Nearly every president has pushed the limits of the office’s power by taking actions that some legal scholars consider an overreach — in directing a military strike, issuing an executive order or filling a job without Congress’s approval. Checks and balances can frustrate a leader who wants to get stuff done. And in an era of polarized politics that can paralyze Congress, presidents often believe that their success hinges on unilateral action.
These pressures apply to both Republicans and Democrats. But that does not mean Donald Trump and Kamala Harris are equivalent. Harris hasn’t said anything to suggest she would expand presidential power as an end in itself.
Trump, by contrast, wants to concentrate more power in the White House and advertises his authoritarian impulses. (Read about his plans.) At Tuesday’s debate, he praised Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, who has eroded democracy in his country, describing him as “one of the most respected men — they call him a strong man. He’s a tough person. Smart.”
The Morning is running a series in which journalists explain how the government might work under Harris or under Trump. In this installment, I’ll discuss each candidate’s approach to the separation of powers and the rule of law. I’ve been writing about executive power for two decades, and this cycle I’ve been tracking such issues closely again.
Trump’s radical vision
Trump busted many norms while in office, like when he invoked emergency power to spend more taxpayer funds than Congress approved for a border wall. If he wins again, as my colleagues and I have reported in a series about the policy stakes of his campaign, he has vowed to go farther.
Trump says he’d make it easier to fire tens of thousands of civil servants and replace them with loyalists. (He issued an executive order laying the groundwork late in his term, but President Biden rescinded it; Trump has said he would reissue it.) He also says he’d bring independent agencies under White House authority and revive the tactic, outlawed in the 1970s, of refusing to spend money Congress has appropriated for programs he dislikes.