President Donald Trump\u2019s impeachment acquittal has delivered the White House a fresh coat of power, sparking worries over the rise of an \u201cimperial presidency.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
His victory in the Senate trial on Wednesday accelerated a decades-long shift in the US government in which Congress has steadily ceded authority to the Oval Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump, though, has sparked anxiety: he flaunts his power, and has an attorney general who favors a strong presidency and a Republican Party unwilling to restrain him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cPresident Trump is functionally a monarch at this point. If the king does it, it\u2019s okay.\u201d After suffering under the British king, the architects of the US system of government crafted a constitution in 1789 that gave the legislature strong checks on the powers of the new nation\u2019s chief executive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Congress did require him to obtain approval to make war on Al-Qaeda and Iraq. But they gave him broad authority, allowing the \u201cWar on Terror\u201d to extend to Syria, Yemen and Africa under Bush and his successors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nearly two decades later, Congress worries that Trump could use the same powers to go to war with Iran. But the lawmakers are too at odds to do anything about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lawmakers held the upper hand mostly through the early 20th century, until, faced by existential emergencies the Great Depression and then World war II president Franklin Roosevelt rode roughshod over Congress to take action.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since then, \u201cwe have seen a steady increase over time in the independent powers of the presidency,\u201d said Mark Rozell, dean of the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Republican George W. Bush went far beyond his statutory authorities to order actions like secret surveillance of Americans and abduction and torture of foreign fighters, claiming he had the right to do so to protect the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Having criticized Bush for abusing his war powers, Obama personally signed off on scores of secret drone attacks on terror targets, until even he admitted that there was need for a formal review process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He created a number of administrative bodies led by powerful \u201cczars\u201d that could institute regulations without going through Congress, and made top-level appointments when Congress was in recess to avoid a contentious approval process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When in 2014 the Republican House leader threatened a court challenge, Obama quipped: \u201cSo sue me.\u201d Trump branded Obama\u2019s use of executive orders as \u201cpower grabs.\u201d But he now taps that authority far more brashly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He skips Congress to appoint senior officials by designating them \u201cacting\u201d; he declared a \u201cnational emergency\u201d to divert billions of dollars of Pentagon money to build a border wall; and he cited national security to effectively ban Muslims from entering the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump\u2019s impeachment acquittal has delivered the White House a fresh coat of power, sparking worries over the rise of an \u201cimperial presidency.\u201d His victory in the Senate trial on Wednesday accelerated a decades-long shift in the US government in which Congress has steadily ceded authority to the Oval Office. Trump, though, has sparked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":79829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79828"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79830,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79828\/revisions\/79830"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/79829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}