Executive actions intended to cripple top Democratic law firms. Investigations of Democratic fund-raising and organizing platforms. Ominous suggestions that nonprofits aligned with Democrats or critical of President Trump should have their tax exemptions revoked.
Mr. Trump and his allies are aggressively attacking the players and machinery that power the left, taking a series of highly partisan official actions that, if successful, will threaten to hobble Democrats’ ability to compete in elections for years to come.
So far, the attacks have been diffuse and sometimes indiscriminate or inaccurate. But inside the administration, there are moves to coordinate and expand the assault.
A small group of White House officials has been working to identify targets and vulnerabilities inside the Democratic ecosystem, taking stock of previous efforts to investigate them, according to two people familiar with the group’s work who requested anonymity to describe it.
Scott Walter, president of the conservative watchdog group Capital Research Center, which monitors liberal money in politics, recently briefed senior White House officials on a range of donors, nonprofit groups and fund-raising techniques. The White House group is said to be exploring what more can be done within the law.
It is not unusual for partisans in Congress or their outside allies to push for investigations into political groups on the other side of the aisle.
But using the levers of government to target the opposition has long been considered an abuse of power, sometimes leading to prosecution. Mr. Trump himself was impeached in 2019 for pressuring the Ukrainian government to investigate the Bidens.
Mr. Trump’s continued willingness to defy that norm — including in a grievance-filled speech at the Justice Department on Friday, during which he name-checked a litany of critics and called them “horrible people,” “thugs” or “scum” — has Democrats sounding the alarm.
“The breadth is breathtaking,” said Cole Leiter, executive director of Americans Against Government Censorship, a coalition of progressive groups and labor unions created last year to defend against an anticipated Republican assault. Taken together, Mr. Leiter said, the efforts amounted to an attempt “to cut the legs out from their opposition.”
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