Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Trump, Ukraine and a whistleblower: Ever since 1796, Congress has struggled to keep presidents in check

Trump, Ukraine and a whistleblower: Ever since 1796, Congress has struggled to keep presidents in check

"While the current battle between Trump and congressional Democrats is newsworthy, it is not entirely new," writes Jennifer Selin.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Selin is an assistant professor of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

George Washington, hero of the American Revolution and the country's first president, in 1796 withheld documents the House of Representatives had requested from him regarding treaty negotiations with France.

Washington thought that giving the House papers respecting a negotiation with a foreign power would be to establish a dangerous precedent.

Washington's reluctance to hand over these documents has echoed through time, in conflicts between Congress and Presidents Monroe, Jefferson, Adams all the way to Presidents Coolidge, Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan, among others. For the most part, members of Congress still must rely on the president and his administration for information in the areas of foreign relations and intelligence.

In the latest version of that long-running tension between Congress and the president over power, Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire appeared before the House Intelligence Committee last week.

The testimony is part of a chain of events that began in August when an anonymous whistleblower filed a complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, who is tasked by Congress to identify problems in the national intelligence agencies. The complaint related to reports that President Trump pressured Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his family. The developing conflict between Trump and Congress has involved, among other aspects, a struggle over who can have access to crucial documents.


The Intelligence Committee will no doubt use Maguire's testimony as a preliminary step in the formal impeachment inquiry announced by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat.

Questions about the degree to which the legislative and executive branches of the government should share power have arisen throughout the nation's history. While a simple view of the American Constitution revolves around the idea that the federal government is divided into three coequal branches, this understanding is incomplete.

The Founders struggled with problems related to the separation of powers. The text of the Constitution, combined with subsequent legal analysis, shows tension between a desire to separate the branches and the need to integrate the federal government's core functions.

Foreign relations and national security issues like those underlying the Ukraine conflict only exacerbate this tension.

Pelosi's announcement relied heavily on references to the Constitution. At one point, she said, "Our republic endures because of the wisdom of our Constitution enshrined in three coequal branches of government serving as checks and balances on each other."

Yet, what exactly does the Constitution say about the relationship among these three branches?

Over time, the Constitution's language has been interpreted to grant the president broad authority in the conduct of foreign affairs. Many recognize presidential power is greatest when the president directs foreign policy.

The president's broad power is partly by design. Imagine if the president had to publicly broadcast his strategy and build a legislative coalition every single time he communicated with a foreign leader.

And part of the president's power is a result of the accumulation of laws granting policy authority to the executive branch over time.

Regardless, there is no question that the Founders intended for members of Congress to exercise oversight of presidential conduct in foreign policy. In fact, Congress first established a congressional committee to request executive branch documents relating to foreign relations in 1792.

Yet then, as now, lawmakers struggled to obtain the requested information.

Because voters in contemporary politics reward or punish the president for issues that arise in foreign relations, presidents have a reason to control the narrative when it comes to national security.

Congress often has little incentive – or ability – to do much about it. There is waning congressional interest in oversight of foreign policy. Reelection concerns encourage members of Congress to focus their energies on domestic affairs and constituent service.

When legislators do get involved in foreign policy, they are often in a reactive position. Because of the president's constitutional freedom to initiate contact with foreign powers, the president has an advantage over Congress.

Furthermore, the nature of the oversight system can hinder legislators' responses to presidential action. It takes time and resources to coordinate a response, not to mention agreement among a majority of members of Congress.

So what makes the crisis involving Trump, Ukraine and the whistleblower different from other foreign policy power struggles between Congress and the executive branch?

Perhaps this is a Trump issue, not a foreign policy issue. More constituents are pressuring their Democratic House members to pursue impeachment than ever before. This straightforward conflict may provide a clear story for Democrats to tell.

Yet, despite providing a written record of the call between Trump and Ukraine's leader, the president and his administration still control much of the information about the events.

And Congress has limited time and resources to force the executive branch to relinquish this information, particularly if Congress wishes to do so before the 2020 election.

While Congress can appeal to the courts to compel disclosure of documents it needs in its investigation of the Ukraine affair, it is unclear whether the courts would do so.

Separation of powers issues and what is called the political question doctrine – which says some disputes are too political in nature for the judiciary – makes courts reluctant to interfere in political fights between Congress and the president, particularly about national security.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that Republican support for Trump appears intact, making coordination across the chambers of Congress quite difficult.

While the current battle between Trump and congressional Democrats is newsworthy, it is not entirely new. The fight for information over the president's negotiations with foreign powers is an inevitable consequence of the U.S. constitutional system.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Read More

Court to Trump: Your Tariffs Are Illegal

Activists of different trade unions burn an effigy of US President Donald Trump to protest against the recent tariff hikes imposed by the US on India during a demonstration in Kolkata on August 13, 2025.

(Photo by DIBYANGSHU SARKAR/AFP via Getty Images)

Court to Trump: Your Tariffs Are Illegal

The stage for a potential Supreme Court showdown is set after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that most of former President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs were unlawful.

Trump imposed a series of tariffs, citing the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of 1977 as justification. He declared national emergencies over trade deficits and drug trafficking to impose levies on countries, including China, Canada, Mexico, and nearly all U.S. trading partners.

Keep ReadingShow less
Mamdani & The Socialism Canard
File:Zohran Mamdani at the Resist Fascism Rally in Bryant Park on ...

Mamdani & The Socialism Canard

Every time Democrats propose having the government provide new assistance to those in need or a new regulation of business, the Republicans cry out, “This is Socialism.”

But after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, his fellow Democrats beat them to it. They were aroused primarily, I think, because they feared what a negative reaction to Mamdani from big business would do to Democrats' chances nationally in the upcoming mid-term elections. They should be ashamed of themselves for having become so beholden to big business and for joining Republicans in criticizing by labeling a suggestion for dealing with current societal problems that is consistent with our form of economy.

Keep ReadingShow less
Trump-Era Budget Cuts Suspend UCLA Professor’s Mental Health Research Grant

Professor Carrie Bearden (on the left) at a Stand Up for Science rally in spring 2025.

Photo Provided

Trump-Era Budget Cuts Suspend UCLA Professor’s Mental Health Research Grant

UC Los Angeles Psychology professor Carrie Bearden is among many whose work has been stalled due to the Trump administration’s grant suspensions to universities across the country.

“I just feel this constant whiplash every single day,” Bearden said. “The bedrock, the foundation of everything that we're doing, is really being shaken on a daily basis … To see that at an institutional level is really shocking. Yes, we saw it coming with these other institutions, but I think everybody's still sort of in a state of shock.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Border Patrol in Texas
"Our communities fear that the police and deportation agents are one and the same," the authors write.
John Moore/Getty Images

Who deported more migrants? Obama or Trump? We checked the numbers

We received a question through our Instagram account asking "if it's true what people say" that President Barack Obama deported more immigrants than Donald Trump. To answer our follower, Factchequeado reviewed the public deportation data available from 1993 to June 2025, to compare the policies of both presidents and other administrations.

Deportation statistics ("removals") are not available in a single repository, updated information is lacking, and there are limitations that we note at the end of this text in the methodology section.

Keep ReadingShow less