In First 100 Days, Trump Uses Power For Aggressive Political Payback

WASHINGTON, DC — When Donald Trump returned to the White House on January 20, he wasted no time turning campaign rhetoric into governing reality. Within hours of taking the oath of office, he signed an executive order directing his attorney general to investigate what he called the political “weaponization” of the Justice Department. It was the opening salvo in what would become a sweeping effort to use federal power against those he sees as enemies.

The very same day, Pentagon staff were told to remove a portrait of Mark Milley, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had become a Trump critic. That evening, Trump rescinded the Secret Service detail assigned to his former national security adviser, John Bolton, whose memoir had sharply criticized the president. Iran had allegedly threatened Bolton’s life, but Trump overruled the prior decision to protect him, according to Reuters.

Over the next 100 days, Trump has made good on his promise of political retribution—aggressively, swiftly, and with remarkable precision. Former prosecutors, intelligence officials, political opponents, and even entire states have been swept up in the president’s retaliatory campaign. According to Reuters, historians say no president in modern American history has used the machinery of government in such an openly punitive way.

“It’s not unusual for presidents to have enemies,” said Jeremi Suri, a presidential historian at the University of Texas at Austin, to Reuters. “What is unusual is for the president to use the entirety of the federal government, not simply to exclude someone, but to directly punish them.”

Targeted Investigations

Trump has leaned heavily on executive orders—traditionally tools of policy enforcement—to launch probes and impose sanctions on individuals and institutions. Within his first day, he revoked the security clearances of 50 former intelligence officials who had signed a 2020 letter linking Russian disinformation to reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop. No such Russian link has since emerged.

He also stripped clearances from President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton—all Democrats who have faced Trump in presidential elections. Trump’s team has claimed the moves are part of broader efforts to reform bloated government systems. Critics see something more targeted.

The Reuters report pointed out, the Trump administration has also fired or demoted dozens of Justice Department employees and FBI agents involved in previous investigations against him, including the Capitol riot probe and the special counsel’s inquiry into classified documents.

At a February speech inside DOJ headquarters, Trump denounced what he called “lies and abuses” by Special Counsel Jack Smith. His administration has since blocked the law firm where Smith once worked—Covington & Burling—from handling federal contracts, suspended their security clearances, and even floated sending Smith the executive order as a “souvenir,” Reuters reported.

Critics Purged

Unlike his first term, when some establishment Republicans resisted Trump’s more extreme inclinations, his second-term appointments have favored loyalists unlikely to push back. The result, experts say, is a president less encumbered by dissenting voices and more emboldened in his retaliatory ambitions.

Timothy Naftali, former director of the Nixon Presidential Library, told Reuters that while other presidents have punished rivals in subtler ways—through exclusion or media smears—Trump’s approach is different in both “ferocity and scope.” Nixon had a list, Naftali noted, but many of his more aggressive plans were thwarted. “Trump is executing them.”

That execution extends well beyond Washington. Following a tense exchange in a White House meeting, Trump ordered investigations into Maine Governor Janet Mills after she refused to comply with his transgender athlete policy. Within days, multiple federal agencies launched inquiries, froze school funding, and the Justice Department eventually filed a lawsuit against the state.

Brooke Rollins, Trump’s agriculture secretary, informed Mills in writing: “This is only the beginning.”

Retribution

Former administration officials who once served in his own cabinet have also found themselves in the crosshairs. Earlier this month, Trump signed an order targeting Christopher Krebs, his former cybersecurity chief who disputed the president’s claims of 2020 election fraud, and Miles Taylor, a Homeland Security official who penned an anonymous book critical of Trump.

“I think he’s guilty of treason,” Trump said of Taylor. “But we’ll find out.”

Taylor responded on X (formerly Twitter): “Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous.”

Critics and legal experts warn that what Trump frames as reform may, in fact, mark a chilling new era for presidential power—one in which political retaliation is not only normalized but institutionalized.