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whistleblowers
Trump's First 100 Days of Unchecked Power
It's been a lawless few months, but there's some good news here. Through times like these, we can identify ways to make our democracy work better — and for the first time in our country’s history, make it work for everyone.
Apr 30, 2025
For nearly 250 years, the American system of government has been built to guard against an authoritarian leader. Our Constitution created a careful balance of powers among the branches of government to ward off tyranny. But just 100 days into President Donald Trump’s second term, we are seeing this system bend to the point of breaking under the weight of a willful disregard for the rule of law.
We must take this moment to finally install more concrete guardrails against corruption and abuse of power.
America’s system of checks and balances was never meant to depend on trust alone. It was designed to be tested and strengthened. We have relied on key tools to rein in executive overreach: a vigilant Congress, a strong judiciary, an engaged citizenry informed by public interest groups, an apolitical civil service, independent inspectors general, meaningful whistleblower protections, and ethics laws, to name several.
Some of these safeguards are holding. Right now, civil society is carrying much of the burden. Investigative journalists, watchdog groups, academic institutions, and advocacy organizations are doing the work that too many public officials have abandoned. They are shining lights into corners where the government prefers darkness, informing the public and pressuring institutions to act.
The problem isn’t just that guardrails are being destroyed; some have always been missing.
The courts, too, have shown signs of resilience. Despite last year’s Supreme Court ruling expanding presidential immunity, which chipped away at the judiciary’s role as a check on executive power, judges have issued rulings that uphold our basic constitutional principles. That said, recent moves from the judicial branch are alarming. They have done so even in the face of hostile rhetoric and open defiance.
These bright spots are important, but they are the exception, not the rule. We must confront a harsh reality: Many safeguards have proven extremely fragile. If we hope to emerge from this crisis with our democracy intact, we must also confront what has failed and what we must change.
Congressional oversight has become theatrical at best and nonexistent at worst. This is especially true when the president’s party holds power. And the legislative branch has let the executive branch encroach on its power of the purse and diminish its role in the policymaking process. That dynamic must change. Members of Congress need to remember they work for their constituents. That means scrutinizing the executive branch regardless of which party controls it, holding more hearings back in members’ districts, and creating more accessible public forums.
An apolitical and secure civil service has long been a stabilizing force in our government, ensuring that laws are implemented faithfully and without bias. But mass firings and politically motivated purges are dismantling this safeguard. When loyalty to the president is prized over competence or integrity, the system begins to collapse from within. To protect their essential work, we must strengthen legal safeguards for civil servants and insulate them from political retaliation.
Inspectors general — the independent watchdogs tasked with rooting out misconduct across federal agencies — have been fundamentally disempowered. President Trump has removed many of them without explanation or cause, threatening a critical line of oversight. Congress must not only rebuild but strengthen the independence of inspectors general. That may look like moving them to the legislative branch, where they could be protected from executive interference.
The work of everyone who cares about democracy... matters more than ever. Not just for today’s crisis, but also to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
Whistleblowers, another bedrock of internal accountability, are often our first and best defense against corruption. But their protections are increasingly toothless after the president illegally fired the head of the very office designed to uphold them. This move costs us the information we need to root out corruption and abuse.
The problem isn’t just that guardrails are being destroyed; some have always been missing. Ethics laws for the most powerful people in government are far too weak. Both the president and vice president are exempt from the conflict-of-interest rules that apply to the federal workforce. Members of Congress can buy and trade stocks even though their decisions often move markets. And Elon Musk’s role in the White House demonstrates how glaring financial conflicts can sow deep distrust in government actions. We need stronger laws at the highest levels so the public can be confident their government is working in their interest.
None of these failures exist in isolation. Each one enables the other. Without consequences, the last abuse of power is just practice for the next.
But here’s the good news: the reverse is also true. Strengthen any of these pillars, and you strengthen the whole system. That’s why our work — the work of everyone who cares about democracy — matters more than ever. Not just for today’s crisis, but also to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
We can make our democracy work — and for the first time in our country’s history, make it work for everyone. But only if we fight for it.
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Bondi Shreds Biden-Era Protections for Journalists as Trump White House Hunts Leakers
One critic warned that President Donald Trump "almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to."
Apr 28, 2025
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has scrapped a Biden-era policy that sharply restricted the Justice Department's ability to seize journalists' records and force them to testify in leak investigations, an alarming move that press freedom advocates said carries dire implications for reporters and whistleblowers.
In an internal memo first reported Friday by CBS News, Bondi wrote that the Justice Department "will not tolerate unauthorized disclosures that undermine President [Donald] Trump's policies, victimize government agencies, and cause harm to the American people."
"The perpetrators of these leaks aid our foreign adversaries by spilling sensitive and sometimes classified information onto the Internet. The damage is significant and irreversible," Bondi continued. "Accountability, including criminal prosecutions, is necessary to set a new course."
As part of a renewed crackdown on leaks, Bondi said she is issuing revised Justice Department regulations stating that media outlets "must answer subpoenas" related to efforts to uncover sources of unauthorized disclosures within the federal government.
"The policy contemplates the use of subpoenas, court orders, and search warrants to compel production of information and testimony by and relating to members of the news media, subject to the Privacy Protection Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000aa, and the approval of the department's leadership in some instances," the memo states. "The attorney general must also approve efforts to question or arrest members of the news media."
"Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history—from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11—was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF)—a group co-founded by the late Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked classified documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers—noted in a statement that Bondi's memo followed "news that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard asked the Department of Justice to investigate recent leaks to reporters."
Seth Stern, FPF's advocacy director, said Bondi's move was made possible by lawmakers' failure to pass the PRESS Act, bipartisan legislation would have codified into law rules prohibiting the federal government from forcing journalists or telecom companies from disclosing information about their sources.
"Every Democrat who put the PRESS Act on the back burner when they had the opportunity to pass a bipartisan bill codifying journalist-source confidentiality should be ashamed," said Stern. "Everyone predicted this would happen in a second Trump administration, yet politicians in a position to prevent it prioritized empty rhetoric over putting up a meaningful fight."
"Because of them," Stern added, "a president who threatens journalists with prison rape for protecting their sources and says reporting critically on his administration should be illegal can and almost certainly will abuse the legal system to investigate and prosecute his critics and the journalists they talk to."
After his victory in the 2024 presidential election, Trump instructed Republicans to block the PRESS Act, writing on his social media platform, "REPUBLICANS MUST KILL THIS BILL!"
Since the start of his second term, Trump has launched what Reporters Without Borders (RSF) characterized as "a monumental assault on press freedom," including by engaging in "legal intimidation" against media outlets.
"When you step back and look at the whole picture, the pattern of blows to press freedom is quite clear," Clayton Weimers, executive director of RSF North America, said late last week. "RSF refuses to accept this massive attack on press freedom as the new normal. We will continue to call out these assaults against the press and use every means at our disposal to fight back against them. We urge every American who values press freedom to do the same."
Earlier this month, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a safety advisory to journalists planning to visit the United States, warning "journalists who are at high risk of being detained at the border" to "consider leaving their personal and/or work devices at home and instead carry separate devices and a new SIM card."
Bruce Brown, president of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said in a statement following Bondi's memo that "strong protections for journalists serve the American public by safeguarding the free flow of information."
"Some of the most consequential reporting in U.S. history—from Watergate to warrantless wiretapping after 9/11—was and continues to be made possible because reporters have been able to protect the identities of confidential sources and uncover and report stories that matter to people across the political spectrum," Brown said.
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'Technofascism': Whistleblower Says DOGE Goons May Have Taken Private Labor Data
"If the plundering of Americans' data wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical threats and surveillance... takes this to another level," said the whistleblower's attorney.
Apr 15, 2025
Despite finding a letter with "threatening language, sensitive personal information, and overhead pictures of him walking his dog" taped to his door, a technology expert at a federal labor agency has become a whistleblower, urging U.S. officials to investigate data practices by President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
NPR on Tuesday published a lengthy report about whistleblower Daniel Berulis' submission to Congress and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel sounding the alarm over DOGE employees' recent activities at the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—which the president also has tried to effectively shut down, leading to court battles.
While DOGE didn't respond to NPR's request for comment, Tim Bearese, the NLRB's acting press secretary, claimed that the Musk-led entity had not requested access to the agency's system, and the NLRB had not granted it. He also said the agency investigated after Berulis raised concerns but "determined that no breach of agency systems occurred."
"As an agency protecting employee rights, the NLRB respects its employee's right to bring whistleblower claims to Congress and the Office of Special Counsel, and the agency looks forward to working with those entities to resolve the complaints," he added.
Those who spoke with NPR struck a much different tone. The reporting features interviews with Bearese, his attorney—Andrew Bakaj of Whistleblower Aid—and dozens of other experts in tech, law enforcement, the labor movement, and government. It adds to mounting worries about what DOGE is doing across various agencies under the reign of the richest man on Earth.
"I can't attest to what their end goal was or what they're doing with the data," Berulis—who found evidence of up to around 10 gigabytes of data, or the equivalent of a full stack of encyclopedias, leaving the NLRB system—told NPR. "But I can tell you that the bits of the puzzle that I can quantify are scary... This is a very bad picture we're looking at."
There's always been reason to believe DOGE was hacking govt systems. Now a whistleblower has substantiated it at NLRB, precisely the kind of data compromise labor unions worried about when they sued re DOL.
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— emptywheel ( @emptywheel.bsky.social) April 15, 2025 at 6:26 AM
"The amount of data that was taken is the equivalent to a section of the New York Public Library, and the amount of people it could impact is in the hundreds of millions," Berulis noted in a Tuesday statement from Whistleblower Aid. "Our information systems appear to have been assaulted, and someone with the capacity and mandate to investigate needs to do so."
According to NPR, labor law experts "fear that if the data gets out, it could be abused, including by private companies with cases before the agency that might get insights into damaging testimony, union leadership, legal strategies and internal data on competitors—Musk's SpaceX among them. It could also intimidate whistleblowers who might speak up about unfair labor practices, and it could sow distrust in the NLRB's independence."
Russ Handorf, who spent a decade in cybersecurity roles at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, reviewed Berulis' records and told NPR that "all of this is alarming" and "if this was a publicly traded company, I would have to report this [breach] to the Securities and Exchange Commission."
Sharon Block, a former NLRB board member and now executive director of Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy, said that "there is nothing that I can see about what DOGE is doing that follows any of the standard procedures for how you do an audit that has integrity and that's meaningful and will actually produce results that serve the normal auditing function, which is to look for fraud, waste, and abuse."
"The mismatch between what they're doing and the established, professional way to do what they say they're doing... that just kind of gives away the store, that they are not actually about finding more efficient ways for the government to operate," she told NPR.
It's not just DOGE affiliates, including Musk, who may have access to the data taken from federal agencies, including the NLRB. NPR reported that "if the data isn't properly protected after it leaves the agency or if DOGE left a digital door open to the agency itself, data could also be exposed to potential sale or theft by criminals or foreign adversaries."
In Whistleblower Aid's statement, Bakaj said that "what is particularly alarming is that in addition to private data being exfiltrated out of NLRB systems—and within minutes of DOGE personnel creating service/user accounts in NLRB systems—someone or something within Russia appeared to attempt to login using all of the correct credentials (e.g. usernames/passwords) on several occasions. This near real-time unlimited access by Russian actors heightens concerns to a level not previously seen and could have destroyed the agency's entire infrastructure in a matter of minutes."
"If the compromise of American's data wasn't concerning enough, the targeted, physical threats and surveillance of my client takes this to another level," he added. "It is time for Congress to act and investigate to keep our democracy from slipping away, something that could take generations to repair."
While NPR readers called the report "sickening" and shared warnings of "technofascism," there is also some optimism in this story: Berulis hopes that he not only prompts a probe but also provides a roadmap for other government employees to come forward.
"I believe with all my heart that this goes far beyond just case data," the whistleblower said. "I know there are [people] at other agencies who have seen similar behavior. I firmly believe that this is happening maybe even to a greater extent at other agencies."
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