Why has Donald Trump transformed his foreign policy from isolationist to interventionist?
He doesn’t have some newfound curiosity in foreign affairs. Nor does he now deeply care about the global order. He’s shifted his focus for a different reason entirely: because his domestic agenda keeps getting stymied by checks and balances.
Unlike at home, Trump has few restraints on the global stage. He likes that environment much more.
He’s a bull who needs his China shop.
America’s domestic political system is resisting Trump more than many think. Sure, he’s gotten things done and caused lots of trouble. And to the victims of his abuses, the restraints on his power are far too weak.
But Trump’s domestic agenda has been muddled and underwhelming, especially for a president whose party controls Congress.
This is true even when the noise is screeching. Take DOGE, Trump’s partnership with Elon Musk. Remember how it was supposed to dramatically reduce federal spending?
For all its sound and fury, DOGE was largely negated by the very president who authorized it. About Trump's 2025 spending bill, Musk asked: “What’s the point of DOGE if the government’s just going to add $5 trillion more in debt?”
Moreover, while many Republicans slavishly acquiesce to Trump, not all of them do. Republican senators are rejecting his demand to end the filibuster. House Republicans are investigating the Epstein files.
The courts, for their part, rule against Trump regularly, including striking down his signature tariffs policy. His effort to undo birthright citizenship will likely soon meet the same fate.
State and local governments are likewise resisting Trump. Just look at California’s and Virginia’s broad gerrymanders in response to his (and his fellow Republicans’) election machinations.
The media–traditional and independent alike–have been fierce, notwithstanding Trump’s threats (and lawsuits). And the people in the streets, like in Minnesota, have made their voices heard.
Polling data suggests that Democrats will take the House in November. If they do, Trump will likely be impeached (again), and his legislative agenda will be in tatters.
Indeed, Trump has worthy opponents across American society thwarting his domestic ambitions.
Every single day.
But foreign policy, alas, is different. These checks don’t work internationally. A simple comparison illustrates the point: The same president who can’t get his political rival, Adam Schiff, indicted can unleash the might of America’s military on a whim.
Trump can largely do what he wants globally–including blowing up suspicious ships, taking out heads of state, invading sovereign nations, and threatening to end a civilization on social media.
It’s not supposed to work this way. The United States Constitution is ambiguous in numerous respects. But with declaring war, it’s clear: Article 1, Section 8 grants to Congress, not the president, “The power to declare war.”
“Only Congress can declare war,” Republican Senator Rand Paul said in March while protesting the Iran invasion. “That’s not my opinion. That's Article 1 of the Constitution … History will not be kind to a Congress that gave away its most solemn responsibility.”
As Trump's supporters emphasize, multiple presidents have initiated hostilities without congressional support. But numerous others have gone to Congress, as George W. Bush did in 2002 before the Iraq war.
One virtue of working with Congress before declaring war is that the public debate is more robust. Today, the American people are left to guess why Trump invaded Iran.
When he did so, without first seeking congressional authorization, he violated Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.
It’s that simple. Yet there was no practical way to stop him.
Congress moves far too slowly to block an aggressive commander-in-chief. And the courts can only do so much. Judges can force Trump to refund his tariffs, for example, but they can’t unwind the invasion of another country.
Ultimately, the person in the Oval Office is what matters most. As John Adams put it long ago, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality … [which] would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
Trump’s global ambitions flow from his domestic frustrations. The way to restrain him should be to follow the Constitution. That is, unfortunately, like trying to catch a whale with a fishing net.
Edward Larson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning legal historian, and William Cooper is an attorney and author. They cohost the podcast How Our Constitution Works And Why It Doesn't.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
A view of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on June 25, 2026. President Donald Trump jolted Republicans during a fiery appearance at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, scrapping a housing bill signing ceremony and clashing behind closed doors with a party rebel who challenged him over the Iran war. Trump had been expected to sign the bipartisan housing.
Only Trump doesn’t care about housing
It was August 15, 2024. Then candidate Donald Trump stepped out of his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club’s columned clubhouse to a gaggle of reporters. He was flanked by tables of groceries and signs showing the rising cost of food. Also on one of the tables was a dollhouse, meant to represent the equally alarming rise in housing prices.
It was a speech about the economy, the single most important issue of the 2024 election cycle, full of promises that went right to the heart of Americans’ anxieties. While former President Joe Biden and then Vice President Kamala Harris were contorting themselves to posture a good economy that just needed more time to recover from the pandemic, Trump was preying on voters’ very real fears of unaffordable gas, groceries, and homes. It was obviously a winning message.
In that speech, Trump promised, “We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now.”
As of mid-2023, there had been a housing shortage of nearly four million homes, according to the National Association of Realtors. Americans all over the country were either priced out of buying new homes due to low inventory, trapped in their existing homes by sky-high mortgage rates, or facing exorbitant rent hikes thanks to corporate investors buying up rental properties. Americans needed help, and Trump promised it.
Cut to March of 2026, when Trump reportedly told House Speaker Mike Johnson, “No one gives a sh*t about housing.”
That kind of thinking may explain why Trump this week suddenly announced he was canceling a signing ceremony for the bipartisan “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” a housing bill co-sponsored by Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Tim Scott that passed the House 358-32 and was approved in the Senate on Monday.
Trump instead demanded Congress pass the SAVE America Act, his controversial election grievance bill that doesn’t have enough Republican support to get passed in the Senate.
It’s just the latest in a line of policy self-owns where Trump has seemingly intentionally made life more difficult for Republicans hoping to keep their majority. Despite midterm elections occurring in the midst of a blistering economy and an unpopular war, they were surely hoping the housing bill would give them something — anything — to brag about when they returned home to their districts.
And very much to the contrary, Americans do give a sh*t about housing. According to a recent survey by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a whopping 79% say the cost of housing is extremely or very important to them. Eighty-three percent say Congress should take action on the issue — like it just did. Eighty-nine percent say the House and Senate need to work together to pass affordable housing legislation — like they just did. And 63% say they would be more likely to vote for a lawmaker if they helped pass legislation to build more affordable homes and lower housing costs — like they just did.
There aren’t many issues that unite Americans like housing does, and very few bipartisan policy wins Congress can point to, and yet, Trump is holding that bill hostage in order to get his pet project — which doesn’t even have the support of his own party — pushed through.
If you’re trying to make sense of something so nonsensical, as I’m sure many Republican lawmakers are, it’s certainly sad but not actually all that complicated. Trump said what he needed to get reelected and then promptly abandoned his promises in order to pursue his own self-interests, even if those interests are bad for Republicans and bad for voters.
That’s just the kind of guy he is.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.