Column: Trump creating an imperial presidency. He’s doing it by decree

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump has been back in the White House for only two weeks, but he’s already remaking the federal government. He’s trying to create an imperial presidency — and he’s ruling by decree.

In a blizzard of executive orders, Trump has halted federal spending on clean energy, infrastructure, foreign aid and anything connected with “diversity, equity and inclusion”; frozen most federal hiring; stripped thousands of civil servants of job protections and proposed subjecting them to political loyalty tests; summarily fired prosecutors and targeted FBI agents involved in prosecuting him; and attempted to end birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented migrants.

Some of those actions may not stand. The White House canceled a poorly drafted order halting federal payments after it touched off nationwide chaos. A federal judge blocked enforcement of Trump’s birthright citizenship decree, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional.”

But taken together, the actions add up to a concerted campaign to give Trump more direct power over federal programs and spending than any president in recent history.

“This is fundamentally an attempt to redefine the president’s powers under the Constitution,” said Donald F. Kettl, former dean of the University of Maryland’s school of public policy. “It’s seismic.”

The Constitution says setting spending levels for federal programs is up to Congress, not the president — the role traditionally known as the “power of the purse.” Trump is trying to change that.

Earlier presidents have tried to use executive orders to try to sidestep Congress. But Trump’s actions over the last two weeks have been far broader and more sweeping than his recent predecessors’.

His most dramatic attempt to expand presidential power has been his orders to freeze spending on programs he doesn’t like.

Trump has made clear that he believes a president can unilaterally block funds that Congress has approved.

“For 200 years, under our system of government, it was undisputed that the president had the constitutional power to stop unnecessary spending through what is known as impoundment,” he claimed in 2023.

That’s historical fiction. It’s true that earlier presidents tried to impound funds, but their right to do so was often disputed. As early as 1838, the Supreme Court ruled that the president has no such authority. In 1974, Congress passed a law explicitly prohibiting the practice; Trump says he intends to challenge that 50-year-old law in the courts.

Under Trump’s expansive view, legal scholar Stephen Vladeck noted last week, Congress’ decisions on spending would become “merely advisory.”

“If presidents can impound appropriated funds at any time and for any reason, then there’s not much point to having a legislature,” Vladeck wrote.

Less visibly, but just as important, Trump has abruptly transformed thousands of federal jobs from nonpartisan civil service positions into political appointments.

His Office of Personnel Management issued a memo asserting that the Senior Executive Service, the roughly 8,000 career employees atop the bureaucracy, now “serve at the pleasure of the president” — meaning they can be fired at will.

In another memo, the new administration gave itself the right to staff government departments with an unlimited number of political appointees, at least in the short term.

Yet another memo offered some 2 million civil servants a “deferred resignation” plan under which they would give up their jobs in exchange for up to eight months of paid leave.

“It appears intended to reduce the size of the federal payroll in a single blow,” Kettl said. “And if the agencies replace anyone who leaves, it will presumably be with political appointees who feel loyal to Trump.”

“It could represent the biggest rapid remaking of the federal bureaucracy since World War II,” he said. But he noted that it isn’t clear that the scheme will work — partly because Congress hasn’t agreed to fund it.

“Is the [conservative] House Freedom Caucus going to agree to pay bureaucrats for not working?” Kettl asked.

Trump and his chief budget advisor, Russell Vought, have frequently denounced career bureaucrats as members of a hostile “deep state.”

In a 2023 speech, Vought said he intended to make civil servants so miserable that they would leave of their own volition: “We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work.”

Predictably, the new administration’s blitzkrieg has run into resistance on several fronts.

Democratic-led state governments have challenged Trump’s spending freezes in federal court, and two federal district judges have ordered temporary pauses in their implementation. Unions representing federal workers have sued to prevent Trump from taking away their members’ job protections.

But most Republicans in Congress quickly expressed support for Trump’s actions — even though they came at the expense of congressional prerogatives.

“We promised to reduce the size and scope of government, and there’s been so much action on that that it’s caused controversy,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said. “That’s a good thing. We’re disrupting.”

Polls suggest that Trump is on solid political ground when it comes to spending cuts in general. A Reuters-Ipsos survey released last week found that 61% of Americans support the president’s drive to downsize the federal government.

But polls also show that most voters also want the government to do more to improve healthcare and education — areas Trump has promised to defund.

Public support for many of the president’s other actions is much weaker. The Reuters poll found respondents evenly divided over the wisdom of a federal hiring freeze. And a solid majority, 59%, disagreed with Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship.

If Trump’s campaign to slash spending and cancel programs produces more chaos of the kind that occurred last week, or threatens popular programs in health or education, his public support — already weak by historical standards — could quickly erode.

A Republican-led Congress won’t stand in his way. But he already faces pushback from federal judges; even the Trump-friendly Supreme Court may be skeptical of his broad claim of a power to impound.

And eventually, the voters will get a say. The next congressional election is 21 months away.