corpus. The idea was championed by senior advisor Stephen Miller, who saw it as a way to bypass judicial review for deportees. White House Staff Secretary Will Scharf, a conservative lawyer, wrote a confidential memo to Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, outlining the extreme and historically dubious nature of such an action. Scharf’s memo detailed that habeas corpus, a fundamental legal right, had been suspended only four times in US history, almost always with congressional approval during times of war or rebellion.

Despite these warnings, the administration proceeded with a plan to deport migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. To do so, Trump quietly invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a rarely used wartime statute, to justify summary removals without hearings. The move was immediately challenged in court, and a federal judge ordered the deportation flights halted. The administration defied the order, and three days later, the DOJ claimed in court that the third plane, which departed anyway, carried only people with final deportation orders.

The legal battle intensified around the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national with a non-removal order who was mistakenly placed on one of the flights. When the Supreme Court directed the administration to facilitate his return, Trump and Miller effectively ignored the order. The defiance of court orders and the public discussion of suspending habeas corpus highlighted the administration’s willingness to dismantle legal guardrails. By the end of the year, the administration reinterpreted immigration laws to deny bond hearings to thousands of detainees, leading to a massive increase in the number of non-criminal immigrants held in indefinite detention, with at least 31 people dying in ICE detention centers that year.

The authors paint a portrait of the chaotic and unstructured nature of the Oval Office in Trump’s second term. The president’s days were filled with improvisational meetings where policy discussions were mixed with gossip, grievances, and personal projects, such as planning a new White House ballroom. Decision-making was confined to a small, insular group of loyalists led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, often leaving senior officials in key government agencies in the dark. Trump, now the oldest person ever sworn in as president, showed signs of aging, including fatigue and hearing problems, though his personal dominance often masked these issues.

On the world stage, Trump’s transactional and personality-driven approach to foreign policy proved ineffective against disciplined adversaries. China’s President Xi Jinping countered Trump’s massive tariffs with retaliatory measures that exposed US economic vulnerabilities, forcing the administration into a temporary truce. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin stalled negotiations over the war in Ukraine, leading Trump to privately dismiss him as a “bullshit artist.” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu persistently pressured Trump to join a military campaign against Iran, complicating the administration’s diplomatic efforts.

The chapter also highlights significant conflicts of interest. The government of the United Arab Emirates invested $2 billion in USD1, the crypto stablecoin issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm run by the Trump and Witkoff families, with Trump’s sons Eric and Donald Jr. serving as senior executives and Witkoff’s son Zach running daily operations. Shortly after, Trump accepted a $400 million private 747 luxury aircraft from Qatar as a gift, which he said would be retrofitted to serve as Air Force One and later transferred to his presidential library. Despite clear ethical and constitutional concerns raised by the Foreign Emoluments Clause, Trump defended the gift and attacked his critics.

The focus shifts to the escalating crisis with Iran, as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu pressured Trump to support a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. While Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, engaged in indirect talks with Iran, Netanyahu argued that the window for action was closing. The anti-interventionist wing of the MAGA movement, including figures like Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, lobbied Trump to avoid war, reflecting a growing divide within his base. Vice President Vance also privately expressed concern about being drawn into a regime-change conflict.

Despite these pressures and his own stated desire for a diplomatic deal, Trump’s patience with Iran wore thin. When negotiations stalled in early June, Netanyahu informed Trump that Israel would attack. Trump didn’t use his leverage to stop the Israeli prime minister. Initially, the White House issued a muted statement to distance the US from the Israeli strikes, hoping to avoid Iranian retaliation against American forces. As news coverage portrayed the initial Israeli bombing runs as a stunning success, however, Trump, watching on Fox News, began to claim credit and publicly threatened Iran.

Influenced by the positive media coverage and his own instincts, Trump decided to fully commit US forces. He authorized Operation Midnight Hammer, a targeted strike using 12 of the massive 30,000-pound “bunker buster” bombs to destroy Iran’s fortified Fordo nuclear facility. After the successful strike, an exuberant Trump publicly mused about “Regime Change” on his social-media platform Truth Social, contradicting his administration’s official position. The episode, the authors suggest, illustrates Trump’s reactive decision-making and his ability to defy the ideological expectations of his own supporters.

This chapter details the Trump administration’s culture wars against major American institutions, beginning with a takeover of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where Trump installed himself as board chairman. The primary target, however, became the Smithsonian Institution. The conflict began when Trump announced that he was firing Kim Sajet, the director of the National Portrait Gallery—though it wasn’t at all clear that he had the authority to do so—over his official portrait and its accompanying label mentioning his two impeachments.

The move sparked a battle with the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, which maintained the sole authority over personnel. The board’s secretary, Lonnie G. Bunch III, the first Black person to hold the position, found himself at the center of the storm. At board meetings, Trump’s allies—Vice President Vance and Representative Carlos Giménez—threatened to defund the Smithsonian unless Sajet was fired. While the board initially passed a resolution asserting its authority, Sajet resigned days later to de-escalate the conflict.

The administration’s campaign intensified, guided by a new executive order to remove “improper ideology” from federally funded institutions. The White House challenged an upcoming exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery by artist Amy Sherald, who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait. An administration official objected to a painting depicting the Statue of Liberty as a Black transgender woman. When the Smithsonian proposed adding a video debating trans rights alongside the artwork, Sherald canceled the entire exhibition in protest. The White House sent a letter to Bunch announcing a sweeping, top-to-bottom review of all Smithsonian content, signaling a massive overhaul of the nation’s premier cultural institution.

This chapter examines Trump’s unprecedented control over the Republican-led Congress, a stark contrast to the frequent resistance he faced from his own party during his first term. The central example is the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, a massive piece of legislation that included deep cuts to Medicaid and a $5 trillion increase to the debt limit. Despite grave concerns from fiscal conservatives, Speaker Mike Johnson ensured that the bill aligned with Trump’s wishes.

Trump’s dominance was maintained through a combination of personal relationships and ruthless intimidation. He granted extraordinary access to rank-and-file members, rewarding them with personal calls and invitations, while his political machine, run by Susie Wiles, Chris LaCivita, and Tony Fabrizio, was prepared to crush any dissent. This operation, funded by a torrent of post-election donations from corporate leaders, threatened primary challenges against any Republican who defied the president.

The strategy proved effective. Senator Joni Ernst, who initially questioned Defense Secretary nominee Pete Hegseth, was subjected to a brutal online campaign and ultimately fell in line. Representative Thomas Massie, who voted against the Big Beautiful Bill, was immediately targeted by a well-funded super PAC. Fearing a similar fate, Senator Thom Tillis, who opposed the bill due to its impact on his state’s rural hospitals, announced his retirement after being attacked by Trump. The authors depict a Republican Party transformed, with members competing to offer lavish tributes to Trump while the separation of powers eroded.

The administration was engulfed by a self-inflicted crisis over the so-called “Epstein files,” a collection of documents that supposedly contained illicit, secret information about the true workings of sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein. Before the DOJ memo was released, Elon Musk had already publicly accused Trump of being in the Epstein files, helping fuel the base’s expectations. Then, in July 2025, the DOJ under Attorney General Pam Bondi released a memo stating no client list exists. The memo backfired spectacularly, enraging the MAGA base, who saw it as a betrayal and a cover-up.

The White House was stuck. In a series of tense Situation Room meetings, senior officials clashed over how to respond. Vice President Vance, seeing the damage to the MAGA coalition, argued for full transparency, urging the release of all government files on Epstein, even those containing unsubstantiated allegations against Trump. Other aides, led by Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, feared the political fallout and resisted. The infighting extended to the DOJ, where Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, furious at being made the public face of the “cover-up,” erupted at Bondi and stormed out of a meeting with senior staff.

Trump himself, whose past friendship with Epstein was considered a major vulnerability, grew increasingly angry and defensive, snapping at aides and lashing out at his own supporters on Truth Social. The crisis deepened when The Wall Street Journal prepared a story about a lewd, hand-drawn birthday card that Trump allegedly sent to Epstein. The administration was unable to quell a conspiracy it once encouraged and facing a congressional subpoena demanding the very files it was desperate to keep hidden.

The authors detail Trump’s second-term fixation on gaining control over the Federal Reserve, an independent institution that had thwarted him during his first term. His primary target was Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom Trump blamed for raising interest rates and whom he was determined to fire. After advisors warned that firing Powell would trigger a market meltdown and a likely Supreme Court battle, Trump attempted a different approach, inviting Powell to the Oval Office to personally pressure him to cut rates. Powell politely but firmly rebuffed him, citing inflation risks from Trump’s own tariff policies.

Frustrated, Trump resorted to bureaucratic sabotage. On a whim, he ordered his aides to find a way to halt a $2.5 billion renovation of the Fed’s headquarters. Aides Russ Vought and James Blair discovered that the National Capital Planning Commission oversaw the project, so Trump immediately appointed them and Staff Secretary Will Scharf to take it over. They used their new positions to harass the Fed, demanding reviews and comparing the building’s cost to the Palace of Versailles.

When this failed to dislodge Powell, Trump allies, led by FHFA Director Bill Pulte, launched a public campaign against Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve as a Fed governor. Based on Pulte’s unsubstantiated accusations of mortgage fraud, Trump posted a Truth Social letter addressed to Cook declaring her “hereby removed,” citing Section 242 of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 as authority to remove a governor “for cause.” The move was an unprecedented assault on the Fed’s independence. Powell stood by Cook, keeping her on the payroll as she filed a lawsuit to fight her removal, setting up a legal battle that would determine the future of the central bank’s autonomy from presidential control.

This chapter chronicles Trump’s pivot from a tech skeptic to a fervent champion of artificial intelligence (AI). The transformation began in June 2024 after a demonstration of OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which captivated him with its creative and practical capabilities. He quickly saw the AI revolution, with its massive energy and construction needs for data centers, as a way to fuel an American manufacturing boom and run the economy hot.

As president, Trump abandoned the cautious regulatory approach of the Biden administration and forged a powerful alliance with key figures in the tech industry, most notably Jensen Huang, the CEO of the chip developer Nvidia. Trump was dazzled by Huang and saw Nvidia’s dominance in the global chip market as a key point of leverage for the US. He rolled back many of the export controls on high-end chips, allowing Nvidia to sell to countries worldwide, including a controversial arrangement to sell older-generation chips to China with the US government taking a percentage of the revenue.

The administration’s full-throated embrace of AI created a new fracture in the MAGA base, with figures like Tucker Carlson and Steve Bannon warning of its dangers. Trump ignored them, pushing an AI “action plan” that was essentially a tech-industry wish list. His new interventionist approach to the industry culminated in a move against the semiconductor company Intel. After a Fox Business segment raised concerns about CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s ties to China, Trump publicly demanded his resignation. In a subsequent Oval Office meeting, Trump offered to “cure” Tan’s problem in exchange for the US government receiving a 10% ownership stake in the company. The deal was made, solidifying a new model of corporate-state relations driven by the president’s whims.