type: timeline_event
Within 48 hours in mid-October, Trump purged thousands of federal workers, threatened massive China tariffs, and ordered prosecution of New York's attorney general despite prosecutors' objections. Business leaders responded with donations and silence rather than resistance, demonstrating complete capitulation to executive pressure. This represents systematic consolidation of authoritarian power, with the administration simultaneously weaponizing the Justice Department for political revenge, conducting ideological purges of the federal workforce, and leveraging economic threats for political control, while traditional checks on executive power collapse through intimidation.