Regime Change: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
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Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.
The Consolidation of Executive Power
In Regime Change, Haberman and Swan examine the first year of the second Trump administration to argue that the administration systematically dismantled traditional institutional guardrails to forge an unconstrained, imperial presidency. The book details how Trump and his inner circle, particularly Stephen Miller, have utilized emergency declarations, executive orders, and direct military action to circumvent Congress and the courts. This strategy, born from the frustrations of Trump’s first term, concentrated unprecedented power within the Oval Office, creating a presidency whose actions are limited less by law or precedent than by the president’s own fleeting whims. Haberman and Swan portray this consolidation as a deliberate and central project rather than as an accidental byproduct of a chaotic administration.
The administration’s most potent tool, the authors suggest, has been its aggressive and often dubious use of emergency powers. In his first hundred days, Trump issued more than 140 executive orders, many predicated on newly declared national emergencies. He declared an energy emergency despite record domestic oil production, a trade deficit emergency for a long-standing economic status quo, and a border “invasion” emergency even as the number of border crossings fell. These declarations provided the pretext for unilateral actions such as the Liberation Day tariffs, which imposed sweeping duties on global trade without congressional approval. This approach, the authors believe, reached its apex with the administration’s serious consideration of suspending the writ of habeas corpus, a foundational legal right. A confidential memo from Staff Secretary Will Scharf outlined the extreme rarity and dubious legality of such a move, noting that it had only been attempted unilaterally by Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War. Despite these warnings, the administration still used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a wartime statute—to summarily deport migrants, defying a federal judge’s order to ground the flights. By operating in such a manner, the authors hope to illustrate how the first year of the administration went beyond the normative parameters of the presidency.
Beyond domestic policy, the authors suggest, Trump has asserted his authority as commander-in-chief to initiate and escalate foreign conflicts without legislative consent. One of the most striking examples in the book is a secret military campaign of extrajudicial killings at sea. By designating Latin American drug cartels as “foreign terrorist organizations” (321), the administration justified using military drones and missiles to destroy suspected drug-smuggling boats, a campaign that Trump proudly announced on Truth Social. This redefinition of crime as terrorism allowed for lethal force outside any conventional legal framework. As such, the administration bypassed scrutiny and “simply asserted” that the gangs were terrorists, in spite of internal and external dissent that the reasoning used to reach this judgment was specious. This willingness to bypass established norms culminated in the launch of Operation Epic Fury, a major air and naval war against Iran. The decision was made with a small circle of advisors, over the private concerns of the vice president and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and was announced to the world via a social-media video, cementing the image of a presidency operating entirely on its own authority.
Ultimately, the book argues that four years out of office allowed Trump’s team to study the system’s vulnerabilities. As Trump himself told the authors, had he won in 2020, his “presidency could never have been as powerful in the second term as it has been in the third” (412). By redefining emergencies, ignoring judicial checks, and waging unilateral war, the administration has effectively demonstrated that many of the constraints on presidential power are norms, not laws, and that a president willing to shatter them can accumulate authority on a scale not seen in modern American history.
Loyalty at the Expense of Governance
Throughout Regime Change, a central theme is that the second Trump administration has valued absolute personal loyalty to the president above competence, experience, and institutional knowledge. The result of this, the book argues, is chaotic and often counterproductive governance. Haberman and Swan portray a system in which fealty has become the primary qualification for power, leading to the appointment of untested loyalists and the dismissal of seasoned officials. This prioritization of personal allegiance over policy expertise has transformed government agencies into instruments of the president’s will, often run by individuals chosen for their television presence or willingness to execute ill-conceived plans without question, ultimately undermining the administration’s own stated goals.
The cabinet selection process is used by the authors to introduce this new paradigm. Trump’s choices were dictated by an “acid test” of loyalty, particularly regarding the events of January 6. Experienced officials like Robert O’Brien were blacklisted for the minor offense of having praised former Vice President Mike Pence, who ignored Trump’s orders on the day in question. In contrast, unqualified but suitably sycophantic figures were elevated into positions of power. Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host, was chosen to lead the Department of Defense largely because “nobody’s ever looked better on camera” (14), as well as the fact that he had publicly defended soldiers accused of war crimes. Similarly, Kristi Noem was appointed secretary of the DHS despite Stephen Miller’s explicit warnings about her incompetence, simply because Trump felt “she’[d] been so good to [him]” (15). This transactional approach to staffing filled the highest levels of government with individuals whose primary skill was pleasing an audience of one, rather than managing complex federal agencies.
The consequences of this loyalty-first doctrine were most visible in the administration’s chaotic attempts at governance. Trump granted vast, unaccountable power to loyal outsiders, creating parallel structures that bypassed his own cabinet. The most disruptive example was Elon Musk’s DOGE. Given a presidential mandate to act as a “demolition man” with a “chainsaw,” Musk wreaked havoc across the federal government, attempting to fire air traffic controllers and gutting USAID without consulting the relevant secretaries or guarding against the consequences of the department’s actions. This led to a full-blown revolt in a cabinet meeting, where officials like Marco Rubio and Sean Duffy openly confronted Musk, forcing Trump to finally rein in the billionaire he had unleashed, a scene in which the personal whims of the president had sweeping consequences on the nature of the American government. A similar dynamic played out in foreign policy, where real-estate investor Steve Witkoff was appointed a special envoy to Russia and the Middle East, sidelining career diplomats and the official envoy, Keith Kellogg, and conducting high-stakes negotiations based on personal chemistry rather than strategic expertise. During these moments, traditional governance was sidelined in favor of the immediate impulses and feelings of Trump, feelings that were often conditioned, the authors suggest, on the respective loyalty of those involved. Importantly, the loyalty in question was to Trump, the authors suggest, rather than to the country or to the idea of good governance.
This system has produced chaos, Swan and Haberman suggest, but also made the administration vulnerable to manipulation by fringe figures who understand that loyalty is the only currency that matters. In one Oval Office meeting, political outsider Laura Loomer presented a binder of unsubstantiated claims against six National Security Council officials. Despite protests from National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, Trump, enraged by the alleged disloyalty, ordered him to “[j]ust fucking fire them” (154). The subsequent purge, based on little more than rumor, demonstrates how the administration’s obsession with fealty has created a government susceptible to internal purges driven by paranoia and misinformation, ultimately weakening the same institutions it is supposed to lead.
The Weaponization of the Justice System
Regime Change documents the transformation of the DOJ from an independent institution into a political weapon wielded for the president’s personal retribution. Haberman and Swan argue that the second Trump administration has systematically abandoned the post-Watergate norm of prosecutorial independence, openly using the threat of investigation and indictment to punish perceived enemies. This weaponization isn’t subtle or confined to back channels. Instead, the authors argue, it’s a declared policy, executed through presidential memoranda, public pressure campaigns, and the installation of loyalists in key law-enforcement positions, all aimed at turning the nation’s legal apparatus into an instrument of Trump’s personal and political vendettas.
In the book, the most direct manifestation of this idea was the administration’s campaign of intimidation against private law firms and individuals who had participated in investigations against Trump. The White House issued an executive order specifically targeting the law firm Paul, Weiss, which had employed a prosecutor who investigated Trump’s finances. The order threatened the firm’s ability to conduct business with the federal government and, by extension, that of its clients. This unprecedented move forced the firm’s chairman, Brad Karp, into a direct negotiation in the Oval Office, where he agreed to provide $40 million in pro bono legal services to settle the matter and save his firm from presidential retribution. This tactic was repeated with other firms and individuals, including former officials Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who were targeted with presidential memoranda directing the DOJ to investigate them for their perceived disloyalty during Trump’s first term. Each time a new deal was reached, the authors note, this was taken as “the new precedent” (136), creating a pattern by which the justice system was weaponized for the benefit of the administration.
Beyond these formal actions, Trump exerted a relentless and public pressure campaign on his own top justice officials to prosecute his political rivals. He constantly complained to aides that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche were failing to indict his enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. His complaints, the authors suggest, indicate that the persecution of political enemies was the remit of these positions and that failure to persecute said enemies constituted a failure, regardless of any other work conducted in the role. This pressure culminated in an accidental but revealing public post on Truth Social where Trump directly addressed “Pam,” stating that they couldn’t “delay any longer” on bringing charges against certain political opponents (307). This public directive, Swan and Haberman believe, shattered any remaining pretense of separation between the White House and the DOJ. To carry out his wishes, Trump appointed Lindsey Halligan, a former personal lawyer with no criminal prosecution experience, as a US attorney with the clear mandate to pursue these politically motivated cases, though they were ultimately dismissed by a judge for legal and procedural failings.
Finally, the administration expanded its definition of criminality to include political opposition, using the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk as a pretext for a broad crackdown on dissent. Guided by Stephen Miller, who declared the Democratic Party a “domestic extremist organization” (301), the White House issued National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7. This order directed the National Joint Terrorism Task Force to investigate and “disrupt” a wide range of left-wing nonprofit groups and activist networks, effectively equating constitutionally protected protest with domestic terrorism. By directing the nation’s counterterrorism apparatus against his political opponents, the authors suggest, Trump cemented the transformation of the justice system into a tool for suppressing dissent and consolidating his own power.
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