Trump Wants a Monarchy, Not a Presidency. He Must Be Stopped
As a constitutional law professor, I can tell you we are in danger of losing our democracy over the president's false claim to unlimited executive power under Article II.
As President Donald Trump shamelessly shreds the rule of law – flouting a federal court order, ignoring numerous acts of Congress, and defying the plain language of the Constitution as well as US Supreme Court precedent – his defenders are digging in, claiming that the Constitution’s framers envisioned this kind of power-grab all along. “I have an Article II,” Trump said in 2019, “where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” He and his enablers are now proceeding as if every president before him, from George Washington to Joe Biden, stupidly got it all wrong by treating the other two branches as if they have any real power.
But anyone who has seen the hit musical ‘Hamilton’ or watched the 1970s Saturday morning TV series ‘School House Rock’ knows that a war was fought – and won – on a commitment to “No More Kings.” Blinking away that history, Trump’s advocates point to something called the “unitary executive theory,” which suggests that the president has unlimited power to control the actions of the 4 million people that make up the Executive Branch, including firing any of them at any time and for any reason.
Earlier this month, the prominent pro-Trump tech investor Keith Rabois claimed on X that any 9th-grade history student knows that “Article II vests *all* Executive Power in the President.” In a letter justifying the firing of the National Labor Relation Board’s general counsel, Trump’s team likewise wrote that “Article II of the U.S. Constitution vests the entire executive power in a single President, who alone is accountable to the people.” That argument is the unitary executive theory.
But vesting unfettered power in one man would be a monarchy, not a presidency.