Trump finds new ways to flex presidential power after returning to White House

U.S. President Donald Trump signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump is swiftly breaching the traditional boundaries of presidential power as he returns to the White House, bringing to bear a lifetime of bending the limits in courthouses, boardrooms and politics to forge an expansive view of his authority.

He’s already unleashed an unprecedented wave of executive orders, daring anyone to stop him, with actions intended to clamp down on border crossings, limit the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship and keep the popular Chinese-owned TikTok operational despite a law shutting down the social media platform.

Democrats and civil rights organizations are rallying to fight Trump in court, but legal battles could drag on before slowing the president down. Meanwhile, Trump is drafting a new blueprint for the presidency, one that demonstrates the primacy of blunt force in a democratic system predicated on checks and balances between the branches of government.

“He’s going to push it to the max,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville, a Republican from Alabama.

Trump tried to take a similar approach in his first term, with mixed results. This time, there are fewer guardrails.

His administration has few of the establishment figures that once tried to curb his penchant for upheaval. The U.S. Supreme Court is stocked with conservative justices, and recently decreed that presidents are broadly immune from prosecution for any official actions taken during their term. Republicans are in complete control on Capitol Hill, where the leaders owe their majority positions to Trump’s support or acquiescence.

In a striking display of Trump’s dominance, almost no one from his party challenged the decision to pardon almost everyone charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.

“We’re not looking backwards, we’re looking forward,” said Senate Majority Leader John Thune of South Dakota.

It’s the kind of scenario that Democrats warned about during last year’s campaign, when they claimed that Trump would govern as a dictator if elected to another term.

Sitting in the Oval Office just hours after being inaugurated on Monday, Trump rejected the characterization.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head and pursing his lips. “I can’t imagine even being called that.”

Then he continued scrawling his signature on executive orders that were laid out across the Resolute Desk.

Trump’s blitz didn’t surprise Barbara Res, who worked for the future president years ago at his namesake company.

“Politics is about compromise. Business is all about leverage,” Res said. “He’s not a compromiser.”

Although Trump got his start in the brick-and-mortar field of real estate, he appears to be taking a page from the “move fast and break things” tactic of technology company executives who spent millions bolstering his presidential bid and attended his inauguration.

John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley who helped expand presidential authority while working for George W. Bush, said Trump’s executive orders were “unprecedented in terms of the sweeping scope of the orders and in the sheer number.”

Although such orders can be easily reversed by a future president, they could have a profound impact for now.

Yoo described as “legally shaky” Trump’s effort to allow TikTok to keep operating even though U.S. officials have described it as a national security threat because of fears that China could access user data or manipulate the content algorithm. A law signed by President Joe Biden required the platform to shut down in the United States unless its Chinese parent company found a new owner by Sunday, the day before Trump took office.

But Trump directed his Justice Department not to enforce the ban, which Yoo compared to a student asking for more time on an exam after it was due.

Yoo also said Trump is trying to “really push the envelope” by declaring that migrants who are entering the country constitute an “invasion.” The president directed the military to help take “operational control” of the U.S. border, but troops are not allowed to handle law enforcement, whether it’s seizing drugs or arresting migrants.

“This is without historical parallel,” Yoo said. “This is really an extraordinary claim of presidential power.”

Nearly two dozen states have already sued Trump over his executive order intended to limit birthright citizenship, part of his sweeping effort to curb immigration. The president’s opponents said the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires that people born in the U.S. are citizens, including people whose parents were not legally citizens at the time of their birth.

“Presidents have broad power but they are not kings,” said New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat.

Depending on how the legal battles play out, Yoo said Trump could set a new standard for his successors.

“If he’s successful with even half the executive orders, every future president is going to want to do the same thing,” he said.

It’s not unusual for presidents to test the limits of presidential authority, said Julian Zelizer, a Princeton University historian. For example, Biden tried to expand the cancellation of federal student loans, only to see his proposal blocked by the U.S. Supreme Court.

“But as with most things,” Zelizer said, “Trump goes further than the rest to see just how far he can go.”

Res recalled a similar approach at the Trump Organization, where Trump prided himself on his ability to chisel down contractor costs or lean on local officials for favorable treatment for his properties.

“No matter what you gave him or offered him, he wanted more,” she said.

Res said Trump would keep in his desk a black-and-white picture of Roy Cohn, an attorney renowned for his ruthlessness.

“He would pull that out when he was arguing with a contractor,” she said. ”‘Here’s my lawyer, sue me.‘”

Trump’s ongoing challenge will be keeping Republicans in line on Capitol Hill, and some have suggested they’re still willing to cross him.

Sen. Susan Collins, a Maine Republican known for an independent streak, said she supports some of Trump’s executive orders but “others I have real questions about.”

Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California who has been a political nemesis of Trump, said Trump’s actions run the gamut “from the plainly unconstitutional — as in the attempt to end birthright citizenship — to the draconian, with mass deportations.”

Others, he said, like the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, are just “absurd.”

Asked if Congress would stand up to the new White House, Schiff said he wasn’t sure.

“We’re about to find out,” he said.

Chris Megerian And Lisa Mascaro, The Associated Press