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The Politics Shed- A Free Text Book for all students of Politics.
President Trump is officially a Republican president, but many aspects of his views and policies put him at odds with the Republican Party - and give him common ground with Democrats. President Trump has no direct political experience, entering the presidential race directly from business and media. He used the Republican primaries to launch a hostile takeover of the party: voters selected a candidate whom most senior Republicans strongly opposed, especially in private. Reince Priebus (then head of the RNC) refused to campaign with him, Paul Ryan initially refused to endorse him, and Senator McCain and Mitt Romney openly attacked the Trump candidacy.
Trump's policies are not typically Republican and are best characterized as right-populist. His populist attacks on racial minorities and abortion rights please the social conservatives, and fiscal conservatives welcome his desire to cut financial regulations and reduce corporation tax. However, many of the policies he proposed in his first term seemed more atune with radical, progressive Democrats, such as opposition to international trade deals like the TPP. However, this was always motivated by nationalist isolation rather than opposition to the concept of globalization. In particular, Trump's trillion-dollar infrastructure plan could be seen as the opposite of fiscal conservative traditions.
Trump's First Term
Trump's First Term
In office, 2009-2016 the infrastructure plan became less ambitious and more oriented to Republican preferences for cars over mass transit. Trump's infrastructure spending plan stalled due to Democrats who took issue with the fact that Trump preferred private funding and highways to federal funding and public transit. Of the projected $1.5 trillion, the federal government would spend only $200 billion.[95] Under the Obama administration, funding for transit on the one hand and for highways and bridges on the other hand were roughly equal. Under the Trump administration, some 70% of the funding went to highways and bridges and only about 11% to transit.
Regardless of their mandate or style, presidents find it increasingly difficult to persuade members of the opposing party given the high levels of partisanship that now exist and party unity means support from the president's party is not guaranteed.
Trump and Speaker Paul Ryan tried to pass the American Health Care Act (to reform the Affordable Care Act) in March 2017 which would have replaced and largely destroyed Obama care. Despite concerted efforts, Trump was unable to persuade any Democrats or enough Republicans to support the bill.
Trump's Second Term
Trump's Second Term
May 2025
May 2025
Trump Uses Emergency Powers
Trump Uses Emergency Powers
The law gives the president broad powers in a state of emergency.
The law gives the president broad powers in a state of emergency.
US presidents' use of emergency powers has historically expanded their authority during national crises, such as Abraham Lincoln's blockade of Southern ports or Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. After Watergate, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976 (NEA), which requires presidential emergencies to be renewed annually and establishes a framework for the president to declare an emergency under delegated statutory authority. The NEA requires the president to specify the laws under which they will act and to report on expenditures related to the emergency to Congress.
In recent years, members from both parties have highlighted the executive branch’s increased reliance on emergency powers to achieve policy objectives outside of Congress. To correct this trend, Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the Senate and Representatives Chip Roy (R-TX) and Steve Cohen (D-TN) introduced the bipartisan, bicameral ARTICLE ONE Act to reflect the consensus on the need to reassert congressional authority over emergency declarations.
In his second term President Trump declared nearly a dozen states of emergency. Trump said he can impose tariffs because it’s an emergency to contain trade deficits. He can deport immigrants without due process because it’s an emergency to fight a Venezuelan gang’s invasion. He dispatched the National Guard to American cities like Los Angeles because it’s an emergency to quell protests and crime. He asked the Supreme Court for emergency rulings on legal challenges to his authority because the emergeny means he can’t afford to wait for judges to debate his policies. By describing so many things as an emergency today, Trump signals that he must take abnormal action to cope with an abnormal time.
The U.S. Constitution doesn’t have a general emergency authority. Instead, there are laws that give the president special powers in specific circumstances.
“These have accumulated over time to the point where, if you invoke an emergency in area after area after area, you can grope your way toward something resembling a general emergency power,” says David Pozen, a constitutional expert at Columbia Law School.
The climate of emergency can be used to rationalize virtually any action. The president can pardon insurrectionists and fire the people who punished them, meaning the very idea of justice is up for grabs. The president can end civil rights enforcement, meaning landlords can discriminate on the basis of race l. The president can say that data about the economy — or weather or autism or the census — is bogus and proffer his own figures instead.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 empowers the president to quickly deport foreigners during a war or an invasion — but doesn’t say what an invasion is. The Homeland Security Department says it is battling an invasion by Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. An appeals court said this week that the administration isn’t using the law properly, though the government has already deported many people that way. The question is headed for the Supreme Court.
The International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 says the president can take action against an “unusual and extraordinary threat.” But the trade deficit Trump cites as the reason for his tariffs is usual and ordinary. An appeals court said last week that tariffs imposed by executive order were illegal, but Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court.
U.S. law lets the president deploy the National Guard domestically to help enforce federal law. Were federal buildings and immigration agents really unsafe because Angelenos were protesting an immigration crackdown? On Tuesday, a federal district judge in California called the deployment there illegal because the demonstrations were not “a form of rebellion,” as the government claimed.
In Washington, D.C., Trump used a local law that lets him take over the police force in a “crime emergency.” There is crime; it has been falling. But Washington was a “sanctuary city” where the police refused to cooperate with federal immigration agents.
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