U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks to the White House Religious Liberty Commission at the Museum of the Bible, in Washington, D.C., U.S., September 8, 2025.
Two things became yet more clear this week about Donald Trump’s personal vendettas and about what he is forcing to be official policy of the United States towards those he holds in contempt.
First, rather than heed the message of an angry American electorate that anti-democratic use of government for personal gain has gone too far, Trump is doubling down. On successive days, Team Trump has acknowledged it is seeking to investigate Fed board member Lisa A. Cooke, despite court findings stopping him, and to consider criminal charges against former aide Cassidy Hutchinson for lying to Congress in testimony about Jan. 6 behaviors.
The Trump government refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing with ICE agents shooting seven rifle bullets to wound a migrant suspect in a car that contained a five-year-old on a crowded residential street at school pickup time on Thursday. Instead, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin cited the criminal record of the migrant, criticized New York City’s “sanctuary” policies for migrants and never acknowledged the public dangers involved in ICE tactics.
Then Trump and the State Department set sanctions against “any companies doing business” with the International Criminal Court. The timing of the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize to Navi Pillay, a former judge on the court, for her role in declaring Israeli responses in Gaza to be “genocidal” made clear that sanctions were a Trump-directed personal response to choosing Pillay for the international honor.
Amid a barrage of declarations of the silly – anyone using the term AI rather than Superintelligence now is a Trump “enemy” — to the seriousness of overlooking outright pay-for-access schemes detailed by The Wall Street Journal and others involving U.S. Ambassador to Greece Kimberly Gilfoyle, Trump was telling us in a plain social media post: “I can do whatever I want,” regardless of law, propriety, fairness, ethics, or simple humanitarian concern.
A Next Phase
We have entered the next phase of the Trump presidency in which a cornered egotist weighed down with untenable policies of his own making is spreading misery so far and so fast that even traditionally Republican strongholds are fortifying themselves for possible losses in the elections only a few weeks away.
If the previous phase was marked by authoritarian pushes against federal employees and trust in institutions, in acting less than openly in favoring personal loyalty over the power of Congress and the courts, this new era is a Trump free-for-all attack on anything that annoys him in the moment or over decades.
Unsheathing the Trump prosecutorial sword now, before the elections should tell us why Trump seems not to care about plummeting polls or even minor revolt by candidates he has selected or endorsed. An untethered Trump who cares so little about court orders that he continues to bar selected reporters and news organizations from the Oval Office or Air Force One despite legal bars against doing so is much more likely to unleash havoc on a level we have not witnessed against voting, vote counts and certifications.
There already is prediction market voting on insurrection attempts for Jan. 3, 2027, when Congress will have to certify the results of 50 state elections.
The case against Lisa Cooke, now taking the form of a nonjudicial “committee of inquiry” of Trump’s choosing will consider mortgage fraud charges that went nowhere before grand juries that heard complaints and found no evidence. She could be fired as a result or perhaps referred anew for prosecution – all because she has voted as a Fed board member against lowering borrowing rates.
Wide numbers of legal analysts say the potential case against Cassidy Hutchinson is weak at best and uncertain as to how to show her testimony was “lying,” when multiple court trials resulted in 1600 convictions on Jan. 6 charges – all thrown out in a single order by Trump, who wants to rewrite history. However it proceeds, this case will result in harassment and expense for someone who stood up to report the events of the day, largely as told to her.
Likewise, the international court sanctions announced have little force of law.
Having the evidence is not the point for Trump, of course, it is having the power to act as if he has the evidence.
Election Timing
What makes these developments remarkable is the timing, just as early voting has gotten underway in several states and a few weeks before Election Day. Trump’s rally tours, invented party convention, strange handling of campaign money have not moved any political needles, say his own chosen candidates.
Trump has demanded that people pretend he is on the ballot out of the misguided belief that millions of fans will enroll anew in the unthinking loyalty campaign he demands. Poll after poll – a guide that never accounts for turnout – shows the opposite. Multiple leaks from Texas Republican Senate candidate Ken Paxton talking with his donors instead suggest that from the candidate viewpoint, it is Trump’s policies, tariffs, war with Iran and openness to what the rest of us call corruption that is bringing his race – and others’ – to a screeching halt short of victory.
Trump has neutered Congress, ignored the courts, eschewed military and intelligence advice about war and economics. Trump has lied about the effects of his policies. Trump has spent his time on personal glorification projects, money-making off the Oval Office, and on rebuilding history to see him in a sainted light.
Meanwhile, we have active planning about new strikes in Iran towards the same unachievable goals with the same uncooperative set of enemies. We have Trump playing footsie with Russia and even offering to sell China some of our top fighter aircraft. We have open speculation about the mental health state of the president.
The label that comes to mind for this new chapter is Desperation, in which a lawless, egotistical, armed and dangerous leader who holds his own people in contempt, needs to show us his power in expectation that we quake and fear.
Get a better mirror.
Terry H. Schwadron retired as a senior editor at The New York Times, Deputy Managing Editor at The Los Angeles Times and leadership jobs at The Providence (RI) Journal-Bulletin. He was part of a Pulitzer Gold Medal team in Los Angeles, and his team part of several Pulitzers in New York.
