Trump's Expanding Executive Power and Congressional Accommodation

President Donald Trump will stand before Congress on Tuesday to deliver the annual State of the Union address to a suddenly transformed nation. One year back in office, Trump has emerged as a president defying conventional expectations. He has executed a head-spinning agenda, upending priorities at home, shattering alliances abroad and challenging the nation’s foundational system of checks and balances. Two Americans were killed by federal agents while protesting the Trump administration’s immigration raids and mass deportations.

As the lawmakers sit in the House chamber listening to Trump’s agenda for the year ahead, the moment is an existential one for the Congress, which has essentially become sidelined by his expansive reach, the Republican president bypassing his slim GOP majority to amass enormous power for himself. “It’s crazy,” said Nancy Henderson Korpi, a retiree in northern Minnesota who joined an Indivisible protest group and plans to watch the speech from home. “But what is disturbing more to me is that Congress has essentially just handed over their power.” She said, “We could make some sound decisions and changes if Congress would do their job.”

The country is at a crossroads, celebrating its 250th anniversary while experiencing some of the most significant changes to its politics, policies and general mood in many Americans’ lifetimes. The president muscled his agenda through Congress when he needed to — often pressuring lawmakers with a phone call during cliffhanger votes — but more often avoided the messy give-and-take of the legislative process to power past his own party and the often unified Democratic opposition.

Trump’s signature legislative accomplishment so far is the GOP’s big tax cuts bill, with its new savings accounts for babies, no taxes on tips and other specialty deductions, and steep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP food aid. It also fueled more than $170 billion to Homeland Security for his immigration deportations. But the GOP-led Congress has largely stood by as Trump dramatically seized power through hundreds of executive actions, many being challenged in court, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to impose his agenda.

“Retrieving a lost power is no easy business in our constitutional order,” wrote Justice Neil Gorsuch in the Supreme Court’s landmark rebuke of Trump’s tariffs policy on Friday. Gorsuch said that without the court stepping in on major questions, “Our system of separated powers and checks-and-balances threatens to give way to the continual and permanent accretion of power in the hands of one man.”

From slashing the federal workforce to upending the childhood vaccine schedule to attacking Venezuela and capturing that country’s president, Trump’s reach appeared to know no bounds. His administration launched investigations of would-be political foes, imposed his name on historic buildings, including the storied John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and perhaps most visibly has been rounding up people and converting warehouses into detention holding centers for deportations.

At almost every step of the way, there were moments when Congress could have intervened but did not. Democrats, in the minority, often tried to push back, including by halting routine Homeland Security funds unless there are restraints on the immigration actions. But Republicans believe the country elected the president and gave their party control of Congress to align with his agenda, according to one senior GOP leadership aide who insisted on anonymity to discuss the dynamic. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana has said Trump will be the “most consequential” president of the modern era.

Democrats plan to either boycott the speech or sit in stony silence. “The state of the union is falling apart,” said House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York. There have been times when Congress held its own against the White House, but they have been rare — as in the high-profile bipartisan push from Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Ca., to force the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, over the objections of Johnson and GOP leadership.

The flex of congressional power has more often come from a few renegade Republicans joining with most Democrats to put a check on the president, as when the House voted to block Trump’s tariffs on Canada. The Senate advanced a war powers resolution to prevent military action in Venezuela without congressional approval, but backed off after Trump intervened. Those have been mostly symbolic votes, because Congress would not have the numbers to overcome any expected Trump veto.

More often, the Congress has accommodated Trump, by rolling back already approved bipartisan funding for USAID foreign aid or public broadcasting or failing to stop the U.S. military strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats that killed two survivors in the Caribbean. When Trump issued a Day One pardon of some 1,500 people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, the Republicans in Congress did not object. And as Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency with billionaire Elon Musk started firing federal workers, GOP lawmakers signaled approval by forming their own DOGE caucus on Capitol Hill.

“The central question for us is does the public understand what’s at stake” said Max Stier, CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit organization focused on government management and democracy. “We are in the midst of the most significant transformation of our government and our public servants in our history as a country.” He said some 300,000 federal employees were fired or moved on, while 100,000 new hires or rehires have largely gone to Homeland Security.

In courtrooms across the country, cases are being filed against the administration at record levels, as Congress was “asleep at the wheel,” said Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, which has filed more than 150 cases against the administration, part of the largest legal effort against an executive branch in U.S. history. But the judicial system has been under strain, and the White House has not always abided by court rulings. GOP lawmakers have joined Trump’s criticism of the courts, displaying outside their offices posters of judges they want to impeach.

A next big test will be over a proof-of-citizenship voting bill that Trump wants ahead of the midterm elections. The House has passed the SAVE America Act, which would require birth certificates or passports to register to vote in federal elections and a photo ID at the polls. Supporters say it’s needed to crack down on fraud, while critics argue it will shut millions of Americans out of voting because they don’t have citizenship documents readily available. The Senate has a majority to pass the measure but not the necessary 60 votes to overcome an expected Democratic-led filibuster. Trump has vowed executive actions if Congress fails to approve legislation.