SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
constitutional crisis
What Would the Founders Make of Trump’s Authoritarianism?
The Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive.
Mar 26, 2025
The U.S. Constitution is very specific about the powers of Congress and very vague about the powers of the president and the judiciary. While the authors of the nation’s founding documents were explicit that power had to be divided between three coequal branches, the legislative, executive, and judicial, they did not anticipate the authoritarianism of President Donald Trump, the cowardice of congressional representatives beholden to a populist demagogue for endorsements and campaign funds, nor the reactionary ideology of a right-wing Supreme Court. It is not fair to blame the founders for events 250 into the future, with the United States in the midst of a major constitutional crisis.
In 1787, Benjamin Franklin placed the responsibility for upholding the Constitution on future generations when he warned that the new government is “A republic, if you can keep it.” Abraham Lincoln recognized the difficulty of maintaining a country based on this one’s founding principles in his Gettysburg Address over 150 years ago when he told the assembled, “We are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
The Constitution assigns the president an undefined executive power with some very specific tasks. The president represents the country in talks with other countries and can negotiate treaties, but the treaties must be approved by the Senate; the president can veto or sign bills approved by both houses of Congress, and then they are responsible for enforcing the laws; and the president acts as Commander-in-Chief of the military during a war, nominates judges and ambassadors pending Senate approval, and grants pardons.
The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
There is no mention in the Constitution of political parties or of Cabinet members. Departments and Cabinet positions were created by Congress later to make the government run more smoothly. Executive orders are not mentioned in the Constitution either, and they do not carry the power of law, but every president since George Washington has issued executive orders as instructions to heads of the different federal departments about how to carry out their duties. The Constitution does not give the president the authority to issue executive orders that overturn or ignore laws passed by Congress or decisions made by the Supreme Court.
Since George Washington’s presidency, different presidents have interpreted their powers and responsibilities as chief executive in different ways. President Trump embraces the modern unitary executive theory, which claims that the president has sole authority over the executive branch of the government. According to this theory presidential power can only be restrained if a president is impeached by the House of Representatives and convicted by the Senate, something that it so difficult that it has never happened in United States history.
Without restraints, Trump argues he can summarily fire without cause any employee of the executive branch including Cabinet members approved by the Senate, he can decide not to spend money allocated by Congress, and he can ignore laws he does not agree with even though they were passed by Congress and signed by a previous president. The right-wing majority on the Supreme Court seems inclined to support Trump’s view of executive power. In 2020, during Trump’s first presidency, the Supreme Court narrowly ruled 5-4 that “the entire ‘executive power’ belongs to the president alone,” although it never actually explained what executive power means.
Three of the nation’s founders, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, addressed the allocation of power in the new government and explained why power had to be divided. Thomas Jefferson was not at the Constitutional Convention, but he did address the separation of powers in his 1784 Notes on the State of Virginia, with ideas that helped shape the Constitution. While Jefferson was more concerned with the legislative branch assuming too much power, he was very clear that “all the powers of government, legislative, executive, and judiciary, result to the legislative body,” but “concentrating these in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government... An elective despotism was not the government we fought for; but one which should not only be founded on free principles, but in which the powers of government should be so divided and balanced among several bodies of magistracy, as that no one could transcend their legal limits, without being effectually checked and restrained by the others.” Jefferson warned, “The time to guard against corruption and tyranny, is before they shall have gotten hold on us. It is better to keep the wolf out of the fold, than to trust to drawing his teeth and talons after he shall have entered.”
James Madison, who was the secretary at the Constitutional Convention, explained how separation of powers should work in essays he wrote during the debate in New York State over ratification of the Constitution. In Federalist Papers 47-50, he explained the importance of separating powers and how the principle was applied in the Constitution. He also addressed concerns about how the system would work. An underlying principle of the new government was that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” balancing power among the branches of government to protect individual rights and prevent tyranny. Madison famously wrote in Federalist Paper 51, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Alexander Hamilton, an active participant in the Constitutional Convention, wrote in favor of a strong executive and is used to justify the unitary executive theory; however, Hamilton was not discussing unlimited executive authority but was disputing the idea of a presidential council. Hamilton explained the specific powers assigned to the president and did not anticipate claims that a president would be virtually unchallengeable. According to Hamilton, “The only remaining powers of the executive are comprehended in giving information to Congress of the State of the Union; in recommending to their consideration such measures as he shall judge expedient”; and “faithfully executing the laws.” He was very careful to distinguish between the president as an elected executive subject to impeachment and the power of a hereditary monarch.
I think the Founders imagined the president as an administrator, not a policymaker, and definitely not an imperial unitary executive. Their bigger fear was that congressional majorities would attempt to usurp the executive’s responsibility to administer laws in order to benefit special interest groups. For the same reason they wanted an independent judiciary to prevent the politically motivated administration of justice. The Trump claim for a unitary executive and virtually unlimited executive power undermines everything they were trying to create.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Trump Plays Very Dangerous Game by Saying 'F You' to Judicial Orders
If this deportation case goes to the Supreme Court and the president ignores its ruling, every American should take to the street to secure his ouster.
Mar 18, 2025
After a federal judge pressed the Trump administration to provide evidence by 5 pm Monday about whether the White House had violated the court’s order in deporting migrants with little to no due process, so-called border czar Tom Homan said that the flights would continue regardless. “We’re not stopping,” he said. “I don’t care what the judges think.”
In our system, judges don’t just “think.” They have the final say, unless their rulings are appealed to the Supreme Court, in which case the high court’s majority has the final final say.
On Monday afternoon, it became apparent that Trump’s Justice Department shares Homan’s odd view of our judicial system. DOJ lawyers filed papers telling the judge that the administration would not provide any further information about the deportation flights, and that the court should vacate the hearing.
Later, speaking Monday evening on Fox News, Attorney General Pam Bondi criticized the judge, saying “What he’s done is an intrusion on the president’s authority.”
What’s going on here?
A very dangerous game.
On Sunday night, Trump told reporters that a federal judge in California who ordered the administration to rehire thousands of fired probationary workers was “putting himself in the position of the president of the United States, who was elected by close to 80 million votes.”
Excuse me? In our system of government, courts pass judgment on actions of a president and the executive branch. Courts don’t put themselves in the “position” of a president. They act as the Constitution empowers them to act — as a co-equal branch of government.
If the executive branch doesn’t agree with what a lower-court judge decides, it can appeal to a higher court and ultimately to the Supreme Court.
Trump isn’t the only one to make this unconstitutional claim. In early February, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, declared that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” It was an odd statement coming from someone who has studied at one of America’s preeminent law schools — and it was logically absurd, since it’s up to judges (and eventually the Supreme Court’s justices) to determine a president’s “legitimate power.”
Let’s be clear. Trump has openly violated numerous laws and constitutional provisions — such as ending birthright citizenship; giving associates of Elon Musk’s government-slashing effort access to a sensitive Treasury Department system; transferring transgender female inmates to male prisons; placing thousands of U.S. Agency for International Development employees on leave; and effectively dismantling USAID and folding it into the State Department.
In response, federal judges have temporarily barred a slew of Trump orders from taking effect.
But not until now has Trump or his regime blatantly refused to follow a judge’s order.
What happens when this or another lower-court ruling goes to the Supreme Court, and the high court rules against Trump?
Vance has said that if this occurs, Trump should “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”
Never mind that the quote attributed to Jackson is, as one scholar has noted, “probably apocryphal.” It’s heard more and more from Trump appointees these days, as exemplified by Homan’s remark this morning and this afternoon’s Justice Department filing.
Trump’s appointments in his second term are having the opposite effect of his first-term appointees. In his first term, they restrained him somewhat. Recall that the Justice Department’s top brass threatened to resign en masse if he appointed as attorney general the one assistant attorney general who was prepared to sell his soul to Trump and say the 2020 election was stolen from him.
This time, his appointees are magnifying his worst instincts. Rather than act as guardrails, they are egging Trump on.
Many people wonder if we’re in a “constitutional crisis.” Definitions of that phrase vary considerably, as do opinions about whether we’re in one now.
My worry is that Trump is surrounded by extremist anti-democracy nihilists, including his vice president, who are encouraging him to defy the Supreme Court.
If and when he does, we’ll be in a constitutional crisis that should cause every American to take to the streets.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Our 2 Choices: Join the Democratic Party to Transform It, or Acquiesce to Fascism
Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.
Feb 21, 2025
We are in the midst the gravest constitutional crisis since the Civil War. In less than one month, the new administration has shredded the United States’ heretofore sacrosanct system of checks and balances—through the brazen expansion of executive power, the de facto disregard of Congress whenever expedient, the intimidation of adversaries including the press, and a brash confidence that President Donald Trump cannot be contained by the courts.
Fortunately, there is one weapon available to us, one that is large enough to combat a crisis of this scale, one that we as citizens can wield to contain, defeat, and roll back this fascist counterrevolution–the Democratic Party.
Not the Democratic Party as it is—so far, the response to the crisis by Democratic leadership in Congress has been anemic, an utter failure.
After four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.
Rather, the Democratic Party as it must be, and will be, when we do the only thing available to us to save our democracy, freedom, and constitutional republic: Enter en masse into the Democratic Party and transform it into an institution of, by, and for the people.
For better or for worse, we live in a two-party political system.
Since 1946 there have been over 17,000 elections for the U.S. House of Representatives. How many have been won by a third-party candidate? Zero.
In the U.S. Senate, there have been two third party candidates elected: William F Buckley’s brother, James L Buckley, in 1970 on the New York Conservative line (usually a fusion Party); and Joe Lieberman, founding member of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party.
Final score over the past 78 years: Connecticut for Lieberman 1 Green Party 0.
The record is just as bad statewide and in localities. There have literally been millions of elections since WWII. The number of third-party victories is infinitesimal, less than one-tenth of 1%.
Third Partyism in the United States is, at best, an utter waste of time and energy; at worst (and this is usually the case), left-wing third parties facilitate the rise of the right—both by siphoning votes away from Democrats, and, more significantly, by drawing well-intentioned progressives away from participating in politics that actually make a difference.
This is unequivocally true for a very simple reason: The rules and regulations that govern our society are still, to this day, determined by our elected officials, who are either Democrats or Republicans.
Indeed. Until Trump, Elon Musk, and their minions do considerably more damage to our democratic republic by changing the rules of our elections, this will remain the case. There are scheduled midterm elections in 2026—and it remains likely that they will be as competitive as recent U.S. elections. (The Trump administration is intent on whittling away voter protections, but anything like the wholesale transformation of competitive voting as in Hungary or Russia appears a bridge too far in just two years.)
As such, the Democratic Party remains our only hope to preserve our freedom and our civil, human, and political rights. The Republican Party is wholly captured by the authoritarian, anti-constitutional MAGA movement.
And, to reiterate, there are only two parties that matter in the American political system, in which elected officials establish the laws that govern our society.
So, either you enter the Democratic Party to reform it, or you are complicit in the rise of fascism.
If that sounds too straightforward or confrontational, I ask you to take a breath and seriously consider what’s transpiring in the country. I don’t mean to be condescending, and I certainly don’t intend to scold anyone (if anyone deserves that, it’s myself for not writing this sooner). But I’ve done my due diligence in writing this essay. I’ve challenged dozens upon dozens of people to negate the logic of my argument. No one who has tried has even come close—and 90% have conceded the point without even making a counterargument.
At this hour, the Democratic Party is the only instrument at our disposal that can deliver the results we need.
The time has come for us to take off our blinders, understand the lay of the land so we can engage our foes, defeat them, and then proceed to build a stronger democratic society.
This strategy has worked before, in the 1930s and 40s, to claw our society back from the brink of fascism. FDR’s transformed Democratic Party, defined by the mass entry of workers in coordination with the labor movement, then proceeded to build the most prosperous middle class in human history, and by the mid-1960s codified the demands of the civil rights movement.
This is the third essay in a four-part series outlining why progressive “mass entryism” into the Democratic Party is necessary at this hour of history in order to salvage American democracy, freedom, and our Constitutional Republic.
The first two installments addressed the main causes behind the rise of Donald Trump: widespread dissatisfaction with the economy and the political establishment. The first article made the case that only a progressive-Bernie Sanders-FDR-inspired set of policies can deliver the shared economic prosperity that Americans crave and thus vanquish Trump’s hollow populism. The second shows that, once again, only progressives will fulfill the wishes of the people by establishing a true “small d” democratic revival that ends the reign of plutocratic money and insures equal political agency for every citizen.
In this essay, the most polemical in the series, I make the case that all progressives, with no exceptions, must get over any qualms they have about entering the Democratic Party. They either do this or accept that they are failing to stand up for what they claim to believe. History will not treat them kindly if they fail to act accordingly.
The fourth and final installment will outline a two-step fail-proof strategy for transforming the Democratic Party in a progressive direction. Together we can build the party into a force that can save American democracy and deliver the fully inclusive, prosperous middle-class society that the vast majority of Americans want.
In the title of this article, the words “to transform” are just as important as those about joining the Democratic Party. Heretofore, and since Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, the mainstream of the Democratic Party has supported neoliberal policies. This must end, and end now, for the simple reason that neoliberalism begat Trumpism—and will always continue to do so.
Here’s why. If a society is organized, as it is under neoliberalism, so that all the surplus wealth flows into the coffers of an ever increasingly rich small minority (aka the idle investor class)—it simply follows that this group of people will use their unrivaled wealth and power to end any capacity the general population may have to influence how society allocates its resources. Four and a half-decades after former President Ronald Reagan and former U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher launched the neoliberal revolution, and 30-odd years since Clinton and former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair joined their team—this is exactly what Trump, Musk, and Project 2025 are doing.
It follows that mass entryism into the Democratic Party is not enough; we also must reform it along the lines that were outlined in the first two articles in this series. To sit idly by, allowing the Democratic Party to remain in its current state, is as good as handing Trump the keys to the kingdom.
While mass entryism may be necessary, it won’t be easy. At this hour of history, people’s resistance to becoming actively involved in Democratic Party politics is profound. On the one hand, party leadership has (with rare exceptions) obstructed efforts by progressives to gain a toehold, wearing down its grassroots wing. More significant for the general population has been the slow realization and then tacit acceptance of a central tenet of the neoliberal order—that money and capital have an iron grip on all meaningful political decision-making.
However, neoliberal ideologues, in their heyday, did not actively seek to dismantle the apparatus of elections. Rather, promotion of “democracy” was central to their world view—even as they declared themselves the winners in advance (witness Thatcher’s “There is no Alternative” and Francis Fukuyama’s “End of History”). The actual destruction of liberal democracy has been left to neoliberalism’s heirs—Trump and the emergent international alliance of authoritarians (the “reactionary international,” aka 21st century fascism).
Nonetheless, after four and half decades of neoliberalism’s marginalization of popular political participation, the American majority has effectively been hypnotized into accepting its own oppression.
As mentioned before, no one I spoke to could negate the structural reality that the Democratic Party is literally the only institutionally empowered channel in American society capable of beating back Trumpism. However, the very same people acknowledged that they hadn’t even considered mass entryism into the Democratic Party as the appropriate and viable solution to the current crisis.
When asked why, a common response was for people to look at me with a blank stare, then blink their eyes or look away as if seeing the sun for the first time after being in a cave for days. However, this was not a “seen-the-light moment,” only a momentary break in the hypnosis. Invariably, what I would hear next became a familiar litany of reasons why Democratic mass entryism just won’t happen.
Most prominent among these were:
- The Democratic establishment will never cede power.
- Too many people are making too much money through the Democratic Party, and they will block any attempt to shut down their gravy train.
- Capital will never allow one of the two parties to be taken over by the people.
- Progressives will resist being shepherded into a centrist party.
- The Democrats are a war party. Gaza.
- The Democratic “brand,” and the progressive brand, have been made toxic by effective right-wing propaganda.
- Resistance activism is adequate (The Resistance is a great thing. Necessary, but not sufficient; it requires a parallel positive program.)
- Social movement activism is the solution (Also, a great thing, but requires allies on the inside. Must be supplemented by Democratic Party entryism.)
- Labor Movement activism is the solution (Another great thing. Solidarity forever, and across all sectors of society through Democratic Party entryism)
- Working people simply don’t have the time for political activism.
- Americans have been conditioned to remain politically inert.
In the fourth and final article in this series, I will outline an effective strategy for transforming the Democratic Party through mass entryism. In the context of that strategy, I will address the objections listed above.
In the meantime, please internalize the message of this essay—nothing is more important:
Because of the structure of American society and politics, the Democratic Party is the only institution positioned to challenge, defeat, and reverse the Trump administration’s ongoing destruction of our constitutional order.
The Democratic Party is failing now. We cannot allow this to continue. Everyone reading this understands there must be change, and that requires action.
Either we get involved in transforming the Democratic Party into the means that will defeat Trump and 21st-century fascism, or we are complicit in its rise.
Join PDA’s efforts to create a truly progressive Democratic Party, which we desperately need at this crucial hour of our history.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular