FREE SPEECH

President Trump has persistently articulated that the outcome of the 2020 election was compromised by a conspiracy among social media and Big Tech platforms to suppress conservative voices and stifle free expression. Consequently, in his second term, the President’s primary inclination has been to leverage federal governmental authority to restrict the speech of ordinary Americans, as well as foreigners seeking entry into the United States. In September, Donald Trump enacted National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7), a directive mandating federal law enforcement and intelligence personnel to target "anti-American" activities, including any "tax crimes" perpetrated by extremist groups defrauding the IRS. Journalist Ken Klippenstein’s extensive reporting revealed that the directive’s focus extends to individuals expressing "opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology," alongside "anti-Americanism," "anti-capitalism," and "anti-Christianity." Earlier this month, Attorney General Pam Bondi issued a directive to the FBI, instructing it to compile a registry of Americans whose activities "may constitute domestic terrorism." Bondi also mandated the establishment of a "cash reward system" to incentivize public reporting of suspected domestic terrorist activities. The memo explicitly defines domestic terrorism to encompass "opposition to law and immigration enforcement" or support for "radical gender ideology." Furthermore, the Trump administration is planning to implement social media scrutiny for tourists, intensifying existing travel restrictions for foreign visitors. A notice from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) indicates that tourists from nations including Britain, Australia, France, and Japan will soon be compelled to disclose five years of their social media history. CBP also intends to collect "several high value data fields," encompassing applicants’ email addresses from the preceding decade, their phone numbers used within the last five years, and details of their family members. Wired reported in October that the CBP conducted more device searches at the border in the initial three months of the year than in any prior quarter. These new CBP requirements lend substance to Executive Order 14161, which, under the guise of combating "foreign terrorist and public safety threats," bestows broad new authorities that civil rights organizations warn could facilitate a revived travel ban and expanded visa rejections or deportations based on perceived ideology. Critics contend that the order’s ambiguous language regarding "public safety threats" allows for the targeting of individuals based on their political views, national origin, or religion. Currently, at least 35 nations are subject to some form of U.S. travel restrictions.

CRIME AND CORRUPTION

In February, President Trump ordered executive branch agencies to cease enforcement of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, effectively halting foreign bribery investigations and even permitting "remedial actions" for past enforcement efforts deemed "inappropriate." The White House also dissolved the Kleptocracy Asset Recovery Initiative and the KleptoCapture Task Force—units that had proven instrumental in corruption cases and the seizure of assets from sanctioned Russian oligarchs—and diverted resources away from white-collar crime investigations. Also in February, Attorney General Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force, an entity established during Trump’s first term to counter foreign government influence on American politics. In March 2025, Reuters reported that several U.S. national security agencies had suspended coordinated efforts to counter Russian sabotage, disinformation, and cyberattacks. Former President Joe Biden had previously directed his national security team to form working groups to monitor these issues, following intelligence warnings of escalating Russian shadow warfare against Western nations. In a challenge to prosecutorial independence, Trump’s Justice Department ordered prosecutors to drop the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams. The immediate repercussions included the resignation of multiple senior officials in protest, the reassignment of the case, and widespread disarray within the Southern District of New York (SDNY), historically one of the nation’s most vigorous offices for pursuing public corruption, white-collar crime, and cybercrime. Regarding cryptocurrency, the administration has shifted SEC regulators from enforcement to promoting an industry rife with scams, fraud, and rug-pulls. The SEC in 2025 systematically retreated from enforcement actions against cryptocurrency operators, dropping significant cases against Coinbase, Binance, and others. Perhaps the most concerning instance involves Justin Sun, the Chinese-born founder of the cryptocurrency company Tron. In 2023, the SEC charged Sun with fraud and market manipulation. Sun subsequently invested $75 million in the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial (WLF) tokens, became the top holder of the $TRUMP memecoin, and secured a seat at an exclusive dinner with the President. In late February 2025, the SEC dropped its lawsuit. Sun promptly took Tron public through a reverse merger arranged by Dominari Securities, a firm with ties to the Trump family. Democratic lawmakers have urged the SEC to investigate what they term "concerning ties to President Trump and his family" as potential conflicts of interest and foreign influence. In October, President Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. In 2023, Zhao and his company pleaded guilty to failing to prevent money laundering on the platform. Binance paid a $4 billion fine, and Zhao served a four-month sentence. As CBS News noted last month, shortly after Zhao’s pardon application, he was at the center of a significant deal that brought the Trump family’s WLF into prominence. "Zhao is a citizen of the United Arab Emirates in the Persian Gulf and in May, an Emirati fund put $2 billion in Zhao’s Binance," 60 Minutes reported. "Of all the currencies in the world, the deal was done in World Liberty crypto." SEC Chairman Paul Atkins has explicitly articulated the agency’s new stance on crypto, stating, "most crypto tokens are not securities." Concurrently, President Trump has directed the Department of Labor and the SEC to expand 401(k) access to private equity and crypto—assets that regulators have historically restricted for retail investors due to high risk, fees, opacity, and illiquidity. The executive order specifically prioritizes "curbing ERISA litigation" and reducing fiduciary accountability, thereby shifting risk onto ordinary workers’ retirement savings. At the White House’s directive, the U.S. Treasury suspended the Corporate Transparency Act in March, a law that required companies to disclose their beneficial owners. Financial experts warned that this suspension would reintroduce shell companies and "open the flood gates of dirty money" into the U.S., including funds from drug cartels, human traffickers, and fraud rings. Trump’s clemency decisions have led to a pattern of pardoned individuals committing new offenses. Jonathan Braun, whose sentence for drug trafficking was commuted during Trump’s first term, was found guilty in 2025 of violating supervised release and faces new charges. Eliyahu Weinstein, who received a commutation in January 2021 for operating a Ponzi scheme, was sentenced in November 2025 to 37 years for orchestrating a new Ponzi scheme. The administration has also granted clemency to an increasing number of white-collar criminals: David Gentile, a private equity executive sentenced to seven years for securities and wire fraud (effectively a Ponzi-like scheme), and Trevor Milton, the Nikola founder sentenced to four years for defrauding investors concerning electric vehicle technology. The implicit message conveyed is that financial crimes against ordinary investors are inconsequential. At least 10 of the January 6 insurrectionists pardoned by President Trump have subsequently been rearrested, charged, or sentenced for other crimes, including plotting the murder of FBI agents, child sexual assault, possession of child sexual abuse material, and reckless homicide while driving under the influence of alcohol. The administration also imposed sanctions against the International Criminal Court (ICC). On February 6, 2025, Executive Order 14203 authorized asset freezes and visa restrictions against ICC officials investigating U.S. citizens or allies, primarily in response to the ICC’s arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu concerning alleged war crimes in Gaza. Earlier this month, the President launched the "Gold Card," a visa program established by an executive order in September that offers wealthy individuals and corporations expedited pathways to U.S. residency and citizenship in exchange for $1 million for individuals and $2 million for companies, plus ongoing fees. The administration also plans to offer a "platinum" version of the card that provides special tax breaks for a substantial fee of $5 million.

FEDERAL CYBERSECURITY

President Trump campaigned for a second term asserting that the previous election was marred by fraud and unjustly taken from him. Shortly after taking the oath of office for his second term, he dismissed the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), Chris Krebs, for publicly affirming the 2020 election’s security. Mr. Trump revoked Krebs’ security clearances, initiated a Justice Department investigation into his election security work, and suspended the security clearances of employees at SentinelOne, the cybersecurity firm where Krebs served as chief intelligence and public policy officer. This executive order marked the first direct presidential action against a U.S. cybersecurity company. Krebs subsequently resigned from SentinelOne, telling The Wall Street Journal he was leaving to push back against Trump’s efforts "to go after corporate interests and corporate relationships." The President also dismissed all 15 members of the Cyber Safety Review Board (CSRB), a nonpartisan government entity established in 2022 to investigate security failures behind major cybersecurity incidents, likely because these advisors included Chris Krebs. At the time, the CSRB was finalizing a critical report on the root causes of Chinese government-backed digital intrusions into at least nine U.S. telecommunications providers. In a parallel move, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) promptly rolled back a previous ruling that mandated U.S. telecom carriers implement enhanced cybersecurity measures. Meanwhile, CISA has experienced a significant workforce reduction, losing approximately one-third of its staff due to mass layoffs and deferred resignations. When the government shutdown commenced in October, CISA laid off additional employees and furloughed 65 percent of its remaining personnel, leaving only 900 employees working without pay. Furthermore, the Department of Homeland Security has reassigned CISA cyber specialists to roles supporting the President’s deportation agenda. As Bloomberg reported earlier this year, CISA employees were given one week to accept the new positions or resign, with some reassignments involving relocations to different geographic areas. The White House has indicated plans to implement an additional $491 million cut to CISA’s budget next year, primarily targeting CISA programs focused on international affairs and countering misinformation and foreign propaganda. The President’s budget proposal justified these cuts by reiterating unsubstantiated claims of CISA engaging in censorship. The Trump administration has pursued a similar reorganization at the FBI: The Washington Post reported in October that a quarter of all FBI agents have been reassigned from national security threats to immigration enforcement. Reuters reported last week that the replacement of seasoned leaders at the FBI and Justice Department with Trump loyalists has resulted in an unprecedented number of prosecutorial missteps, leading to a 21 percent dismissal rate of criminal complaints filed by the D.C. U.S. attorney’s office over an eight-week period, a stark contrast to the mere 0.5% dismissal rate over the preceding decade. "These mistakes are causing department attorneys to lose credibility with federal courts, with some judges quashing subpoenas, threatening criminal contempt and issuing opinions that raise questions about their conduct," Reuters reported. "Grand juries have also in some cases started rejecting indictments, a highly unusual event since prosecutors control what evidence gets presented." In August, the DHS banned state and local governments from using cyber grants for services provided by the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC), an organization that for over 20 years has facilitated the sharing of critical cybersecurity intelligence across state lines and provided software and other resources at no or significantly reduced cost. Specifically, DHS prohibited states from expending funds on services offered by the Elections Infrastructure ISAC, which was effectively shuttered after DHS withdrew its funding in February. Cybersecurity Dive reports that the Trump administration’s substantial workforce reductions, coupled with pervasive mission uncertainty and a prolonged leadership vacuum, have disrupted federal agencies’ collaborative efforts with businesses and local utilities responsible for operating and safeguarding healthcare facilities, water treatment plants, energy companies, and telecommunications networks. The publication noted that these changes occurred after the U.S. government eliminated CIPAC, a framework that allowed private companies to share cyber and threat intelligence without legal repercussions. "Government leaders have canceled meetings with infrastructure operators, forced out their longtime points of contact, stopped attending key industry events and scrapped a coordination program that made companies feel comfortable holding sensitive talks about cyberattacks and other threats with federal agencies," wrote Cybersecurity Dive’s Eric Geller. Both the National Security Agency (NSA) and U.S. Cyber Command have been without a leader since Trump dismissed Air Force General Timothy Haugh in April, allegedly for disloyalty to the President and at the suggestion of far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer. The nomination of Army Lt. Gen. William Hartman for the same position failed in October. The White House has ordered the NSA to cut 8 percent of its civilian workforce, totaling between 1,500 and 2,000 employees. As The Associated Press reported in August, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) plans to significantly reduce its workforce and cut its budget by over $700 million annually. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard stated these cuts were justified by the ODNI’s alleged bloat and inefficiency, and by the intelligence community’s purported prevalence of abuse of power, unauthorized leaks of classified intelligence, and politicized weaponization of intelligence. The dismissal or forced retirement of numerous federal employees has benefited foreign intelligence agencies. Chinese intelligence agencies, for instance, reportedly moved swiftly to capitalize on the mass layoffs, utilizing a network of front companies to recruit laid-off U.S. government employees for "consulting work." Former employees of the Defense Department’s Defense Digital Service, who resigned en masse earlier this year due to DOGE encroaching on their mission, have been approached by the United Arab Emirates to work on artificial intelligence for its armed forces, reportedly with the blessing of the Trump administration.

PRESS FREEDOM

President Trump has initiated multi-billion dollar lawsuits against several major news outlets over news segments or interviews that allegedly depicted him negatively, suing networks such as ABC, the BBC, CBS’s parent company Paramount, The Wall Street Journal, and The New York Times, among others. The President signed an executive order aimed at reducing public subsidies for PBS and NPR, citing alleged "bias" in their reporting. In July, Congress approved Trump’s request to cut $1.1 billion in federal funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit entity that funds PBS and NPR. Brendan Carr, the President’s nominee to lead the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), initially pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." However, on January 22, 2025, the FCC reopened complaints against ABC, CBS, and NBC concerning their coverage of the 2024 election. The previous FCC chair had dismissed these complaints as attacks on the First Amendment and attempts to weaponize the agency for political purposes. In February, President Trump seized control of the White House Correspondents’ Association, the nonprofit entity that determines which media outlets gain access to the White House and the press pool accompanying the President. The President invited an additional 32 media outlets, predominantly conservative or right-wing organizations. According to the journalism group Poynter.org, these include three religious networks, all with a conservative leaning, as well as a mix of outlets comprising a legacy newspaper, television networks, and an AI-powered digital outlet. Trump also barred The Associated Press from the White House due to their refusal to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Under Trump appointee Kari Lake, the U.S. Agency for Global Media moved to dismantle Voice of America, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, and other networks that have historically served as credible news sources in authoritarian regions. While courts blocked shutdown orders, the damage continues through administrative leave, contract terminations, and funding disputes. President Trump this term has dismissed most personnel involved in processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for government agencies. FOIA is an essential tool used by journalists and the public to obtain government records and hold leaders accountable. Petitioning the government, particularly when requests are ignored, often necessitates legal challenges against federal agencies. However, this becomes significantly more difficult if competent law firms begin to avoid cases that might involve confronting the President and his administration. On March 22, the President issued a memorandum directing the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security Departments to "seek sanctions against attorneys and law firms who engage in frivolous, unreasonable and vexatious litigation against the United States," or in matters before federal agencies. The Trump administration announced enhanced vetting of applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, with an internal State Department memo stating that individuals involved in "censorship" of free speech should be considered for rejection. Executive Order 14161, issued in 2025 and concerning "foreign terrorist and public safety threats," granted broad new authorities that civil rights groups warn could enable a renewed travel ban and expanded visa denials or deportations based on perceived ideology. Critics argue that the order’s vague language regarding "public safety threats" creates latitude for targeting individuals based on political views, national origin, or religion.

CONSUMER PROTECTION, PRIVACY

At the beginning of this year, President Trump directed staffers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to cease most of its operations. Established by Congress in 2011 as a clearinghouse for consumer complaints, the CFPB has pursued legal action against some of the nation’s largest financial institutions for violating consumer protection laws. The CFPB reports that its actions have returned nearly $18 billion to Americans through monetary compensation or debt cancellation, and imposed $4 billion in civil money penalties against violators. The Trump administration announced plans to dismiss up to 90 percent of all CFPB staff, but a recent federal appeals court ruling in Washington overturned an earlier decision that would have permitted these dismissals. Reuters reported this week that an employee union and other parties have engaged in a ten-month legal battle, during which the agency has been largely inactive. The CFPB’s acting director is Russell Vought, a key figure in the GOP policy framework Project 2025. Under Vought’s leadership, the CFPB quietly withdrew a data broker protection rule in May that was intended to limit the ability of U.S. data brokers to sell personal information on Americans. Despite the Federal Reserve’s own post-mortem explicitly attributing the 2023 Silicon Valley Bank collapse—which triggered a rapid crisis requiring emergency weekend bank bailouts—to Trump-era deregulation, Trump’s banking regulators in 2025 doubled down. They loosened capital requirements, narrowed definitions of "unsafe" banking practices, and removed specific risk categories from supervisory frameworks. This has created conditions ripe for another banking crisis requiring taxpayer intervention. The Privacy Act of 1974, one of the few significant federal privacy laws, is founded on the principles of consent and separation, established in response to the abuses of power that emerged during the Watergate era. The law stipulates that when an individual provides personal information to a federal agency to receive a specific service, that data must be used solely for its original purpose. Nevertheless, it was revealed in June that the Trump administration has created a centralized database of all U.S. citizens. According to NPR, the White House intends to utilize this new platform during upcoming elections to verify the identity and citizenship status of U.S. voters. The database was developed by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Governmental Efficiency and is being implemented in phases across U.S. states.

DOGE

Arguably the most significant untold story of 2025 revolves around the fate of the personal, financial, and other sensitive data accessed by personnel at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). President Trump appointed Elon Musk to lead this newly established department, which was largely staffed by current and former employees of Musk’s various technology companies, including a former member of the cybercrime community known as "the Com." It soon emerged that the DOGE team was employing artificial intelligence to surveil communications within at least one federal agency for any signs of hostility towards Mr. Trump and his agenda. DOGE employees were able to access and synthesize data from a substantial number of previously separate and highly secured federal databases, including those at the Social Security Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Personnel Management, and the U.S. Department of the Treasury. DOGE staff accomplished this largely by circumventing or dismantling security measures designed to detect and prevent misuse of federal databases, including standard incident response protocols, auditing, and change-tracking mechanisms. For example, an IT expert with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleges that DOGE employees likely downloaded gigabytes of data from agency case files in early March, utilizing ephemeral accounts configured to leave minimal traces of network activity. The NLRB whistleblower stated that the large data outflows coincided with multiple blocked login attempts from Russian IP addresses, which attempted to use valid credentials for a newly created DOGE user account. The stated objective of DOGE was to reduce bureaucracy and achieve significant cost savings, primarily by eliminating funding for numerous federal initiatives previously approved by Congress. The DOGE website claimed these efforts reduced "wasteful" and "fraudulent" federal spending by over $200 billion. However, multiple independent reviews by news organizations determined that the actual "savings" achieved by DOGE were off by a couple of orders of magnitude, likely closer to $2 billion. Concurrently with DOGE’s slashing of federal programs, President Trump fired at least 17 inspectors general at federal agencies—the very individuals tasked with identifying and preventing waste, fraud, and abuse at the federal level. This included several agencies (such as the NLRB) that had ongoing investigations into one or more of Mr. Musk’s companies for alleged non-compliance with protocols designed to protect state secrets. In September, a federal judge ruled that the President had unlawfully fired the agency watchdogs, but none have been reinstated. Where is DOGE now? Reuters reported last month that, from the White House’s perspective, DOGE no longer exists, despite technically having more than half a year remaining on its charter. Meanwhile, who precisely retains access to federal agency data that DOGE funneled into AI tools remains a matter of speculation. KrebsOnSecurity extends its gratitude to the anonymous researcher NatInfoSec for their assistance with the research for this story.