July 4, 2026 [LINK / comment]
Independence Day 2026:
How to cope with Trump's power grab?
I thought the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the official signing* of the Declaration of Independence would be appropriate for me to wade back into the murky waters of online pontificating, a.k.a. "blogging." (My last blog post on politics concerned the topic of mass shootings, on May 24, 2023!) A few months ago I started a Substack account, but haven't written anything for it so far. So the focus of today's musings will be on how to keep the power of the president in check, especially during times of deep domestic division.
* the Second Continental Congress had already voted in favor of independence two days earlier, but a few details on the words that Thomas Jefferson had drafted needed to be ironed out.
Though his most ardent supporters might deny it, President Donald Trump's grab for power really is unprecedented in U.S. history. Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Barack Obama all exceeded the proper bounds of executive authority based on some emergency or other, but in each case the assertion of power was circumscribed and at least arguably within constitutional bounds.
Most constitutional scholars agree with the idea of "inherent" powers, under which the president has the authority to take actions that are necessary to preserve the existence of the government itself. No constitution could possibly foresee every single contingency that might make it necessary to take exceptional actions. It was on that basis that Abe Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus in 1861, because otherwise Confederate spies and saboteurs lurking around the District of Columbia could have substantially neutralized the U.S. government's power, allowing the secessionist states to destroy the Union.
As Harvey Mansfield Jr. noted in his 1979 book Selected Writings -- Jefferson (p. xii), declaring that governmental legitimacy rests upon the consent of the governed does not imply any specific form of government. Even a monarch with limited powers (as has been the case in Great Britain since the early 19th Century) could be considered legitimate, or else what was the point of listing all of the grievances in the Declaration of Independence? That puts the protest slogan "No Kings" in an interesting perspective.
In Trump's case, the very notion that there are limits on presidential power is tossed aside. For almost every issue or problem there is an "emergency" that requires an immediate drastic remedy. Here are some of the leading examples:
- Ordering that the Gulf of Mexico be renamed the "Gulf of America." I'm not aware of anyone who previously suggested this sort of thing might be within a president's purview.
- Attaching his name and face to government buildings (such as the Kennedy Center, which thanks to a court ruling no longer says "Trump" on it) or documents such as passports and possibly currency notes. These are the sorts of things a Third World dictator would do, and it makes us look ridiculous
- Invoking a 1970s law to exercise the power to set tariff rates (in quite a capricious manner) on the grounds that there is some kind of national "emergency."
- Sending military forces into several cities without the consent of local leaders, on the bogus grounds that some kind of insurrection was taking place.
- Using the FCC's regulatory power to pressure TV networks into removing TV hosts who criticize Trump.
- Undermining the autonomy of the Federal Reserve by threatening to bring charges of incompetence against (former) Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, who is a widely-respected financial expert.
- Ordering U.S. military forces to attack Venezuela and detain the dictator Nicolas Maduro, without seeking authorization or even consulting Congress about it.
- Making outrageous threats to seize control of Greenland, which is administered by Denmark, a NATO ally. Such an action would effectively destroy NATO.
- Finally, ordering U.S. military forces to launch (on February 28) a full-scale war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, apparently with the express purpose of killing its then-leader, Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khameini. There was no pretense at all of seeking Congressional approval.
Tragically, Congress has utterly failed in its responsibility to maintain a balance of power among the three branches of government. To better understand how our government is supposed to work, read James Madison's The Federalist #51. In it, he articulates how "Ambition must be made to counteract ambition" so that no one branch becomes too powerful. Ultimately, it is up to the voters to make sure that happens.
It was of some consolation that the Supreme Court rulings of the term that just ended did block Trump from doing whatever he wanted to, but in some cases they were unnervingly permissive. Whatever one thinks of Trump's policies and his higher goals of making America "great," the fact remains that our system of government has broken down. Decisions that are made in an improper manner simply do not carry the moral weight of decisions that are reached within constitutional limits and traditional norms. That's important because the opposing party could quickly reverse many of those policies if they find a way to get back into power. Such a turbulent series of back-and-forth policy reversals would undermine respect for authority and would diminish investor confidence in the United States. Meanwhile, the national debt continues to climb by well over $1 trillion per year, and the two parties just blame each other for it.
President Trump's image adorns the northwest corner of the Justice Department Building. (Feb. 21, 2026)
Virginia Democrats' bogus response
Early this year, Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly managed to squeeze through a "temporary" state constitutional amendment that would have enacted an extreme gerrymandering measure in retaliation for Texas and other GOP-led states for doing so. In April their redistricting amendment was narrowly approved by voters. I have mixed feelings about that, but am mostly disgusted with the whole thing. Evidently, the Democrats didn't think they could pick up enough seats with the current congressional districts in Virginia by reaching out to moderates.
After the election, I accessed 2024 election data from the Virginia Department of Elections, and found that the Democrats won 51.5% of all votes cast for House of Representatives candidates in Virginia, while Republicans won 47.7%. (The rest were independents and write-in votes.) That corresponds very closely to the distribution of House seats: 6 Democrats (54.5%) vs. 5 Republicans (45.5%), which indicates that the current district arrangement is almost ideal. And yet the wording on the ballot describing the proposed amendment describes its purpose as being to "restore fairness." Talk about misleading advertising!
We all know what the real purpose of this amendment was: to fight back against gerrymandering measures recently adopted in Texas and other "red" states. Tit for tat, fighting fire with fire, etc. Maybe it will end up helping to block or even reverse President Trump's grab for power, but we may not know the ultimate results of the Democrats' own grab for power for many years. It's just an awful shame that the Democrats saw no other way to accomplish their anti-authoritarian objectives than by resorting to the most blatant case of gerrymandering in U.S. history. Fortunately, the Virginia Supreme Court ruled that the whole effort was improperly conducted, mainly due to the fact that the measure was approved by the state legislature after early voting in the 2025 state elections had already begun. And so, it was invalidated, leaving the public confused and annoyed.
The Democrats seem to think that all our nation's troubles can be fixed if only they regain governmental power, but they are a big part of the problem. What they don't seem to realize is that the Trump phenomenon (right-wing populism) is a manifestation of systemic forces tending toward greater and greater polarization. In a midterm election with a historically unpopular president, the opposition party in Virginia would ordinarily be expected to gain two or perhaps even three seats, if they had gotten away with this measure they probably would have picked up four seats. It looks like incumbent 6th District Representative Rep. Ben Cline will win easily in this November's elections.
I think this episode in Virginia offers broader lessons for the country as a whole. Why can't the Democrats respond effectively to Trump's power grab? In part it's probably because they realize deep inside that they have a similar lust for power and have abused authority in the past. But a bigger reason, I think, is simply that they have let themselves be overwhelmed by Trump's nonstop bluster, allowing Trump to set the terms of discourse. It will take some true wisdom and leadership for the opposition party to win convincingly in the polls this November, and frankly I'm not very optimistic. The ongoing decay Democracy is part of a vicious cycle, in which politicians who pander to majorities facilitate the "dumbing down" of the electorate, which thus becomes more docile and so cynical about politics that our system of self-government keeps eroding.
I don't pretend to have all the answers to our country's problems, and this essay is but a tentative, preliminary effort to clarify what is really taking place. I hope to develop these thoughts later on.