- Unitary executive theory
- Congress
What Trump did
Mr. Trump fired multiple Democratic-appointed members of independent agencies before their terms were up, including at the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Trade Commission. He has not provided reasons for their termination.
How it violated a norm or law
Congress passed laws to create the agencies and to make them independent from direct presidential control. According to those laws, members of the commissions who oversee the agencies serve fixed terms and cannot be removed before those are up without a good cause, like misconduct.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish that Congress lacks the authority to create agencies within the executive branch that are not subject to the total control of presidents. This is in line with a maximalist vision of the so-called unitary executive theory, or the idea that the Constitution vests all executive power in the president, and as such, he must be able to control everything the executive branch does — a revisionist interpretation of the Constitution pushed by some conservatives since the 1980s.
What’s next?
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has allowed the firings to happen while cases are moving through the courts. In oral arguments, the majority appeared ready to overturn a 1935 precedent that upheld Congress’s power to limit presidents’ removal powers.
- Unitary executive theory
- Congress
What Trump did
Mr. Trump systematically fired inspectors general embedded within departments and agencies across the executive branch, providing no notice or specific reason for the purge.
How it violated a norm or law
Congress enacted a law that requires presidents to give lawmakers 30 days’ notice and a specific reason for removing an inspector general before firing one.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish that Congress cannot limit his ability to fire inspectors general.
What’s next?
Some of the inspectors general filed a lawsuit. A federal district court judge ruled that Mr. Trump violated the law in how he fired them but did not reinstate the inspectors general while waiting for the Supreme Court to address the larger issue of whether Congress can limit a president’s removal power.
- Unitary executive theory
- Congress
What Trump did
Mr. Trump’s administration fired federal employees en masse, including laying off people at various agencies and targeting specific career employees for political reasons — like Justice Department prosecutors who worked on investigations of Mr. Trump.
How it violated a norm or law
Congress has protections in place regarding firing federal workers to ensure that the workforce remains apolitical.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish that Congress cannot limit his ability to fire federal workers at will.
What’s next?
Federal courts have mostly allowed Mr. Trump to fire federal workers while litigation continues.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump issued an executive order requiring independent agencies to submit their regulatory plans to the White House for review and to adhere to his administration’s interpretations of legal issues.
How it violated a norm or law
Traditionally, independent agencies have handled their own regulatory planning and litigation, although this has been a norm rather than a law.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is imposing greater White House control over the work of such agencies.
What’s next?
This has not been challenged in court.
- Unitary executive theory
- Weaponization
What Trump did
Mr. Trump tried to fire a Democratic-appointed member of the board of the Federal Reserve, Lisa Cook, who had not voted to lower interest rates, something Mr. Trump wanted the Fed to do. He said the reason for her termination was allegations — which have not been charged or proven — of mortgage fraud.
How it violated a norm or law
As with other independent agencies, Congress enacted a law that protects members of the Fed from being fired without a cause before their terms expire. In this case, Mr. Trump did provide a reason for termination, but it is widely seen as a pretext.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish that courts cannot review a president’s reason for terminating members of independent agencies, including the Fed.
What’s next?
The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has suggested that it sees the Fed as different from other independent agencies and has allowed Ms. Cook to remain in her position while litigation plays out.
- Unitary executive theory
- Weaponization
What Trump did
Mr. Trump has ordered the Justice Department to prosecute his perceived political adversaries, including the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey and the New York attorney general, Letitia James.
How it violated a norm or law
Especially since the Watergate scandal, the norm has been that the Justice Department makes investigative and charging decisions independent of the White House.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is asserting that a president can personally direct criminal investigations and prosecutions of people he disfavors.
What’s next?
Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department as an instrument of political vengeance. Several Trump foes who have been indicted have challenged their charges in court as malicious and selective prosecution. The Comey and James charges were thrown out on the grounds that the U.S. attorney was unlawfully appointed. The Trump Justice Department is still trying to bring cases against them.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump signed orders targeting law firms that represented or hired people he does not like or who had diversity goals in hiring. He selectively lifted these orders for some firms that promised to provide free legal services for causes he favors.
How it violated a norm or law
The First and Fifth Amendments grant Americans, including law firms, the freedom to say what they want and equal protection under the law.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is using state power to punish foes and coerce concessions.
What’s next?
Four law firms won judicial orders blocking the directives, and nine struck deals with Mr. Trump.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump conditioned the distribution of federal research grants to major universities on whether they would agree to crack down on what he portrayed as antisemitism during protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, and to end admissions and faculty hiring practices he portrayed as discriminatory against conservatives and white men.
How it violated a norm or law
The First Amendments grant Americans, including universities and students, freedoms of speech and association. Congress had also already approved the grant money.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is leveraging the executive branch’s role in distributing federal research funding to coerce his preferred political changes at universities.
What’s next?
Some universities struck deals, but others are suing.
- Congress
- Unitary Executive Theory
What Trump did
Mr. Trump has hollowed out several agencies established by Congress, including the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Education Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Board.
How it violated a norm or law
Congress has declared that these departments or agencies shall exist by law and has granted them funding to operate.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish that the president is the ultimate decider of how the executive branch is structured, including over whether agencies Congress created and funded should even exist.
What’s next?
These agencies still technically exist but have largely been dismantled. For instance, the remnants of U.S.A.I.D. have been folded into the State Department, even though by law it is an independent entity. Courts have also largely allowed this to happen while litigation continues.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump ordered the Justice Department not to enforce a law banning TikTok from operating in the United States unless its Chinese owner sells it, and to tell tech firms that it is lawful for them to continue to provide services to the app.
How it violated a norm or law
The Constitution says presidents must “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
How it would expand presidential power
While the executive branch has authority to deprioritize enforcement of particular laws, Mr. Trump has claimed a broader power to set this law aside entirely and assert that defying it is lawful. This was all based on a vague claim that the law interfered with Mr. Trump’s constitutional responsibilities. Notably, the law had just been unanimously upheld by the Supreme Court.
What’s next?
There is no lawsuit directly over this issue, and no one appears to have standing to sue.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump imposed tariffs on the imports of goods from nearly every country in the world.
How it violated a norm or law
The Constitution says Congress, not the president, has the power to regulate commerce with other countries and to impose taxes and duties.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump has claimed that an emergency powers law allows him to impose import taxes at his own discretion.
What’s next?
There is a lawsuit now pending before the Supreme Court, and in oral arguments, the court appeared skeptical of Mr. Trump’s claims.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump has installed loyalists as top federal prosecutors in key offices without going through the Senate confirmation process.
How it violated a norm or law
There are laws that allow presidents to temporarily fill vacant U.S. attorney positions with “acting” or “interim” appointments. But these laws set limits on who can be in such a role or how long it can last. Mr. Trump has tried to get around that in several ways, such as by replacing an interim U.S. attorney with another one before his or her 120-day term was about to expire, after which a court could have picked the successor.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is seeking to indefinitely bypass the Senate confirmation process for who gets to wield the powers of a U.S. attorney.
What’s next?
Several judges have declared Mr. Trump’s moves to be illegal, including ruling that Alina Habba and Lindsey Halligan were not lawfully appointed as acting or interim U.S. attorneys in New Jersey and Virginia. The Justice Department has appealed the ruling in the Halligan case.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump directed the U.S. military to destroy boats suspected of smuggling drugs for certain cartels and gangs. To date, the operation has killed 123 people in 35 strikes.
How it violated a norm or law
Domestic and international law forbids the military from deliberately targeting civilians who pose no imminent threat, even if they are suspected of crimes. That is murder in peacetime and a war crime during armed conflict.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump has claimed the right to order the summary extrajudicial killings of suspected drug runners by asserting that he has “determined” there is an armed conflict with a secret list of 24 cartels and gangs he has deemed terrorists, even though drug trafficking is not an armed attack and Congress has not authorized any such war. A Justice Department memo that remains classified says the attacks are lawful based on Mr. Trump’s premise that there is an armed conflict, and says the presumed drugs aboard the vessels are a lawful military target because the “designated terrorist organizations” could use the proceeds to fund their purported war efforts.
What’s next?
There is currently no litigation. Congress launched a limited oversight inquiry.
What Trump did
Without congressional authorization, Mr. Trump ordered the U.S. military to invade Venezuelan territory and arrest its president.
How it violated a norm or law
Critics argued that as a matter of domestic law, the use of ground forces and major fighting for what was effectively a regime-change operation required congressional authorization, and that as a matter of international law, the incursion violated the United Nations Charter.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is seeking to establish — or reinforce, since President George H.W. Bush took a similar action in Panama in 1989 — that a president could unilaterally deploy ground forces to fight inside another country’s territory and seize its leader without congressional authorization and notwithstanding the U.N. Charter.
What’s next?
Venezuela’s deposed president, Nicolás Maduro, is facing a criminal trial on drug trafficking charges in New York. Venezuela’s future remains uncertain.
What Trump did
Without congressional authorization, Mr. Trump ordered the U.S. military to bomb Iranian nuclear sites.
How it violated a norm or law
While administrations of both parties have taken the position that presidents can unilaterally authorize limited strikes, bombing Iran had been seen by some — like Joseph R. Biden Jr., when he was running for president in 2019 — as risking such a major regional conflict that it would require congressional authorization unless in response to an imminent attack.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to establish the authority to unilaterally launch a military attack on a major regional power like Iran without any imminent threat to the United States or its allies.
What’s next?
The situation has not developed into a full-fledged war with Iran, but amid mass protests in Iran, Mr. Trump is purportedly weighing further military action.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump has ordered troops under federal control into the streets of Democratic-controlled U.S. cities, including Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in the name of protecting immigration agents and suppressing crime.
How it violated a norm or law
A longstanding norm, backed by the Posse Comitatus Act, bars the use of federal troops on domestic soil for policing purposes with narrow exceptions for suppressing an insurrection.
How it would expand presidential power
Acting on a desire he was stopped from carrying out in his first term, Mr. Trump is sending troops into American cities to assert control.
What’s next?
A federal judge ruled in September that Mr. Trump had illegally used troops for policing purposes in Los Angeles. An appeals court stayed his order while it reviewed it. Before it issued a decision, the judge ordered the deployment to end, and the appeals court allowed that ruling to take effect. Mr. Trump pulled the troops out of Los Angeles.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump took control of California’s National Guard over the objections of its governor and sent it into Los Angeles. He similarly sought to take over state militias in Illinois and Oregon, for deployment in Chicago and Portland, over the objections of their governors.
How it violated a norm or law
Since the civil rights era ended, the norm has been that presidents only federalize a National Guard at the invitation of and with the consent of state officials.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is seeking to establish that he can take federal control of a state’s National Guard at will and without the consent of a state’s governor.
What’s next?
While an appeals court allowed Mr. Trump to take over the California National Guard, lower courts blocked his attempts to deploy National Guard troops to Portland and Chicago. The Supreme Court in December issued a preliminary order blocking the Chicago deployment for the time being, and Mr. Trump has abandoned, for now, his attempt to do so. But he could still try again using a different law known as the Insurrection Act.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump sent migrants arrested in the United States to the military’s war-on-terror prison at the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where military guards handled them with nominal involvement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.
How it violated a norm or law
The executive branch does not have clear authority to transfer people arrested on U.S. soil for immigration reasons to the prison in Cuba, and detaining migrants is a civilian law enforcement task, not a military one.
How it would expand presidential power
This is blurring the lines between domestic civilian law enforcement and military detention powers.
What’s next?
A district court judge has certified a class-action lawsuit.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump used the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime deportation law, to send planeloads of Venezuelan migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador without due process hearings.
How it violated a norm or law
The act allows for expedited removals only when there is a declared war or a foreign government is invading the United States.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump tried to expand his ability to summarily deport people by stretching what counts as an invasion and by claiming that a Venezuelan prison gang is purportedly tied to that country’s government, a claim that the U.S. intelligence community thinks is false.
What’s next?
The Supreme Court held that even if this law applies, people still have a right to hearings. Lower courts have cast doubt on whether it applies, saying illegal immigration does not count as the kind of invasion covered by the law. Litigation continues, but for now there have been no further Alien Enemies Act deportations.
What Trump did
Through Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Mr. Trump is canceling student visas and deporting people for political expression that the administration does not like — namely, criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
How it violated a norm or law
The First Amendment protects the rights of noncitizens who are lawfully on U.S. soil.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump tried to expand his ability to suppress free speech and deport noncitizens for political expression he disfavors.
What’s next?
In September, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration had violated the First Amendment rights of international students and professors by revoking the visas of people involved in pro-Palestinian activism. Litigation continues over what the remedy should be, and the case has not yet been appealed.
What Trump did
Mr. Trump has instructed the government that babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents should not be given documents that treat them as citizens, like Social Security cards.
How it violated a norm or law
The 14th Amendment has long been understood to grant citizenship to almost everyone born on U.S. soil.
How it would expand presidential power
Mr. Trump is trying to unilaterally rewrite the meaning of the 14th Amendment, without a constitutional amendment or even congressional legislation.
What’s next?
Courts have blocked this policy, which will come before the Supreme Court soon.
