Here's a factual rundown of the major actions and disputes since January 2025 that critics have pointed to in this context.
Let's lay out what's documented, and flag where the "heading toward martial law" framing is a rapidly becoming settled fact—supporters of these policies generally offer different justifications (border security, bureaucratic efficiency, executive authority under existing law), so they can continue their actions even their supporters would be again. It offers them cover, as thinly veiled as it is to most of us.
Executive power and independent agencies
- Trump fired multiple independent agency officials without the "for cause" protections Congress had written into their statutes (e.g., FTC Commissioner Rebecca Kelly Slaughter). The Supreme Court's June 2026 ruling overturning Humphrey's Executor upheld this, significantly expanding presidential removal power over agencies previously insulated from direct White House control.
- Large-scale reclassification of career civil servants under "Schedule F"-style rules, stripping job protections from tens of thousands of federal employees and making them easier to fire for political reasons.
- Mass firings/reductions across federal agencies (including inspectors general removed early in the term without the statutorily required 30-day notice to Congress).
Military and law enforcement deployment domestically
- National Guard deployed to Los Angeles in June 2025 over the objection of California's governor—the first time since 1965 a state's Guard was federalized without gubernatorial consent. This is the single most-cited data point in "martial law" discussions, since the Insurrection Act (not invoked here, but discussed publicly as an option) would be the legal mechanism for a much broader military role in domestic law enforcement.
- Increased ICE enforcement activity, including reports of ICE personnel near polling places ahead of the 2026 midterms, which the White House press office did not directly deny when asked.
Courts and judicial independence
- Arrest of a sitting Wisconsin state judge (Hannah Dugan) by federal authorities in April 2025—the first arrest of a sitting judge by the FBI since the 1930s—after she allegedly obstructed an immigration arrest in her courtroom. Judicial independence groups called this an alarming precedent regardless of the underlying facts.
- Public attacks on judges who ruled against administration policies, and instances of the administration slow-walking or contesting compliance with court orders in immigration cases.
Press, universities, and civil society
- Funding fights and settlement pressure campaigns against universities (Harvard being the highest-profile case, ending in a reported $1 billion settlement) over civil-rights and DEI-related disputes.
- Law firms that represented Trump's opponents or handled cases against the administration faced targeted executive orders threatening their federal contracts and security clearances; several firms cut deals to avoid this.
- Detentions of foreign students/green-card holders over pro-Palestinian campus protest activity (Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia among the most publicized), which immigration and civil-liberties groups characterized as speech-based retaliation.
Immigration enforcement expansion
- Expanded use of expedited removal, narrowed asylum eligibility (including for claims based on domestic/intimate-partner violence), and reported use of racial profiling in enforcement, according to human rights organizations.
- Termination of Temporary Protected Status for large populations (e.g., Haitian TPS holders), which rights groups project will sharply increase ICE activity.
Election-related
- Public statements from Trump and allies (including commentator Steve Bannon) raising the possibility of contesting 2026 midterm results in advance, and pushing for a national voter-ID executive order tied to the SAVE Act if Congress didn't pass it—moves election-integrity watchdogs flagged as groundwork for disputing results they don't like.
A note on the framing itself
The specific claim that these actions are "meant to lead to martial law" is an interpretation advanced by advocacy groups (Human Rights Watch, Protect Democracy, the ACLU-adjacent press, and opinion writers)—it isn't something the administration has stated as intent, and no formal martial law declaration or Insurrection Act invocation has occurred as of this writing.
But why would the administration state their intended goals when it is martial law and autocracy?
Why even bring that up under these conditions?
That's a fair epistemological point, and it deserves a real answer.
While Trump is actually pursuing autocratic consolidation, he would have every reason to describe it as something else—"security," "efficiency," "restoring order." Stated intent is not reliable evidence either way; that's true of any actor with something to hide, and it's also true, less dramatically, of normal politicians who routinely dress up self-interested or power-consolidating moves in public-interest language.
So we can't say "they didn't call it autocracy, therefore it isn't" as they wish to have happen—but that is a weak inference and simply doesn't hold up.
They have used the guise of bringing the budge under control to cover their actions and give them ever lessening ability to do these actions.
There's a real, documentable version of that argument, worth laying out plainly:
DOGE-style cuts and Schedule F reclassification were framed as fiscal efficiency, but the practical effect was gutting the independent civil service protections and inspector-general oversight that historically made it harder for any administration to politicize agencies.
Efficiency and control aren't mutually exclusive—cutting an inspector general's office saves money and removes a watchdog simultaneously.
Even former DOGE members now admit their sheer ignorance and utter stupidity in their blind cuts of important institutions.
Several of the agencies hit hardest (CFPB, parts of the IRS, oversight offices) are ones that specifically constrain executive or corporate power, not just generic "waste." Reasonable critics argue that if this were purely about budget discipline, cuts would track cost-per-function more evenly rather than disproportionately hitting oversight and enforcement bodies.
Thought would have gone into it, planning, wise actions by those with knowledge of what was or needed to be done would have been involved, rather than marched out of their buildings, jobs and careers.
The Humphrey's Executor reversal wasn't a budget matter at all—it was about removal power over agency heads—but it arrived alongside the "shrink government" push and had the effect of making independent agencies dependent on presidential will rather than statutory insulation, regardless of their size or spending.
Timing: several of these moves (inspector general firings without the legally required 30-day notice, mass reclassification) happened in the first weeks of the term, before any serious budget analysis could plausibly have been done, which is consistent with the idea that "cost-cutting" was the vehicle rather than the driver.
The complicating factors
Every administration frames cuts to agencies it dislikes as fiscal responsibility—that's not unique to this one, and it doesn't by itself prove bad faith. Reagan's OMB, Clinton's "reinventing government," and others made similar arguments about entrenched bureaucracy, with a similar mix of genuine efficiency rationale and political convenience.
But then Reagan was the patron saint of the end result of much of what the Republican Party is today under Donald Trump, utterly ignoring his furter intent of his malignant narcissism and ill intent toward our government and citizens, who do not blinding support him. He has surrounded himself with "yes-men" which is always the alarm and eventual death knoll of dying democracies, being murdered in their own cradle of government.
It is also how autocracies self-immolate, eventually.
For to be told all the time that everything you are doing is great, that "all is well", when it is clearly not and the masses are actually rising against you (as they are now), is sheer suicide.
Some cuts have been reversed or blocked by courts, and some inspectors general were reinstated after litigation—meaning the legal system has at points functioned as a check, which cuts against a "budget as cover for unchecked power grab" story being fully successful, even if it was the attempt.
We are thankful for our courts and judges who have stood against this move to autocracy, with little or no thanks to those toxically conservative Justices on SCOTUS today
Whether removing statutory insulation from agencies is itself illegitimate is actually contested on the merits, separate from motive—"unitary executive theory" is a real, decades-old legal position (not invented for this purpose) holding that this insulation was constitutionally dubious to begin with.
So even sympathetic critics of Trump specifically have disagreed among themselves about whether the Humphrey's Executor outcome is a power grab or a correction of an old constitutional error.
Net: I think it's fair to say "budget discipline" has functioned as a permission structure that made some of these moves politically easier to sell and legally easier to defend, whether or not that was the primary motive going in.
Whether it was designed as cover from the start (it was), versus opportunistically exploited once cuts started producing convenient side effects (that too obviously happened), isn't something easily settled for many, sadly—but the pattern described here (nominal fiscal rationale, disproportionate impact on oversight/independence rather than generic cost centers) is a real and observed one, not a fringe read of the record.
When bringing into all this the Trump/MaGA/GOP toxic conservative game plan, Project 2025 and Trump's continuing claims of a 3rd or 4th presidential term, it all becomes rather clear rather quickly.
When you add in things like the Trump administration firing those in cybersecurity, so many expert throughout our government, all as we are being attacked from international enemies, like Iran, in retaliation for a war Trump needlessly started to distract yet again from the Epstein files release, needlessly attacking other countries (as in Venezuela) after having run on a political platform of "no more war," "no more forever wars", it all becomes ever more clear exactly what he is doing. And who and what he is.
A grifter. A career criminal. A documented serial and malignant career liar with unhealthy personality issues.
WHY America is sitting so idly by watching this man tear apart America, and our American government without acting, without removing him ASAP, or faster, is quite beyond not only the "pale", but the spirit of America under the guise of remaining America.
Iran is attacking our water systems, remotely.
And Trump's claim is what?
That state's Democratic leadership is incompetent.
It's ludicrous and only makes blatantly clear, Donald Trump is our greatest and domestic enemy and those not telling him the truth, too busy saying "Yes, sir" always, while enabling his demise of our American government and protections, is becoming ever harder to deny.
We are fooling ourselves. We have given ourselves a truly incompetent leader, after decades of conservatives claiming Democratic leaders are, that anyone but themselves are the ones who are truly incompetent.
We are being fooled.
We are allowing it to happen.
We do not have to do that.
Not by a long shot.
Cheers! Sláinte! Na zdravie!
JZ Murdock is a retired Senior Technical Writer/IT administrator, and an active award-winning author/ filmmaker, documentarian, and writer based in Bremerton, Washington.
He publishes commentary on the state of things at murdockinations.com and on his creative works over at Substack. He also posts on Slasher.com on the horror genre.
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