The Trump Crisis Deepens

It is a mistake to think of the first two and a half weeks of President Trump’s second term as a series of discrete and separate constitutional and legal crises. It is one crisis, with many manifestations. Think of Trump’s second term as a kind of legal hydra, in which the defenders of the Constitution are facing one body with many heads, and those heads are acting in concert.

Trump isn’t merely issuing orders and enacting policies; he’s launching a constitutional revolution. The object is nothing less than the transformation of the American presidency.

Trump’s unconstitutional effort to end birthright citizenship by decree presents separate legal issues from his effort to expand his powers beyond even what the unitary executive theory imagines, but they’re rooted in the same constitutional motivation.

Similarly, his proposal to occupy Gaza and forcibly and permanently relocate millions of Gazan civilians implicates entirely different legal doctrines (it would be a crime against humanity under international law, for example), but it’s also rooted in the same impulse, even if other members of the administration are now trying to walk it back.

So is Elon Musk’s role in the federal government and the extraordinary effort to impound appropriated funds or destroy executive agencies established by Congress.

And so is Trump’s attempt to push the edges of his tariff authority and extend congressional trade statutes far beyond their intended scope.