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President Trump, through orders, firings and other changes, is remaking the existing system of checks on the president. Supporters say that is exactly the point. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Getty Images North America hide caption
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Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images/Getty Images North America
No one can say he wasn't upfront about it.
"It's good to have a strongman at the head of a country," then-candidate Donald Trump declared at a New Hampshire campaign rally back in January 2024.
In his successful comeback bid, Trump spent the entire campaign praising strongman leaders, vowing to uproot the administration state and seek retribution against his political enemies and, asked to promise that he would never "abuse power as retribution against anybody" by Fox News host Sean Hannity in 2023, he replied "Except for day one."
"We're closing the border, and we're drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I'm not a dictator. OK?" Trump continued.
Since he assumed office just seven weeks ago, the second-term president has unleashed an unprecedented assault on the workings of the executive branch: challenging the independence of the Justice Department, firing independent inspectors general across 18 federal agencies, effectively shuttering watchdog agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and attempting to take operational control of independent agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission — which oversees Wall Street — and the Federal Election Commission — which oversees elections.
"All of these actions are setting up legal fights as to the scope of executive power," said Tara Malloy, who directs appellate litigation and strategy at the Campaign Legal Center, a government watchdog group.
"That said, I fear that we should not see them as some sort of academic, legal argument or fight," Malloy added. "This administration is attempting to exert control and authority over the operations of federal government in a way that's unprecedented."
The CLC is particularly opposed to Trump's attempt to fire Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission. Independent agencies cannot be both neutral and fair enforcers of the law and simultaneously only answerable to the president, Malloy said.
"I think you can see the basic unfairness. If you were to flip the situation, if, for instance, the Biden administration had exerted presidential control over the FEC, would President Trump think that his 2024 campaign was getting a fair shake? This seems completely contrary to everything we know about Trump."
The case for a more 'energetic' executive
Trump's actions have sparked chaos across the executive branch, but there is a theory that ties it all together, according to John Yoo, a conservative legal scholar who served in the Justice Department under George W. Bush.
Prior to Watergate, American presidents enjoyed far fewer constraints on their power. After President Nixon resigned in scandal over his abuses of that power, Congress — under the control of Democrats at the time — spent years passing laws to constrain or check presidential power by, for instance, creating the inspectors general role to serve in federal agencies to report on waste, wrongdoing and inefficiencies.
"We're still living with those laws today, and one way to understand what Trump is trying to do, and I'm not saying even that Trump understands this is what he's doing, but the presidency, the way it's designed, urges him to do it, as he's trying to snap those bounds that were imposed on the presidency in the post-Watergate era," Yoo said.
This idea, called the "unitary executive theory," has long been popular in far-right conservative circles, and promoted in the conservative government blueprint Project 2025, but it is now being tested in real time by the Trump administration.
The argument, according to supporters like Yoo, is that the Constitution puts the power of the executive branch into one person, the president, and as a result the president should have the power to command the executive branch at will. In the simplest terms: the president can hire or fire whoever they want.
"Now, that can be risky or dangerous, of course, but [the founders] thought that was outweighed by the virtues of having a single person who could act quickly, could act with speed, could act with decision and capability," Yoo said, "The famous phrase of Hamilton used is good government is defined by 'energy and the executive.' And to have that energy, you need to have the power in one person."
Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller explained the administration's view on Trump's power during a Feb. 20 press briefing while discussing cuts made by White House adviser Elon Musk and his government efficiency project.
"A president is elected by the whole American people. He's the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation. Right? Judges are appointed. Members of Congress are elected at the district or state level. Just one man," Miller said. "And the Constitution, Article Two, has a clause, known as the vesting clause, and it says, 'The executive power shall be vested in a president,' singular. The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. That president then appoints staff to then impose that democratic will onto the government."
He went on to describe tenured civil servants "who believe they answer to no one" as a "threat to democracy."
Watchdogs sounding the alarm
Watchdogs say Trump's actions are having a chilling effect not only on the forces of government aimed at stopping corruption, but also on the government officials who remain in these agencies waiting to see what happens next.
"I don't think it's inconsequential that removing the heads of those officers whose job it is to protect whistleblowers and prevent corruption and wrongdoing were the early targets of the Trump administration. I think what's also important is the signal that that sends to all those who are left behind," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which investigates corruption. "All of the offices and the laws that have been set up to prevent corruption and abuse of power are explicitly being targeted and undermined."
Scott Greytak, director of Advocacy for Transparency International U.S. and an anti-corruption lawyer and advocate, was more measured.
"Multiple lights in the sky doesn't necessarily mean there is a constellation, and I'm hoping there's not a constellation, but it's simply factually too early to tell," he said, "I don't think that this comes from some coordinated, whole-of-government nexus of corruption. I just don't think we're there yet. I think we're going to find out if we get there, and we may find out as soon as in the next six months."
The Trump administration has also yet to issue an executive order imposing ethical guidelines for his administration and high level political appointees — which presidents typically do — despite employing more billionaires than any cabinet in history with many financial conflicts before the government.
"I'm not saying that there is necessarily corruption in the administration, but I am saying that it creates a much bigger risk that there will be at least an appearance, and when that happens, there needs to be accountability, because we need to know, again, the government is operating in the public interest," said Daniel Weiner, director of the elections and government program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a center-left research organization.
Who asked for this
There's little evidence that the American public is clamoring for a more powerful president.
If anything, voters seem to like the separation of powers the way it is. According to 2024 polling by Vanderbilt University's Unity poll, just six percent of Americans support increasing presidential power. The vast majority — 63 percent — were happy with the status quo.
Just last month, a CNN poll showed a narrow majority of Americans, 52%, say Trump has gone too far in exercising presidential power. However, a second-term president is not as captive to popular political sentiment since he is barred from appearing on the ballot again (although Trump has repeatedly raised the idea that he could challenge the two-term constitutional limit on the president).
For now, the check on Trump's power is in federal courts, where more than 100 cases challenging his executive actions are underway.
But the courts move slowly and Trump has not shied away from criticizing judges, nor has his adviser, businessman Elon Musk, who has publicly called for some judges to face impeachment for rulings that have slowed or stopped Trump's efforts to remake the federal government.
What's at stake
There are scores of lawsuits making their way through the federal courts challenging the Trump administration's actions, but Yoo said that is part of Trump's strategy.
"Trump is clearly setting up a test case to go back to the Supreme Court," said Yoo, who said the administration is likely to test a 1935 Supreme Court ruling that limits presidential power to remove certain officials serving in the executive branch. A 6-3 conservative Court is a more hospitable place for Trump to have that legal fight, and the Court has been sympathetic in recent years to these arguments.
In 2020 the Court ruled that the president had the power to fire the head of the CFPB. "It's almost like Trump is heeding the call of the Supreme Court to test whether any of these independent agencies can really remain in the framework of our 18th century Constitution anymore," Yoo said.
The Supreme Court already handed Trump nearly absolute power over the Justice Department in a 2024 ruling regarding presidential immunity — including the ability to have conversations about criminal cases and other enforcement actions.
If Trump is successful in breaking all or some of the binds put on the president in the post-Watergate era, it would usher in a new era of American politics with little or no independent checks on the president and politicized agencies.
Accountability could still come in two forms: the ballot box and the other branches of government. Voters can oust unpopular presidents and Congress can still pass laws to reign one in, as well as exercise the impeachment powers to remove a president.
While that might be true for future presidents, Trump is not as swayed by public opinion as a second-term president, and a Congress ruled by the same party is much more willing to acquiesce to the demands of the executive.
Yoo acknowledged the expanding executive power isn't a one party advantage.
"It used to be after World War II, in the wake of FDR and Truman, Kennedy and LBJ, Democrats used to be the ones who liked the unitary executive, and it was Republicans like Taft who opposed it," he said, "So I don't think it's a really Republican-Democrat thing at all. These reforms will ultimately play to an advantage of a Democratic president someday."
