President Trump boasted this weekend of his growing power in his second term – and all the things he's doing now that he wouldn't dare in his first term, such as changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. "I don't think I could have done this in my first term," he told supporters in Northern Kentucky, "This is a much more powerful term. I can do stuff that's unbelievable." He joked about how big companies wouldn't take his call in the first term, but "now they kiss my ass." Less than two weeks before the election, Trump continues to crash through barriers that he wouldn't dare cross in his first term – and pointing to that power to make his case to midterm voters.
Trump's Justice Department is raiding a congresswoman's home. He's knocking down trees in Washington, D.C. against a judge's wishes. And he's making deals with Russia that fly in the face of congressionally passed sanctions.
Trump is hardly the first president to become frustrated and test the limits of executive authority. Bush issued controversial "signing statements" to challenge or reinterpret bills passed by Congress. Barack Obama famously said he had a pen and he planned to use it.
Trump is part of that trend. Trump inherited an increasingly powerful presidency, said Tevi Troy, is a presidential historian, who worked in the George W. Congress has been basically giving away its own power for a quarter of a century.
And Troy says Trump is using that power in a distinctive way - and not to just get around congressional gridlock. Trump's using it to also go after political and cultural opponents. "His goals include going after some of his opponents reigning in 'woke' or "DEI" stuff at universities, pushing back against the media," Troy said, adding.
"He's what I call a unilateralist. He doesn't have an ideology, he has a methodology, and the methodology is unilateralism." The targets are not entirely surprising. Trump has spent years attacking news organizations, criticizing regulators and confronting political opponents, including members of his own party.
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