Donald Trump and Daniel (1) Source of Power

If we want to understand what is happening in the world, we need to understand the source of the immense power being exercised by Donald Trump. He is simply making very effective use the power that was accumulated by his predecessors.

Most recent presidents have struggled with power. GW Bush struck out in a war on terror, but his efforts failed. Barack Obama tried to bring change, he never mastered the power needed to bring change. Joe Biden was too intellectually deficient to control it; instead, his senior aides controlled him. Donald Trump was steam-rolled by the bureaucracy during his first term as president. The president of the United States has enormous power, but during most recent presidencies it has lain dormant and under-used.

Now Donald Trump has come back to the White House with a new understanding of presidential power and has gathered people around him who have worked out how power works. Trump is now using his executive power to accomplish his agenda (I don’t agree with much of his agenda, but this is not about that).

Many Christians are afraid of what is happening. Some say that Trump is evil. Others say that he is dictator. They might be partly right, but these ideas do not explain what is happening in the United States.

The reality that needs to be understood is that the US constitution and decisions by Congress give the president enormous powers that until now have not been fully used. Donald Trump has not had to discard the constitution to achieve massive power. Article II of the US Constitution says that “Executive power shall be vested in the President of the United States.” This gives the president control of the federal executive. This entrusted immense power to the president, especially at a time when the federal bureaucracy has grown very large.

In addition, political change has removed many of the constraints on presidential power established by the framers of the Constitution. They went to extraordinary lengths to achieve a dynamic, self-adjusting balance of power between three equal branches of government. In theory, the “executive” branch executes the will of Congress, as expressed through legislation that Congress alone can introduce and pass.

In practice, members of congress have handed much of their power over to the president. For example, the constitution gives congress control over taxes and appropriations, but it has largely abrogated this responsibility by passing omnibus spending bills that no one understands or controls. Congress also has the authority to declare wars, but it has also abrogated this authority by giving presidents a general authority to engage in wars.

Congress has given the president powers to act independently during an “emergency”. So by declaring a “fentanyl emergency” to be a public health emergency, Trump has been able to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico without Congressional approval. Trump and Biden both sent finance and weapons to Israel without congressional agreement using “emergency powers”. All that was necessary was for the Secretary of State to declare that it was an “emergency”. Rubio and Blinken both used this loophole. Congress is unlikely to take back the power that it has given to the presidency.

In 1977, Congress passed the International Emergency Economic Powers Act which grants the President broad authority to regulate international economic transactions following a declaration of a national emergency. This authority is triggered by a declaration of national emergency related to an unusual and extraordinary threat with a foreign source. Trump has declared that the US trade deficit is an emergency created by foreign actors taking advantage of the openness of the US economy. This gives him authority to apply tariffs and other controls on world trade without getting permission from the congress.

The Supreme Court is supposed to have independent control over the power of the president, but for most of the twentieth century, the courts supported changes that increased presidential power. The court has recently become more conservative, but it has very little to hold back presidential power. A few lower-court judges have attempted to put a hold on some of Trump’s executive orders, but it is quite likely that these attempts will be overturned on appeal.

Donald Trump is not seizing power illegally. He is just using the power that has been given to him by the Constitution and Congress, which previous presidents have not had the ability or energy to use effectively. Raising alarm at Donald Trump’s use of executive power is probably wasted energy, because the power that he is exercising was given to him by the constitution and the congress.

Vinnie Rotondaro explains how this has happened.

The central truth we keep missing — especially on the left — is that Trump is not an aberration. He’s a grotesque continuation. The playbook he uses was written by both parties over decades of eroding democratic norms, consolidating executive power, and circumventing meaningful checks on authority. Trump didn’t invent the impulse to rule by fiat; he just brings it out into the open.

If we want to stop the next Trump, or the next expansion of executive lawlessness, we can’t keep pretending he came out of nowhere. The removal of checks and balances didn’t happen overnight. It was built incrementally, piece by piece, under the banner of national security — with the cooperation and silence of the same liberal establishment that now acts scandalized by Trump’s every defiance.

Trump exposes the tools others helped create. He strips them of their moral veneer, revealing the ugly core. And rather than confront the system itself, liberals point at Trump as a singular villain — as if everything was working just fine before he came along.

The truth is harder to face: If we want to stop the next Trump, or the next expansion of executive lawlessness, we can’t keep pretending he came out of nowhere. We need to reckon with the fact that our democracy has been undermined from within — by both parties, for years. We need to challenge not just the man, but the machine.