Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

Trump takes crusade on the balance of power to the next level

Advocates of good government generally agree that when the three branches are in relative balance, American democracy has a better chance to thrive. President Trump is aggressively challenging that notion, and this week he's opened several new fronts in his campaign to bolster executive power at the expense of Congress:


  • He declared he does not want any current administration officials to testify on Capitol Hill about anything to do with special counsel Robert Mueller's report.
  • He also signaled he may put presidential lawyers to work to prevent former officials, especially former White House counsel Don McGahn, from appearing before any congressional committees. ("There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it's very partisan — obviously very partisan," Trump told The Washington Post on Tuesday.)
  • His Treasury Department flatly defied a deadline set by the House Ways and Means Committee for turning over six years of Trump's tax returns, which the panel seems entitled to see as a matter of law.
  • The Trump Organization sued House Oversight and Reform Chairman Elijah Cummings to block a subpoena that seeks several years of the president's financial documents.

What this amounts to, in every case, is the leader of the executive branch counting on the judicial branch to step in and prevent the legislative branch from conducting the oversight that's at the core of constitutional prerogatives.

"This completely comports with Trump's approach to business and life," was the analysis Axios was given by Bloomberg's Tim O'Brien, who described Trump as not even close to being a billionaire in a 2005 biography and won a subsequent lawsuit filed by his subject. "Roy Cohn taught him how to weaponize the legal system when he was still in his late 20s — nearly 50 years ago."

The president is clearly aided in this approach by the political realities of the moment.

He is combatting a power-split Congress, where virtually any assertions of power by the Democratic House will be ignored or even repudiated by Trump's fellow Republicans in the Senate.

And he is relying on winning his battles with the help of a federal court system he's already succeeded in pushing to the right, with a conservative Supreme Court majority and plenty of appeals court judges now inclined to back his views of executive power. (Tuesday's strong signals from the high court that it will defer to him on the census citizenship question is just the latest evidence of that.)

Sign up for The Fulcrum newsletter

Read More

Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland releases a new survey, fielded February 6-7, 2025, with a representative sample of 1,160 adults nationwide.

Pexels, Tima Miroshnichenko

Large Bipartisan Majorities Oppose Deep Cuts to Foreign Aid

An overwhelming majority of 89% of Americans say the U.S. should spend at least one percent of the federal budget on foreign aid—the current amount the U.S. spends on aid. This includes 84% of Republicans and 94% of Democrats.

Fifty-eight percent oppose abolishing the U.S. Agency for International Development and folding its functions into the State Department, including 77% of Democrats and 62% of independents. But 60% of Republicans favor the move.

Keep ReadingShow less
A Super Bowl of Unity

A crowd in a football stadium.

Getty Images, Adamkaz

A Super Bowl of Unity

Philadelphia is known as the City of Brotherly Love, and perhaps it is fitting that the Philadelphia Eagles won Sunday night's Super Bowl 59, given the number of messages of unity, resilience, and coming together that aired throughout the evening.

The unity messaging started early as the pre-game kicked off with movie star Brad Pitt narrating a moving ad that champions residence and togetherness in honor of those who suffered from the Los Angeles fires and Hurricane Helen:

Keep ReadingShow less
The Paradox for Independents

A handheld American Flag.

Canva Images

The Paradox for Independents

Political independents in the United States are not chiefly moderates. In The Independent Voter, Thomas Reilly, Jacqueline Salit, and Omar Ali make it clear that independents are basically anti-establishment. They have a "mindset" that aims to dismantle the duopoly in our national politics.

I have previously written about different ways that independents can obtain power in Washington. First, they can get elected or converted in Washington and advocate with their own independent voices. Second, they can seek a revolution in which they would be the most dominant voice in Washington. And third, a middle position, they can seek a critical mass in the Senate especially, namely five to six seats, which would give them leverage to help the majority party get to 60 votes on policy bills.

Keep ReadingShow less
The Bureaucrat’s Dilemma When Dealing with a Charismatic Autocrat

A single pawn separated from a group of pawns.

Canva Images

The Bureaucrat’s Dilemma When Dealing with a Charismatic Autocrat

Excerpt from To Stop a Tyrant by Ira Chaleff

In my book To Stop a Tyrant, I identify five types of a political leader’s followers. Given the importance of access in politics, I range these from the more distant to the closest. In the middle are bureaucrats. No political leader can accomplish anything without a cadre of bureaucrats to implement their vision and policies. Custom, culture and law establish boundaries for a bureaucrat’s freedom of action. At times, these constraints must be balanced with moral considerations. The following excerpt discusses ways in which bureaucrats need to thread this needle.

Keep ReadingShow less