On This Presidents Day, Stop Worshiping the Imperial Presidency
Presidents aren't saints. They aren't monarchs. They aren't celebrities. And they aren't your friends.
Presidents aren't saints. They aren't monarchs. They aren't celebrities. And they aren't your friends.
If the refusal of lawmakers to enact a president's policies is justification for unilateral executive action, then a slide toward elective monarchy is inevitable.
Partisans who abandon constitutional principles because they prove inconvenient are in for a rude surprise when the other team wins.
The president acknowledges that there are limits to executive power, even during a public health emergency.
In a Thursday afternoon announcement, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) said Trump committed "an act of sedition" by inciting a riot on Wednesday afternoon.
Politics ruining your holidays? Now you can pay for the privilege.
That’s a rare position for modern White House residents, and not necessarily a popular one with the public.
President Trump pardoned a turkey and an agent of Turkey. Will he give himself a lame duck pardon next?
If Trump isn’t interested, maybe the Biden administration could get started with a few acts of mercy.
If only that signaled a broader respect for legal limits on executive power.
Both major parties defend the Constitution only when it's convenient.
Will his blunt self-aggrandizement reinvigorate concerns about presidents who exceed their powers?
The president’s heavy-handed response to protests against police brutality belies his promise of "law and order."
There was a potentially pivotal exchange in today's Supreme Court oral argument over the House subpoenas seeking the President's financial records.
The president has a history of asserting powers he does not actually have.
This inability to agree on the nature of the national interest is endemic not just to the new nationalism, but to all of politics.
Until we start denuding the Oval Office, we will continue getting the royals we deserve.
Republicans might rue that mistake when Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders inherits Trump's beefed-up trade authority.
"Somehow we've decided that the one job in America that gets the most job protection is the one where you actually get nuclear weapons," says the Cato Institute's Gene Healy.
Americans can lose their jobs for almost anything. Why are we so hesitant to give presidents the boot?
Just like their counterparts in the Democratic Party do!
If, at the end of all this, President Mike Pence sits behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, what has been accomplished?
In making the case against the House impeachment inquiry, the White House counsel relies upon a repudiated district court opinion that doesn't even support its argument.
Hopefully the White House can refrain from creating any new constitutional conundrums for a semester.
The senator and the president she wants to unseat are determined to have their way, regardless of what the law says.
The libertarian legal analyst says Trump, like his White House predecessors, has abused executive power in all sorts of ways.
The Fox News legal analyst says the president is abusing executive power.
Donald Trump's rhetoric is breathtakingly authoritarian, but so far he's done less than his predecessors to expand executive power.
From the moment he started his improbable run for higher office, Donald Trump has stripped bare all pretensions that politics is about more than "winning."
The story of how classical liberal Justice George Sutherland enabled executive overreach abroad.
The Donald is more like The Gipper on trade policy than you think. And not in a good way.
Friday A/V Club: Columnist, broadcaster, and critic of concentrated power
If you look past the shouting and the narcissism, there are clear signs that Trump doesn't have as much power as we all want or fear.
In his first year, Donald Trump took presidential blame shifting to new heights.
The hit cartoon depicts how out of control presidential power has gotten.
Instead of striving to ingratiate himself with those who hold his fate in their hands, the president seems determined to antagonize them.
The heart of the potential for conflicts of interests is not the Trump business empire. It's the presidential power to steer benefits to particular interests.
The nation's father warned against "hyper-partisanship, excessive debt and foreign wars" in 1796. Why aren't we paying attention, asks John Avlon.
Obama's power grabs are now Trump's precedents.
Where were Democrats when Obama was going power-mad? Egging him on, mostly.
The case for limited government is more compelling than ever.
The president warns president-elect against following in his path.
Same song, different strongman
You may want to skip the State of the Union address and prepare for something humbler, like the Super Bowl.