The Trump administration has stopped even trying to hide what it’s doing, and the country is moving quickly into dangerous and unfamiliar territory.
If you haven’t heard yet, there was a major story revealed over the weekend by MSNBC reporters Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian. It involves Tom Homan, the former acting director of ICE, who was widely expected to play a big role in border policy if Trump returned to office. What the FBI discovered about him is astonishing, though sadly not unbelievable.
Here’s what happened. Last summer, FBI agents in west Texas were working on an unrelated investigation. During their work, someone told them something that immediately caught their attention: Homan was allegedly asking for money in return for promising to award government contracts if Trump won the election. In other words, he was accused of trying to sell future political power before Trump had even taken office again.
The FBI took this seriously. They launched a sting operation where undercover agents posed as business executives and offered Homan a bag containing \$50,000 in cash. According to people familiar with the case and internal Justice Department documents, Homan accepted the money.
At that point, officials in the FBI and Justice Department had to decide what to do. This was under President Biden’s administration, the same one Trump constantly accused of being corrupt and unfairly targeting Republicans. Yet, instead of immediately charging Homan, they held back. Their reasoning was that if Trump did win and Homan continued taking bribes, they would have a stronger case that couldn’t easily be dismissed. So they passed the investigation on to Trump’s team, hoping that career officials would treat it seriously.
What happened instead was the opposite. Once Trump’s people were in charge, the investigation was shut down. It’s not clear exactly when, but reports say that in late January or early February, the matter reached Emil Bove, a high-ranking DOJ official. He dismissed it and decided not to pursue the case. Around this same time, he also blocked another investigation into New York Mayor Eric Adams, a move that caused more than ten Justice Department lawyers to resign in protest. The Homan case was supposed to be sent to the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section, but that office had already been gutted by Bove’s earlier decisions.
The news of all this came out the very same day Trump publicly ordered his attorney general, Pam Bondi, to prosecute three of his biggest political enemies: New York Attorney General Letitia James, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff, and former FBI director James Comey. Trump didn’t just suggest charges—he flatly declared them “guilty as hell” and demanded action.
This is not normal behavior for an American president. Imagine if a Democratic official last year had promised to hand out favors in a future Harris administration, accepted a bag of cash, and then the Harris Justice Department had simply dropped the investigation. There would be outrage, and rightly so. The same would apply to Republicans like John McCain or Mitt Romney if they had ever been in power. They would have pursued such corruption cases without hesitation.
Likewise, no responsible president—Democrat or Republican—would ever openly order their attorney general to prosecute political rivals, especially sitting elected officials. But Trump did just that, and his allies and loyal media figures either defended it or looked the other way.
Meanwhile, the Justice Department itself is crumbling. Lawyers are resigning in droves. In the Civil Rights Division and the Federal Programs Branch—the very offices tasked with defending the government in court and protecting citizens’ rights—more than two-thirds of the staff have already left. Many of the replacements come from lesser-known conservative schools like Regent University, or in some cases aren’t even qualified for the roles they’re given. Trump even fired a U.S. Attorney in Virginia for not inventing charges against Letitia James and planned to replace him with a lawyer whose experience was in Florida insurance law, or possibly a local Republican prosecutor. The message is clear: loyalty to Trump matters more than competence or the rule of law.
If all this had happened in earlier years, it would have shocked the nation. Now, it barely makes a dent in the daily news cycle. People shrug it off as just another chaotic day. But that numbness is dangerous. The Department of Justice is being twisted into a political weapon, with serious investigations buried and political prosecutions pushed forward.
Senator Chris Murphy summed it up starkly: this is the kind of thing that happens in authoritarian countries like Iran, Cuba, or China, where political opponents are silenced by force.
America isn’t a full dictatorship yet. People are still writing and speaking out against Trump, elections are still being held, and many courts are still functioning independently. There’s also resistance from ordinary citizens and even some Republicans who are disillusioned with Trump’s behavior. Public opinion still has influence, and Trump has struggled to expand his support. These are reasons for hope.
But the direction is clear and troubling. A line has been crossed, and the balance is tipping away from democracy. Groups like Freedom House, which rate countries as “free,” “partly free,” or “not free,” have always considered the U.S. fully free. But after what we’ve seen in 2025, that label no longer feels guaranteed.
