Today's #ListenFirst Friday video focuses on the importance of overcoming political divides and coming together to combat climate change.
Video: #ListenFirst Friday Ellis Watamanuk
#ListenFirst Friday Ellis Watamanuk
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Protestors march during an anti-Trump "No Kings Day" demonstration in a city that has been the focus of protests against Trump's immigration raids on June 14, 2025 in downtown Los Angeles, California.
Getty Images, Jay L Clendenin
Americans Want To Rein In Presidential Power
Jun 18, 2025
President Trump has been attempting to expand presidential power more than any president in recent history, in large part by asserting powers that have been held by Congress, including federal funding and tariffs. Public opinion research has shown clearly and consistently that large majorities—often bipartisan—oppose expanding presidential powers and support giving Congress more power.
The Pew Research Center has asked for nearly a decade whether presidents should not have to “worry so much about Congress and the courts” or if giving presidents more power is “too risky.” Over seven in ten have consistently said that giving presidents more power would be too risky, including majorities of Democrats and Republicans, no matter which party is in power. In February 2025, 66% of Republicans and 89% of Democrats took this position.
Very few support presidents being able to act unilaterally in defiance of the other branches of government. An AP-NORC poll in March 2024 found just two in ten saying it would be “a good thing” for presidents to be able to change policy without Congress or the courts. The president being able to disobey federal court rulings is supported by just 14%, per a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll; and support rises to just three in ten when told that the court ruling could impede the president’s ability to prevent a terrorist attack, per a recent Annenberg Public Policy Center poll.
As political scientist Andrew Reeves noted in his 2022 book “No Blank Check”, in which he analyzed decades of public opinion data, the public has consistently “express[ed] low levels of support for presidents acting unilaterally,” and that “even when the president changed, these views shifted only slightly over time.”
Specific expansions of presidential power have been met with large public opposition. President Trump has declared he has the authority to directly control federal agencies that were designed by Congress to be independent from presidents. Two thirds oppose presidents having this authority, including majorities of Republicans (52%) and Democrats (81%), according to a March 2025 survey by the Program for Public Consultation (PPC). A YouGov poll found just a quarter (24%) of respondents said it is acceptable for the president to “[assert] control over previously independent federal government agencies.”
The March PPC survey also found that majorities of about two in three prefer to keep seven currently independent agencies free from direct presidential control (FCC, FTC, SEC, NLRB, FEC, OSC, and the Federal Reserve’s regulatory arm), including majorities of Republicans in all but one case (the FTC).
The Trump administration has asserted it has the authority to refuse to spend funds allocated by Congress, known as impoundment. In the March PPC survey, 63% opposed presidents having the power to impound funds, with Republicans being roughly divided. A New York Times/Siena poll found a majority opposition to presidents being able to “eliminate government programs enacted by Congress” (54%, with just 21% in favor). A similar majority opposed presidents having the power to “impose tariffs without authorization from Congress.”
The effort to give the president more direct control over the hiring and firing of civil servants is broadly opposed. Over six in ten Americans oppose the idea of “allowing presidents to fire civil service workers for any reason,” including a 47% plurality of Republicans, according to a June 2024 YouGov poll. A majority find the idea of presidents “dismissing officials because they are perceived as disloyal to the president” unacceptable, per another YouGov poll. Even the more narrow proposal in a recent Executive Order that allows policy-related civil servants to be replaced for any reason under the direction of the president is opposed by a majority (55%) in a PPC survey.
Not only do Americans oppose expanding presidential powers but they favor reining presidents in and giving Congress a greater role. Six in ten oppose presidents being able to directly change policy, such as through executive order, without Congress voting on them, according to YouGov and Annenberg polls.
Even on national defense—where presidents are typically understood to have the most discretion—the majority of Americans support taking away power from presidents and giving it to Congress. Six in ten favor requiring congressional approval for military operations initiated by presidents (Republicans 53%, Democrats 62%), according to a 2022 PPC survey. Another bipartisan majority of six in ten favor requiring congressional approval for presidents making arms sales over $14 million. And a 2019 PPC survey found a bipartisan majority of nearly seven in ten in favor of requiring congressional approval and a formal declaration of war by Congress in order for a president to use nuclear weapons first in a military engagement.
Efforts to expand presidential power are not completely unique to President Trump. Over the last few decades, political scientists agree that the balance has shifted towards the presidency, as a result of presidents taking more power or Congress giving it to them.
One may wonder why Americans favor giving Congress more power when Americans express so much dissatisfaction with them. Though the public is frustrated with congressional gridlock and believes it is too responsive to moneyed interests, Americans appear to nonetheless embrace the Founders’ idea that there should be a balance of power and see the office of the presidency as holding too much power.
Steven Kull is director of the University of Maryland’s Program for Public Consultation.
Evan Lewitus is a senior research analyst for the Program for Public Consultation.Keep ReadingShow less
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U.S. President Donald Trump (R) meets with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the Oval Office at the White House on May 6, 2025 in Washington, DC. Carney, who was elected into office last week, is expected to meet with President Trump to discuss trade and the recent tariffs imposed on Canada.
Getty Images, Anna Moneymaker
Why Congress Must Counteract Trump’s Dangerous Diplomacy
Jun 16, 2025
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s May 31 speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore was no ordinary one. He accused China of posing a “real” and “imminent” threat, leading China to accuse the United States of touting a “Cold War mentality.” Juxtapose this with King Charles’ May 27 speech opening the Canadian Parliament, which he was prompted to deliver in response to U.S. threats to annex Canada. Consistency has not been a hallmark of this administration, but the mixed messages are not just embarrassing—they’re dangerous.
Given Trump’s unpredictable tariffs and his threats to make Canada the 51st U.S. state, Canada can no longer rely on its continental neighbor as a trusted partner in trade and defense. Canadians are rallying around the hockey saying “elbows up” and preparing to defend themselves politically and economically. Trump’s words, which he doubled down on after the King’s speech, are destroying vital U.S. relationships and making the world—including the United States—less safe. Hegseth’s message to China rings hollow next to Trump’s refusal to treat territorial borders as subject to change only by consent, not coercion or conquest.
To understand why Trump’s rhetoric is so dangerous, think back 80 years to the signing of the Charter of the United Nations. World War II was the world’s deadliest conflict, killing an estimated 70–85 million people, including over 400,000 U.S. soldiers. Between 50–55 million civilians died. Countries created the United Nations and agreed in a binding treaty that they would not use the threat or use of force against any other state’s “territorial integrity or political independence, or in any manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” This is the cardinal principle of post-war international relations, and it has—so far—prevented another world war.
The United States made this bargain in its own self-interest. Without minimizing the political and economic instability Americans have faced in recent decades, the situation would be immeasurably worse if we lived in a world of all-out global military conflict. Yet that is where the Trump administration’s rhetoric is taking us, even though Trump claims to be “anti-war.”
The United States and Canada share the world’s longest land border, which has been conflict-free for over 200 years. Yet Trump has called this border an “artificial line.” He has insinuated that Canada would be better off joining the United States. And looming over his conversation with Prime Minister Mark Carney in the White House was a not-so-veiled threat of making Canada a Godfather-like “offer it can’t refuse.” Before January 2025, the idea that the United States would threaten Canada was imaginable only in South Park, where characters sing about “form[ing] a full assault!” on Canada, dismissing it as “not even a real country anyway!”
Canada is only the latest target. Trump has touted the possibility of annexing Greenland and the Panama Canal. His suggestion that Russia could gain territory in a peace deal with Ukraine has undermined Ukraine’s self-defense and panicked European allies, who know that rewarding Russia’s attack would encourage future land grabs. And Trump has threatened to turn America’s back on the United Nations entirely.
This leaves a global invitation to other aggressive moves, for example in Taiwan, notwithstanding Hegseth’s admonition of China. This might seem like a far-away conflict but it affects Americans deeply. In addition to valuing Taiwanese democracy, Americans rely on Taiwan to produce the world’s most advanced computer chips, which we all use daily. Moreover, as World War II showed, military conflict sparked by territorial ambitions is not easily contained.
Talking about borders as “artificial” gives military hawks around the world tacit permission to disregard the lines that protect each country’s territory and the people who live within them. Annexing any other country’s territory without the clear and uncoerced consent of the population—and even talking about doing so—makes Americans less, not more, secure.
Trump’s South Park diplomacy is destructive and should be rejected. Congress can and should take steps to show the world that Trump does not represent the views of the American people. China has long accused the United States of “double standards”—Trump’s annexationist rhetoric adds fuel to such accusations and increases global instability.
The post-war years have seen Congress cede much of its foreign relations authority to the President in practice, but the Constitution gives Congress an essential role. There are multiple ways for Congress to make its views known. For example, in 2023, Congress passed legislation introduced by Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and then-Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) attempting to prevent any president from withdrawing from NATO without Congress’s consent. During Trump’s first term, congressional Republicans cooperated with Democrats to protect spending on U.S. foreign policy, including the State Department. They should do so again. Individual members of Congress can issue statements with their foreign counterparts, as Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) did in her capacity as a member of the Standing Committee of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region, emphasizing that “the future will be defined by partnership, not ownership,” and that other countries are “[o]pen for business, but not for sale.” After Carney’s White House visit, several U.S. senators visited Canada to try and stabilize the U.S.–Canada relationship. That’s a good start, but it’s not enough.
Although it’s difficult to imagine a bipartisan resolution recommitting to the principles of the U.N. Charter as we mark the 80th anniversary of that treaty’s signing, such a move would help restore the world’s badly shaken confidence in the United States, a country that—under presidents of both parties—could previously be counted upon to support our allies and respect their borders, just as we insist that other countries respect ours.
Chimène Keitner is a professor of law at the University of California, Davis School of Law, a PD Soros Fellow, and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. She previously served as Counselor on International Law at the U.S. Department of State.
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U.S. Founding Documents.
Getty Images, DNY59
America’s Political Crisis Sparks Great Interest in the Federalist Papers. Is That a Good Thing?
Jun 09, 2025
Last week, I was at an event with United States Senator Chris Coons of Delaware where he was interviewed about this country’s current political crisis. As he was responding to questions, Senator Coons (full disclosure, he is a former student) gave an unusually eloquent and impassioned call for service and political engagement.
He offered his audience an opportunity to consider why democracy is worth defending. I was enthralled.
Senator Coons also offered some explanations of how we got to where we are, paying particular attention to developments in Congress. Late into those explanations, the Senator weaved into his remarks a reference to the Federalist Papers.
He pointed in particular to Federalist 51. There, James Madison defends the constitutional system of separation of powers and checks and balances and explains that such a system can only work if members of Congress are willing to defend the prerogatives of that branch, even against a president of their own party.
Recall that in Federalist 51, Madison wrote: “The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department, consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others…. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place.”
In the last decade, as America entered an unprecedented period of constitutional and political turmoil, such references have become so ubiquitous that the Senator’s mention of the Federalist Papers almost escaped my notice. But on reflection, his remarks illustrate a serious dilemma in the present moment.
Can we defend and preserve democracy and the rule of law without uncritically venerating our founding documents and without engaging in a kind of constitutional worship that rings hollow to millions of Americans? The answer, I think, is that we need to do two things at once: appeal to the values and institutions enshrined and established in those documents while acknowledging that if we survive the present moment, they will need serious reevaluation and reform.
Indeed, it is a little odd that in our defense of democracy, we fall back, uncritically, on the Federalist Papers. To be candid, I have done so repeatedly in my public writing over the last few years.
When Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison wrote them, they were not so much advocating or defending democracy as warning about its dangers. Take this famous line from Federalist 51: “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? 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.”
Madison continued, “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.”
Note the reference to controlling, not serving, the governed. In a less often quoted line, Madison referenced one of his repeated worries about the way democracy might work: “In a society under the forms of which the stronger faction can readily unite and oppress the weaker, anarchy may as truly be said to reign as in a state of nature, where the weaker individual is not secured against the violence of the stronger; and as, in the latter state, even the stronger individuals are prompted, by the uncertainty of their condition, to submit to a government which may protect the weak as well as themselves; so, in the former state, will the more powerful factions or parties be gradually induced, by a like motive, to wish for a government which will protect all parties, the weaker as well as the more powerful.”
In Madison’s view, democracy, in itself, offered no protection against such dangers. Indeed, as he observed in Federalist 10, "Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."
Picking up on Madison’s worries about such problems, more than a century ago, American historian Charles Beard offered a stinging critique of the Constitution and the Federalist Papers in “An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution.” Beard argued that, far from being a statement of the best in America, the Constitution was written by and for wealthy property owners to ensure that their interests would be protected from democratic majorities.
Federalist 51 was one of Beard’s prime targets, authored as it was by one of the people whom he accused of naked self-interest. Beard characterized the system of checks and balances that Madison defended as one designed to “maintain a hierarchical order protective of economic, political, and social elites.”
Of course, Beard’s criticism has not gone unchallenged. In 1977, Henry Steele Commager published one of the most important of those criticisms. In “The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment”, Commager accused Beard of falling prey to what he called ''sterile'' economic determinism.
In Commager’s view, the Constitution was primarily “a political document focused on the distribution of power between governments, rather than an economic document solely aimed at protecting property.”
Whether you think Beard or Commager has the better of the argument, it goes without saying that Madison did not anticipate the rise of mass, highly disciplined political parties of the kind that now dominate in Congress, the magnitude of campaign finance, the prevalence of social media, or AI. Those things make his hopes for checks and balances seem almost quaint.
This is not to say that the insights found in the Federalist Papers are no longer relevant. They have never been as important as they are today.
And Senator Coons was right to reference them. They are a helpful reminder of a vision of limited government that is in jeopardy today.
But the Federalist Papers and the Constitution they were defending should not be treated like the tenets of scripture that are discussed in a church sermon but then ignored by the parishioners when they leave church. We need to recognize that what Commager wrote in the aftermath of Watergate is as apt today as it was then. “Responsibility for our crisis,” he said, “is rooted in changes in the American character, the American mind, American habits or traits…over the past quarter century.”
In that 1977 essay, Commager argued that “it is insufficient, it is almost trivial, to assign full responsibility for our current sickness to particular presidents. After all, it is the American people who elected them… our government and politics, with all their knaveries, vulgarities, and dishonesties, more or less reflect American society, and even the American character, and that we are, in fact, getting the kind of government that we want. The fault, in short, is in ourselves.”
That is why Senator Coons rightly urged his audience not just to get busy now, trying not just to preserve democracy, but also to use this moment of crisis to restore the traditions, service, and dedication that the Constitution calls “the general welfare”—traditions that speak to the best in the character of this country.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College.
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Tesla CEO Elon Musk listens as U.S. President Donald Trump speaks to reporters in the Oval Office of the White House on May 30, 2025 in Washington, DC. Musk, who served as an adviser to Trump and led the Department of Government Efficiency, announced he would leave his role the Trump administration to refocus on his businesses.
(Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
The Trump and Musk Flameout
Jun 06, 2025
The relationship between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk has come to a dramatic end. An alliance that took off like one of SpaceX’s rockets has now crashed and burned.
Days of increasing tensions over government contracts and political issues culminated on Thursday.
Without offering any proof, Musk claimed on X that the Trump administration hasn’t released all the records related to sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein because Trump is mentioned in them.
Trump, who uncharacteristically had been quiet, fired back yesterday in the Oval Office, saying he was “very disappointed in Musk.”
Then he turned up the heat on his own social media network, Truth Social, stating, “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts."
Hours later, Musk announced that SpaceX would start phasing out the spacecraft it has used to transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station for NASA.
The growing rift between Trump and Musk has had a notable financial impact. Following Trump's criticisms, shares of Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, fell more than 14%, resulting in a loss of approximately $150 billion in Tesla's market valuation. Consequently, Musk's personal holdings in the company decreased by about $20 billion.
Musk remarked in a post, “Without me, Trump would have lost the election," and followed up with the comment, "Such ingratitude.” Notably, he had invested at least $250 million in support of Trump's re-election campaign reported the Associated Press.
Once Trump was elected, the tech billionaire appeared to enjoy the spoils of his investment by standing prominently behind him as he took the oath of office, was appointed to lead the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), flew on Air Force One for weekend stays at Mar-a-Lago, slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, and joined Cabinet meetings wearing MAGA hats.
However, Musk stepped down last week from his official senior adviser role at the White House.
While Trump praised Musk for his service then, he recently texted that Musk was “wearing thin,” that he had “asked him to leave” his administration, that the tech titan had “gone CRAZY.”
Both figures have made strong statements about each other, highlighting how quickly political and business relationships can change in the public eye.
Here's part of a timeline of the Musk and Trump feud produced by CNN :
June 3: Musk posts that the “massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination.”
June 4: Trump posts an image on Truth of Musk’s post announcing he’s leaving the government.
June 5: Trump confirms the deterioration of his relationship with Musk, saying he was “very disappointed” in the tech billionaire after he repeatedly blasted the president’s sweeping domestic agenda bill.
Musk claims that without him, Trump would have lost the election.
Trump claims he asked Musk to leave the administration and took away his "his EV mandate," after which he alleges Musk "just went CRAZY!"
Trump posts that the US government could save billions of dollars in its budget by terminating the contracts and subsidies awarded to Musk’s companies.
Musk claims Trump is "in" the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Musk agrees with an X user calling for Trump’s impeachment.
Musk claims Trump’s tariffs will cause a recession.
The Trump-Musk flameout reflects broader themes in the complex interplay between technology, politics, and personal relationships in today's society.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and a board member of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund, the parent organization of The Fulcrum. He is the publisher of the Latino News Network and an accredited Solutions Journalism and Complicating the Narratives trainer with the Solutions Journalism Network.
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