The episode is unusual in its details, but it is only the most recent in a growing number of similar—and normatively troubling—cases. Across both domestic and international arenas, the administration has deployed discretionary executive authority aggressively as leverage against a wide range of targets, threatening or imposing harm as an instrument of coercive bargaining, and seeking changes in the target’s behavior—often in the form of a purportedly voluntary agreement, settlement, or “deal” acceding to the administration’s demands in return for relief from executive action.
