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."

National Research Act at 50: An Ethics Landmark in Need of an Update; The Hastings Center, July 12, 2024

Mark A. Rothstein and Leslie E. Wolf, The Hastings Center; National Research Act at 50: An Ethics Landmark in Need of an Update

"On July 12, 1974, President Richard M. Nixon signed into law the National Research Act, one of his last major official actions before resigning on August 8. He was preoccupied by Watergate at the time, and there has been speculation about whether he would have done this under less stressful circumstances. But enactment of the NRA was a foregone conclusion. After a series of legislative compromises, the Joint Senate-House Conference Report was approved by bipartisan, veto-proof margins in the Senate (72-14) and House (311-10).

The NRA was a direct response to the infamous Untreated Syphilis Study at Tuskegee whose existence and egregious practices disclosed by whistleblower Peter Buxtun were originally reported by Associated Press journalist Jean Heller in the Washington Star on July 25, 1972.  After congressional hearings exposing multiple research abuses, including the Tuskegee syphilis study, and legislative proposals in 1973, support coalesced around legislation with three main elements: (1) directing preparation of guidance documents on broad research ethics principles and various controversial issues by multidisciplinary experts appointed to a new federal commission, (2) adopting a model of institutional review boards, and (3) establishing federal research regulations applicable to researchers receiving federal funding.

This essay reflects on the NRA at 50. It traces the system of research ethics guidance, review, and regulation the NRA established; assesses how well that model has functioned; and describes some key challenges for the present and future. We discuss some important substantive and procedural gaps in the NRA regulatory structure that must be addressed to respond to the ethical issues raised by modern research." 

After meeting with North Korean dictator, Trump calls press America's 'biggest enemy'; CNN, June 13, 2018

Brian Stelter, CNN; After meeting with North Korean dictator, Trump calls press America's 'biggest enemy'

"Hours after returning from a trip where he lavished praise on one of the world's worst dictators, President Trump declared that America's biggest enemy is... "fake news."

He singled out NBC and CNN in his angry tweet on Wednesday.

Trump frequently portrays the news media as one of his enemies, but rarely has he been this blunt about it. Wednesday's tweet harkens back to February 2017, when he called several news outlets "the enemy of the American People!"

He was roundly criticized back then. This time, there's been a somewhat more muted reaction, perhaps because he is repeating himself. But it's important to recognize just how extreme this rhetoric is.

No modern American president has publicly spoken this way about the press.

Richard Nixon sometimes talked this way, but only in private.

"Never forget, the press is the enemy. The press is the enemy. The press is the enemy," Nixon told his advisors, according to Oval Office recordings"

Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein: Trump’s attacks on the press are more dangerous than Nixon’s; Washington Post, February 19, 2017

Avi Selk and Kristine Guerra; Washington Post; Watergate reporter Carl Bernstein: Trump’s attacks on the press are more dangerous than Nixon’s

"Trump was speaking to his 25 million Twitter followers when, after weeks of news reports on scandals and chaos in his White House, he called most of the major news organizations in the United States “enemies of the American People!"

“We're not enemies of the American people," Bernstein said on CNN. “In fact, we're the last resort of the American people to a dictatorial and authoritarian-inclined president.""

Why We Ask to See Candidates’ Tax Returns; New York Times, 8/5/16

Mitchell Zuckoff, New York Times; Why We Ask to See Candidates’ Tax Returns:

"Until Donald Trump, every major-party presidential nominee since then had released his or her tax returns (except Gerald Ford, who released a summary in 1976). The simple reason is that, on at least one subject, Nixon got it right: The American people need to know if their president is a crook."