MaddowBlog-Team Trump targets post-Watergate reforms, one by one

[LetMyPeopleVote]

One analysis noted Trump has taken aim at Watergate’s ethical checkpoints “as if in a shooting gallery” in his second term. It’s getting worse.

Team Trump targets post-Watergate reforms, one by one

www.ms.now/rachel-maddo...

— Mike Walker (@newnarrative.bsky.social) 2026-04-06T20:29:43.237Z

https://www.ms.now/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/team-trump-targets-post-watergate-reforms-one-by-one

For proponents of ethical reforms, transparency and good government, the aftermath of the Watergate scandal and Richard Nixon’s resignation was an important and productive time. The White House controversy was so systemic, and the political fallout was so dramatic, that policymakers agreed to create all kinds of new limits and guardrails intended to prevent future presidential abuses, while trying to restore public confidence in the wake of a governmental crisis....

It was a step down a familiar path. The New York Times published a memorable analysis on this in January:

From the opening days of his second term, President Trump took aim at Watergate’s ethical checkpoints as if in a shooting gallery. First, he fired 17 inspectors general, a job established in the Watergate era to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in government. He also fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent agency created by legislation in 1978 to protect government whistle-blowers. Then he fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, created around the same time to guard against financial conflicts of interest by top government officials. And he has used the Justice Department and the F.B.I. as political tools, roles they worked to shed after Watergate.

By this measure, Americans are watching an era come to a rapid and painful end. A half-century ago, policymakers responded to a corrupt, power-hungry Republican president by establishing an ethical framework that proved quite effective, until another corrupt, power-hungry Republican president decided that the framework was getting in the way of his authoritarian-style ambitions, and a GOP-led Congress decided to let him do as he pleases.....

I have no idea what’ll happen in the 2026 and 2028 elections, but it would take comparable Democratic majorities to respond to the Trump era the way Congress responded to Nixon decades ago.