Trump attacks Watergate laws in massive shift of ethics system; The Washington Post, June 21, 2025

Naftali Bendavid, The Washington Post; Trump attacks Watergate laws in massive shift of ethics system

"Then-Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman was 32 when, as a member of the House Judiciary Committee, she voted in 1974 for three articles of impeachment against President Richard M. Nixon. She spent the next few years as part of a Congress that passed wave after wave of laws to rein in future presidents.

A half-century later, Holtzman, a New York Democrat, is watching as President Donald Trump takes aim at post-Watergate reforms on transparency, spending, conflicts of interest and more. By challenging and disregarding, in letter or in spirit, this slew of 1970s laws, Trump is essentially closing the 50-year post-Watergate chapter of American history — and ushering in a new era of shaky guardrails and blurred separation of powers.

“We didn’t envision this,” Holtzman said. “We saw Nixon doing it, but he hadn’t done it on this vast a scale. Trump is saying, ‘Congress cannot tell me what to do about anything.’”...

This broad rejection of the post-Watergate laws underlines the country’s shift from an era focused on clean government and strict ethics to the rise of a president whose appeal stems in part from his willingness to violate such rules and constraints.

“There has been a collapse, at least temporarily, of the kind of outrage and ethical standards that were prevalent during the days of Watergate,” said Richard Ben-Veniste, who headed the special counsel’s Watergate Task Force."