Many Americans fear what Donald Trump will do after assuming the presidency in January — and understandably so. Trump's pathological self-absorption has no place in American government, let alone at its very top.
But the specific type of threat Trump poses is often misunderstood. Like all presidents, his domestic powers are limited. He will face stiff resistance at the federal, state and local levels of government.
For instance, as we've already seen with Trump’s first choice for attorney general, Matt Gaetz, the Senate can and will reject some of his Cabinet nominees. The Republicans’ very slim House majority, moreover, means Democrats can stymie Trump's legislation with support from just a few Republicans. Federal and state courts, for their part, have ruled against Trump consistently — and will continue to do so. Even Trump's own executive branch departments, like the Department of Justice, will again resist his most brazen initiatives.
That's not to say Trump won’t score some wins. He will appoint conservative judges, roll back important regulations, knock the tax rate down a few percentage points, accelerate deportations (though not at the level he's promising) and so on. Elon Musk might even get some federal employees canned. And for those on the wrong side of these policies the consequences will matter.
But the limits on what Trump can achieve domestically are significant. And much that he does accomplish can be rolled back or neutralized by Democrats in the future.
Foreign policy, however, is a different story. This is where the potential consequences are biggest and where the bells often can't be unrung. This is where Trump, like all presidents, has the fewest checks on his power. This is where the true Trump threat resides.
Trump will soon be commander in chief of the military and America's head of state. In the foreign policy arena, he won't need Congress to pass legislation to make a major impact. Nor will he need thousands of federal bureaucrats to implement his biggest policies. With few exceptions, the courts won't be able to reverse a thing he does.
Even express constitutional restraints on the president in foreign policy no longer apply. The president has usurped the role of Congress in declaring war against other nations. While Article I of the Constitution says that Congress (not the president) has the power “to declare war,” presidents since Harry Truman have repeatedly waged war without congressional declaration.
Trump will, indeed, be largely unrestrained in the international sphere. Yet the world he inherits is as complicated as ever. The Middle East is fractured with war, blood is spilling in Russia and Ukraine, North Korea's weapons cast a shadow across the globe, populist unrest throbs globally and China's military gets stronger every day.
Having Trump's volatile hand stirring this pot — with few checks to restrain his impulses — is exponentially more dangerous than whatever legislation a razor-thin Republican majority can muster in Congress. As president, Trump can call Vladimir Putin any time. He can confront Xi Jinping on social media before breakfast. He can belittle Kim Jong Un publicly on a whim.
Trump's supporters like to highlight that there were fewer wars when he was president than there are today. This may be true. But it's quite a stretch to credit Trump for this outcome. His diplomatic unpredictability increases the likelihood of international conflict. That his first presidency avoided war bears little on what comes next.
Many Americans myopically follow the daily political drama in Washington. That's where the cameras focus and where retweets propel partisan spats into viral frenzies. This is a mistake. Trump's MAGA tentacles will reach far beyond our national borders. His stage will be the world.
America's domestic checks and balances neutralized Trump the first time he was president. They will again. With foreign policy, on the other hand, the Republicans’ volatile champion will once again be unrestrained.
Cooper is the author of “ How America Works … and Why it Doesn’t. ”
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.