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.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.