{"id":3622,"date":"2025-01-22T14:13:25","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T18:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/?p=3622"},"modified":"2025-01-22T14:13:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T18:13:26","slug":"trump-finds-new-ways-to-flex-presidential-power-after-returning-to-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/?p=3622","title":{"rendered":"Trump finds new ways to flex presidential power after returning to White House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump<\/a> is swiftly breaching the traditional boundaries of presidential power as he returns to the White House, bringing to bear a lifetime of bending the limits in courthouses, boardrooms and politics to forge an expansive view of his authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s already unleashed an unprecedented wave of executive orders<\/a>, daring anyone to stop him, with actions intended to clamp down on border crossings, limit the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and keep the popular Chinese-owned TikTok operational despite a law shutting down the social media platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Democrats and civil rights organizations are rallying to fight Trump in court, but legal battles could drag on before slowing the president down. Meanwhile, Trump is drafting a new blueprint for the presidency, one that demonstrates the primacy of blunt force in a democratic system predicated on checks and balances between the branches of government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe\u2019s going to push it to the max,\u201d said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump tried to take a similar approach in his first term, with mixed results. This time, there are fewer guardrails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His administration has few of the establishment figures that once tried to curb his penchant for upheaval. The U.S. Supreme Court is stocked with conservative justices, and recently decreed that presidents are broadly immune from prosecution<\/a> for any official actions taken during their term. Republicans are in complete control on Capitol Hill, where the leaders owe their majority positions to Trump\u2019s support or acquiescence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a striking display of Trump\u2019s dominance, almost no one from his party challenged the decision to pardon almost everyone charged<\/a> in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not looking backwards, we\u2019re looking forward,\u201d said Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s the kind of scenario that Democrats warned about during last year\u2019s campaign, when they claimed that Trump would govern as a dictator<\/a> if elected to another term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sitting in the Oval Office just hours after being inaugurated on Monday<\/a>, Trump rejected the characterization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, no,\u201d he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. \u201cI can\u2019t imagine even being called that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then he continued scrawling his signature on executive orders that were laid out across the Resolute Desk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s blitz didn\u2019t surprise Barbara Res, who worked for the future president years ago at his namesake company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPolitics is about compromise. Business is all about leverage,\u201d Res said. \u201cHe\u2019s not a compromiser.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Trump got his start in the brick-and-mortar field of real estate, he appears to be taking a page from the \u201cmove fast and break things\u201d tactic of technology company executives who spent millions bolstering his presidential bid and attended his inauguration.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who helped expand presidential authority while working for George W. Bush, said Trump\u2019s executive orders were \u201cunprecedented in terms of the sweeping scope of the orders and in the sheer number.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although such orders can be easily reversed by a future president, they could have a profound impact for now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yoo described as \u201clegally shaky\u201d Trump\u2019s effort to allow TikTok to keep operating<\/a> even though U.S. officials have described it as a national security threat<\/a> because of fears that China could access user data or manipulate the content algorithm. A law signed by President Joe Biden<\/a> required the platform to shut down in the United States unless its Chinese parent company found a new owner by Sunday, the day before Trump took office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Trump directed his Justice Department not to enforce the ban, which Yoo compared to a student asking for more time on an exam after it was due.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yoo also said Trump is trying to \u201creally push the envelope\u201d by declaring that migrants who are entering the country constitute an \u201cinvasion.\u201d The president directed the military to help take \u201coperational control\u201d of the U.S. border, but troops are not allowed to handle law enforcement, whether it\u2019s seizing drugs or arresting migrants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is without historical parallel,\u201d Yoo said. \u201cThis is really an extraordinary claim of presidential power.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly two dozen states have already sued Trump<\/a> over his executive order intended to limit birthright citizenship, part of his sweeping effort to curb immigration. The president\u2019s opponents said the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that people born in the U.S. are citizens, including people whose parents were not legally citizens at the time of their birth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresidents have broad power but they are not kings,\u201d said New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Depending on how the legal battles play out, Yoo said Trump could set a new standard for his successors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf he\u2019s successful with even half the executive orders, every future president is going to want to do the same thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s not unusual for presidents to test the limits of presidential authority, said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. For example, Biden tried to expand the cancellation of federal student loans, only to see his proposal blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBut as with most things,\u201d Zelizer said, \u201cTrump goes further than the rest to see just how far he can go.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Res recalled a similar approach at the Trump Organization, where Trump prided himself on his ability to chisel down contractor costs or lean on local officials for favorable treatment for his properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo matter what you gave him or offered him, he wanted more,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Res said Trump would keep in his desk a black-and-white picture of Roy Cohn, an attorney renowned for his ruthlessness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe would pull that out when he was arguing with a contractor,\u201d she said. \u201c\u2018Here\u2019s my lawyer, sue me.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trump\u2019s ongoing challenge will be keeping Republicans in line on Capitol Hill, and some have suggested they\u2019re still willing to cross him.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican known for an independent streak, said she supports some of Trump\u2019s executive orders but \u201cothers I have real questions about.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who has been a political nemesis of Trump, said Trump\u2019s actions run the gamut \u201cfrom the plainly unconstitutional \u2014 as in the attempt to end birthright citizenship \u2014 to the draconian, with mass deportations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Others, he said, like the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, are just \u201cabsurd.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asked if Congress would stand up to the new White House, Schiff said he wasn\u2019t sure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re about to find out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump is s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3623,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3622"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3624,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3622\/revisions\/3624"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}