Bessette/Pitney’s AMERICAN GOVERNMENT AND POLITICS: DELIBERATION, DEMOCRACY AND CITIZENSHIP reviews the idea of "deliberative democracy." Building on the book, this blog offers insights, analysis, and facts about recent events.
Many laws give Presidents additional authorities to act in the event of national emergencies such as the 9/11 attacks, the Great Financial Crisis or COVID. There are no formal definitions of what qualifies as an “emergency,” and courts have shown wide latitude to Presidents in making that determination. The Trump Administration has declared more emergencies more often than any of its predecessors, citing nearly a dozen to justify & expedite executive action.
High-ranking Biden administration officials repeatedly questioned and criticized how the president's team decided on controversial pardons and allowed the frequent use of an autopen to sign measures late in his term, internal emails obtained by Axios show.
Why it matters: The messages are the latest signs of the chaos surrounding the 82-year-old former president during the final weeks of his administration, in two areas that are now being investigated by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee.
President Trump has cited Biden's process in issuing pardons to try to justify many of his own controversial pardons or commutations on behalf of donor-connected supporters and others who were imprisoned for trying to overturn the 2020 election.
How it happened: After the political backlash to President Biden pardoning his son Hunter last Dec. 1, the White House began pushing to find more people to grant clemency to, according to people familiar with the internal dynamics.
"There was a mad dash to find groups of people that he could then pardon — and then they largely didn't run it by the Justice Department to vet them," a person familiar with the process told Axios.
Biden granted clemency to more people than any president in U.S. history — 4,245 people. More than 95% of those actions occurred in the final 3½ months of his presidency, according to Pew Research.
Many of those actions, including pardoning other members of his family on his last day in office, were signed using an autopen — a computerized version of the president's signature that didn't require him to physically sign the document.
A federal appeals court ruled on Friday that many of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs were illegal, delivering a major setback to Mr. Trump’s agenda that may severely undercut his primary source of leverage in an expanding global trade war.
The ruling, from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, affirmed a lower court’s initial finding in May that Mr. Trump did not possess unlimited authority to impose taxes on nearly all imports to the United States. But the appellate judges delayed the enforcement of their order until mid-October, allowing the tariffs to remain in place so that the administration can appeal the case to the Supreme Court.
The adverse ruling still cast doubt on the centerpiece of Mr. Trump’s trade strategy, which relies on a 1970s law to impose sweeping duties on dozens of the country’s trading partners. Mr. Trump has harnessed that law — the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, or IEEPA — to raise revenue and to pressure other countries into brokering favorable deals. The law has typically been reserved for sanctions and embargoes against other nations.
The Constitution grants Congress the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cl. 1, 3. Tariffs are a tax, and the Framers of the Constitution expressly contemplated the exclusive grant of taxing power to the legislative branch; when Patrick Henry expressed concern that the President “may easily become king,” 3 Debates in the Several State Conventions 58 (Jonathan Elliot ed., 1836), James Madison replied that this would not occur because “[t]he purse is in the hands of the representatives of the people,” id. at 393.
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IEEPA provides that, after declaring a national emergency pursuant to the NEA, the President may “investigate, block during the pendency of an investigation, regulate, direct and compel, nullify, void, prevent or prohibit, any . . . importation or exportation of . . . any property in which any foreign country or a national thereof has any interest.” 50 U.S.C. § 1702(a)(1)(B). Notably, IEEPA does not use the words “tariffs” or “duties,” nor any similar terms like “customs,” “taxes,” or “imposts.” IEEPA also does not have a residual clause granting the President powers beyond those which are explicitly listed.
The White House’s pandemic preparedness team has quietly withered to a single part-time employee.
Last month, Dr. Gerald Parker, the top White House pandemic preparedness official, resigned as senior director for the National Security Council’s Biosecurity and Pandemic Response directorate. His exit drew needed, though still scant, attention to a troubling reality: the biosecurity office now has no full-time staff, and the White House Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPR), which some headlines mistakenly claimed Parker led, has sat empty since late June.
Congress established OPPR in 2022 with broad bipartisan support to coordinate and strengthen domestic pandemic preparedness and response. It worked alongside the National Security Council’s Global Health Security and Biodefense directorate (renamed Biosecurity and Pandemic Response, or BPR, in 2025), which focused on global threats to national security.
As OPPR’s first (and so far only) director, Maj. Gen. Paul Friedrichs told Congress the office was meant to build on “the foundation laid by multiple administrations over the past twenty years which have recognized that biological threats are increasing in frequency and impact.
As President Trump sat with top donors at his New Jersey golf club this month, he made a private admission: He believed the coronavirus vaccine was one of the biggest accomplishments of his presidency, but he couldn’t bask in it.
Trump told donors at a dinner—who were paying $1 million to be there—that he wished he could talk more about Operation Warp Speed, the government program he initiated that helped expedite the development of the vaccine, attendees said. The guests included Pfizer Chief Executive Albert Bourla, whose company developed one of the first Covid-19 vaccines.
Trump’s private comments illuminate the fraught politics around vaccines that the White House is confronting, which reached a boiling point Wednesday after the administration fired the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other top officials quit their jobs in the midst of disagreements with Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over vaccine policy.
The agency is now facing a crisis. Longtime officials there said Kennedy is ignoring scientific findings to pursue an antivaccine agenda, threatening public health as the calendar gets closer to winter and seasonal outbreaks of Covid and other viruses.
In preparing for a class on presidential powers I’ll be teaching this fall with Bob Bauer, I made this chart of the average number of executive orders per year each President has issued over the course of their presidency. The data comes from the American Presidency project. Having made it, I thought it would be interesting to share:
Voters in the U.S. and around the worldare unhappy with the direction of their countries and keep voting to “throw the bums out”. In the U.S. there were just 3 change elections (where the party controlling the House, Senate and/or White House changed) out of the 10 held in the 1960’s & 70s. In the 80’s & 90’s it happened 4 times in 10 elections. This century? 11 out of 13 elections.
Through silence or vocal support, House and Senate Republicans are backing an extraordinary set of new precedents for presidential power they may come to regret if and when Democrats seize those same powers.
Here are 10 new precedents, all set with minimal GOP dissent:
Presidents can actively profit from their time in office, including creating new currencies structured to allow foreign nationals to invest anonymously, benefiting said president.
Presidents can aggressively pardon supporters, including those who made large political donations as part of their bid for freedom. The strength of the case in said pardons is irrelevant.
Between the lines: Friday's Supreme Court ruling limiting nationwide injunctions — a decision widely celebrated by Republicans — underscores the risks of partisan precedent-setting.Conservatives sped to the courts to block many of President Biden's signature policies — and succeeded.
The White House has removed official transcripts of President Donald Trump’s public remarks from its government website, replacing them with selected videos of his public appearances.
As recently as Sunday, transcripts of Trump’s speeches and comments were still showing up in the “Remarks” section of WhiteHouse.gov. The next day, they were gone, snapshots of the site from an internet archive show. The only transcript appearing now is of Trump’s inaugural address on Jan. 20.
Government stenographers are still recording and transcribing Trump’s remarks, a White House official said. But in an internal policy change in recent days, the White House took down the transcripts in favor of audio and video of his appearances.
The idea behind the move is that people will get a fuller and more accurate sense of Trump by watching and listening to him as opposed to reading a transcript, which they may not be inclined to do anyway, the official said. Purging the transcripts and switching to audio and video of Trump's remarks was intended to create "consistency" across the website, the official said.
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Others questioned the rationale the White House official put forward. The real motivation may be that Trump’s frequent digressions — which he calls “the weave” — can come off as gibberish in written form, critics said.
Perhaps the White House “didn’t want ‘the weave’ exposed,” said Mike McCurry, a press secretary in Bill Clinton’s White House.
The last presidential event that the White House transcribed and made public happened more than two months ago — an Oval Office meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Though some videos of Trump's appearances are available on the White House's website, many are not.
The site shows 10 videos in April, including events with Ohio State University’s football team, the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, the Philadelphia Eagles football team and the Italian and Norwegian prime ministers.
For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity.
Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable.
All of that follows President Donald Trump discouraging note-taking at meetings, ripping up records when he was done with them, refusing to release White House visitor logs and having staffers sign nondisclosure agreements during his first term — then being indicted for hauling to Florida boxes of sensitive documents that he was legally required to relinquish.
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He long refused to release his tax returns despite every other major White House candidate and president having done so since Jimmy Carter. Today, White House stenographers still record every word Trump utters, but many of their transcriptions are languishing in the White House press office without authorization for public release. That means no official record — for weeks, if at all — of what the president has said.
A note on Judge Howell’s ruling striking down the Perkins Coie exec order. Key point is in 1st sentence: “No American President has ever before issued exec. orders like the [this] one.” Trump apologists can change the subject or stay silent, but can’t deny she’s right. ... 1/10 pic.twitter.com/bgTxdjiZzO
Every U.S. president has adapted the Oval Office to suit his taste. Franklin Delano Roosevelt placed an animal hide rug on the floor. John F. Kennedy, a World War II naval officer, hung seascapes on the walls. And Barack Obama featured indigenous ceramics on the shelves. But Trump has gone golden, taking the office into baroque and rococo realms typical of 17th- and 18th-century French monarchs. An analysis in the Cut called the decoration “An Interior Designer’s Nightmare.” But the sparkle conveys something more insidious about how Trump views himself. Behold the new Sun King, a wannabe emperor who views his powers as absolute — who governs by executive order, and has been recorded giggling in his gilded chamber with Salvadoran autocrat Nayib Bukele as his administration defies a unanimous Supreme Court ruling that he facilitate the return of a Salvadoran immigrant who was wrongly deported. God save us from the king.
When it came time to choose a design for a presidential residence in the late 18th century, Washington likewise picked one of the more restrained concepts. Conceived by Irish-born architect James Hoban, the White House, as it originally stood, combined the tidy symmetries and boxy practicality of Georgian architecture, a neoclassical style that had been popular in the British Isles during the 18th century. The White House was inspired, in part, by Leinster House in Dublin, which dates to the 1740s and now houses the Irish Parliament — a Georgian structure that is grand in scale but subdued in its surface decoration.
In keeping with the modest tone, the White House’s earliest inhabitants avoided referring to the building as a “presidential palace,” describing it instead as the “executive mansion” or the “President’s House,” the latter of which appears engraved on silver serving objects from the 19th century. It was Theodore Roosevelt who made the informal expression “the White House” the building’s official designation. The U.S. republic’s representative democracy, however imperfect and incomplete, has historically been symbolized by a “house” — not a palace.
The Court said in that case that in the US governmental system all the agencies of the government must be responsible to the president—the only official elected by all the people—and that the CFPB, which had a single administrator whose term of office the president could not terminate at will, was thus unconstitutionally structured because the president could not appoint his own director.
The Federal Reserve Board is headed by seven directors appointed for fixed but staggered terms of 14 years, and thus cannot be dismissed by the president under current law, unless the Supreme Court holds that the Fed is subject to the same rules as the other independent regulatory agencies.
In creating the Fed, Congress was careful to make sure that the agency was completely independent of the president and Congress. This was because the Fed’s control of the major elements of the economy—the money supply, interest rates, and the banking system—would all be important for a president (and his party) running for re-election. The Fed, for example, could lower interest rates and increase economic growth before an election, with major political implications for the president and his political party.
Accordingly, if the president is to be given control over the independent regulatory agencies, the Court must find some other way to assure that the Fed will remain independent of any president.
In Seila Law itself, before the Court decided whether the administrator of the CFPB could be removed and replaced by the president, it considered whether Congress would have created the CFPB in the first place, if it had known that the president would be able to take control of the agency.
The Court concluded that there was nothing in the legislative history of the CFPB to suggest that Congress cared whether the president controlled the agency or not. Accordingly, the Court allowed the agency to continue operations under the president’s control.
In the case of the Fed, however, the Court’s answer would almost certainly be different. It would be clear from the congressional debates over the Fed’s creation—and the extraordinary financial power of the Fed—that its independence from the president was a key in its establishment.
Upon review of the government’s motion, the court denies the motion for an
emergency stay pending appeal and for a writ of mandamus. The relief the government is
requesting is both extraordinary and premature. While we fully respect the Executive’s
robust assertion of its Article II powers, we shall not micromanage the efforts of a fine
district judge attempting to implement the Supreme Court’s recent decision.
It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter. But in this case, it
is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country
in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our
constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody
that there is nothing that can be done.
This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that
Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.
The government asserts that Abrego Garcia is a terrorist and a member of MS-13.
Perhaps, but perhaps not. Regardless, he is still entitled to due process.
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“Energy in the [E]xecutive” is much to be respected. FEDERALIST NO. 70, at 423
(1789) (Alexander Hamilton) (Clinton Rossiter ed., 1961). It can rescue government from
its lassitude and recalibrate imbalances too long left unexamined. The knowledge that
executive energy is a perishable quality understandably breeds impatience with the courts.
Courts, in turn, are frequently attuned to caution and are often uneasy with the Executive
Branch’s breakneck pace.
And the differences do not end there. The Executive is inherently focused upon
ends; the Judiciary much more so upon means. Ends are bestowed on the Executive by
electoral outcomes. Means are entrusted to all of government, but most especially to the
Judiciary by the Constitution itself.
The Executive possesses enormous powers to prosecute and to deport, but with
powers come restraints. If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due
process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will
not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?∗ And
what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary
powers upon its political enemies? The threat, even if not the actuality, would always be
present, and the Executive’s obligation to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”
would lose its meaning. U.S. CONST. art. II, § 3; see also id. art. II, § 1, cl. 8.
-- Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson
* See, e.g., Michelle Stoddart, ‘Homegrowns are Next’: Trump Doubles Down on Sending American ‘Criminals’ to Foreign Prisons, ABC NEWS (Apr. 14, 2025, 6:04 PM); David Rutz, Trump Open to Sending Violent American Criminals to El Salvador Prisons, FOX NEWS (Apr. 15, 2025, 11:01 AM EDT).
2 telling things here:
1) White House crosses out “wrongly,” despite repeatedly acknowledging its error in court.
2) “who’s never coming back” is basically taunting SCOTUS. Signals the opposite of any intent to “facilitate” his return. https://t.co/Pn2ltL8lzX
[N]owhere is the evidence of the new right’s willful decline more obvious than in its rejection of fidelity to the rule of law and the Constitution. As the Trump administration ignores due process, encroaches upon press freedom, and subverts the independence of the judiciary—all central pillars of self-government—top executive branch officials and Republican members of Congress turn a blind eye, or cheer it on. And let us be clear: The previous administration was no paragon of civic health either. Our own Sarah Isgur argued earlier this year that Joe Biden left office in January having caused more damage to the rule of law than any of his predecessors. But the Biden administration’s myriad failures and abuses are not a warrant for this administration to do worse in the spirit of “retribution.”
Take, for example, the administration’s ongoing campaign of intimidation against law firms. These executive orders may have begun as an exercise in retaliation, but their initial success at extracting concessions and capitulation has given way to both a shakedown operation and a means of hacking the rule of law and the constitutional order. Lawyers who might want to take on clients targeted by this administration have, in effect, been told, “That’s a nice little law firm you have there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it.”
But the administration’s most disturbing assault on the Constitution is the one it cynically touts as a patriotic defense of it: a president’s unchecked power. There is plenty of scholarship supporting the theories of the unitary executive; at a basic level, the arguments are uncontroversial and defensible. But the idea of the unitary executive is not, and has never been, a warrant for what Edmund Burke, John Locke, and the Founders called “arbitrary power.” As James Madison wrote in Federalist 47, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
We are not there yet. Our sadly enfeebled institutions and deteriorating commitment to republican government are not yet so enervated as to permit outright tyranny, and we are encouraged by fledgling efforts by lawmakers to reclaim some of the authority granted to the legislative branch by Article I of the Constitution, however unlikely they are to succeed. But the rhetoric coming out of the White House—and the logic underpinning it—is moving rapidly in a dark direction. Donald Trump’s musings about serving a third term or his promotion of a Napoleon quote—“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law”—may be discounted as trolling, but as our own Nick Catoggio has noted, when it comes to Trump, “everything’s a joke until it isn’t.”
Trump and his allies have in recent weeks called for the impeachment of at least five federal judges who have issued injunctions against administration actions, including DOGE moves to gut the federal government. But in past years, especially under JOE BIDEN’s administration, those same Trump allies celebrated judicial injunctions.
Two years ago, Trump praised a federal judge’s ruling which blocked the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies. “Just last week in a historic ruling, a brilliant federal judge ordered the Biden administration to cease and desist from their illegal and unconstitutional censorship and collusion with social media,” he said at a Turning Point Action summit.
In December, Trump applauded when a federal judge blocked the Biden administration from disposing of materials used for Trump’s promised Southern border wall before his inauguration. And in 2021, STEPHEN MILLER’s America First Legal Foundation asked for injunctions against the Biden administration, including one on the federal employee Covid-19 vaccine mandate.
Conservative states are succeeding in getting friendly federal judges to issue broad—often nationwide—injunctions reining in federal government actions, thwarting key parts of President Barack Obama’s agenda and imperiling some aspects of Hillary Clinton’s platform.
The tactic—amplified by the 4-4 deadlock in the Supreme Court—has already frozen Obama’s immigration policy, is limiting his efforts to protect transgender rights and could hamstring Clinton’s planned executive actions on immigration, labor and environmental issues if she wins the White House.
The shorthanded Supreme Court is expected to start adding new cases to its docket as soon as Thursday, with the new term set to open Monday. But many legal experts say that if the high court remains split down the middle on key issues, the more important action will be in the lower courts, where the red-state-led onslaught is playing out..
In its waning days, the Obama administration is continuing to push back against the conservative legal assault, with the Justice Department repeatedly opposing nationwide injunctions and pressing judges to rein in their rulings.
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Nonetheless, some liberal legal activists seem reluctant to deplore the conservative states’ tactics. The reason: civil rights and immigrants’ advocates have long visited the courtrooms of federal judges to seek sweeping rulings looking to alter federal policy across the country.
“A single case involving a single judge can issue an injunction against nationwide laws or policies and they have always done that. That’s the way our legal system works,” said Nina Perales of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund. “It’s almost as if conservatives figured this out after progressives did....It’s really not new.”
While the convention effort is focused on the national debt, legal experts say it could open the door to other changes, such as limiting who can be a U.S. citizen, allowing the president to overrule Congress’ spending decisions or even making it legal for Trump to run for a third term.
Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica have obtained a draft version of a proposed lawsuit being floated to attorneys general in several states, revealing new details about who’s involved and their efforts to advance legal arguments that liberal and conservative legal scholars alike have criticized, calling them “wild,” “completely illegitimate” and “deeply flawed.”
The endeavor predates Trump’s second term but carries new weight as several members of Trump’s inner circle and House Speaker Mike Johnson have previously expressed support for a convention to limit federal government spending and power.
Article V of the Constitution requires Congress to call a convention to propose and pass amendments if two-thirds of states, or 34, request one. This type of convention has never happened in U.S. history, and a decadeslong effort to advance a so-called balanced budget amendment, which would prohibit the government from running a deficit, has stalled at 28.
Despite that, the lawsuit being circulated claims that Congress must hold a convention now because the states reached the two-thirds threshold in 1979. To get there, these activists count various calls for a convention dating back to the late 1700s. Wisconsin’s petition, for example, was written in 1929 and was an effort to repeal Prohibition. The oldest petition they cite, from New York, predates the Bill of Rights. Some others came on the eve of the Civil War.
When a federal court imposes contempt sanctions, the U.S. Marshals Service enforces the order, including
arresting persons ordered imprisoned for contempt. The U.S. Marshals Service is an executive branchagency within the Department of Justice. Some commentators have expressed concerns that, if the
executive branch chose to defy a court order, it might also seek to prevent the U.S. Marshals from
enforcing contempt sanctions. The U.S. Marshals are required by statute to “execute all lawful writs,
process, and orders issued under the authority of the United States,” and the President’s pardon power
does not apply to civil contempt sanctions. The 2018 review of contempt against the federal government
notes that, historically, Presidents have complied with federal court orders and have not directed the U.S.
Marshals not to enforce contempt orders.
Legal experts said there is a major flaw in the system — the judicial branch must rely on the executive branch to enforce its rulings. Federal judges use U.S. marshals, for example, to apprehend anyone ordered to jail. Justice Department prosecutors are the ones who decide whether to bring cases anyone referred for criminal contempt charges.
And it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration would jail or prosecute one of its own officials.
Trump could also pardon anyone facing a criminal contempt charge or conviction.
“The Supreme Court, as Alexander Hamilton famously said in the Federalist Papers, has neither purse nor sword,” said Jeffrey Rosen, president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center. That means if the president were to defy the high court, the justices “would be powerless to enforce” their ruling.
Since Trump’s victory in November, Trump’s team has rejected hundreds of applicants that it felt won’t be loyal enough to Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. The hiring scrutiny has applied to a range of jobs across agencies and seniority levels: more than in Trump’s first term, a White House signoff has been required on lower-level cabinet appointees, people with knowledge of the interviews said. And unlike the 2017 White House, a team on the transition vetted thousands of employees before Trump took office.
Applicants were asked if they ever made comments critical of Trump, worked for a politician who disliked Trump or supported causes or politicians not aligned with the president, according to a person with direct involvement in the vetting operation. Some questions aim to gauge an applicant’s support for the president by asking how long the applicant has backed Trump, the person said, and determine whether the candidate had given to any politicians or supported any causes that aren’t aligned with Trump.
Of particular interest to the vetting team is whether hires made any comments criticizing Trump over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol and his false claims that the election was stolen, the person said.
Potential hires have also been pressed about their policy views, sometimes on subjects that are unrelated to the jobs for which they are applying, some of the people said. They have been asked questions about their views on tariffs, whether Ukraine deserves more or less U.S. aid and whether the U.S. should be a member of NATO. The questions are intended to measure whether a job candidate’s worldviews match up with Trump’s, the people said.
Candidates for top national security positions in the Trump administration have faced questions that appear designed to determine whether they have embraced the president’s false claims about the outcome of the 2020 election and its aftermath, according to people familiar with cases of such screening.
The questions asked of several current and former officials up for top intelligence agency and law enforcement posts revolved around two events that have become President Donald Trump’s litmus test to distinguish friend from foe: the result of the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol, according to the people, who, like others interviewed for this report, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
These people said that two individuals, both former officials who were being considered for positions within the intelligence community, were asked to give “yes” or “no” responses to the questions: Was Jan. 6 “an inside job?” And was the 2020 presidential election “stolen?”
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One former senior intelligence official said that attesting to something you know to be untrue — as in the assertion that President Joe Biden stole the 2020 election — would violate the ethos of an intelligence officer. “I don’t understand how somebody could [answer untruthfully] and do their job,” said the former official.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” ― George Orwell, 1984
