Your Honour, Mr. President: Trump’s Quest to Rule from the Oval Office

Illustration by Will Allen/Europinion

With nearly 100 days in office, President Trump has managed to usher the US into an international trade war and an emerging constitutional crisis. Currently, the Trump Administration is aggressively challenging the US judiciary through various cases, including on issues such as immigration, health research, and birthright citizenship, to fulfill his agenda and campaign promises, but also to assert complete and unchallenged power. 

While Trump’s actions are not new, they align with dangerous global, anti-democratic patterns. Alongside other international leaders, Trump and his administration seek to further democratic backsliding in the United States and challenge his legal constraints on executive power. Whether by disobeying court orders and refusing to return a wrongly deported man, or asking the Supreme Court to limit lower courts' ability to challenge his proposed policies, Trump is paving a path toward lawlessness and disregarding good faith leadership, hoping to ensure that the executive power unilaterally governs the country. 

Beginning in the cases of immigration, the Trump administration has defied and ridiculed judges who contradict their deportation efforts. In March, the Trump administration ignored a federal judge’s order to pause its deportation effort of a group of Venezuelan men. “Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,”  Vice President JD Vance tweeted. 

Calling the judge a “Radical Left Lunatic” on Truth Social, Trump has employed his usual tactic of delegitimising his opponents to not only discredit but pressure institutions into obedience. This tactic was followed by Republicans filing articles of impeachment against the judge in this case, as well as against five other judges. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. commented on the matter, highlighting their intentions: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” 

Since then, Trump has continued to ignore court orders, with his most recent being his unwillingness in facilitating the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant who was wrongly deported to El Salvador and detained in CECOT, El Salvador’s mega-prison. With the Trump administration refusing to cooperate, constitutional rights are being eroded daily and the executive branch’s ability to ignore checks within the balance of power system is blooming. 

The Trump administration’s proposal to end automatic birthright citizenship highlights this concern, especially regarding civil rights and executive overreach. At stake in this ongoing case is not only a crucial foundation of democracy but the integrity of the US Constitution itself, as the Trump administration challenges lower court blocks to its executive orders, potentially setting a devastating precedent. These judicial barriers have been the strongest tool in preventing the full implementation of his authoritarian agenda. We could see not only the end of birthright citizenship, but potentially a new precedent for other lower court blocks, such as the foreign aid billion-dollar freeze, the deportation of Venezuelans to El Salvador without due process, medical research funding, federal worker “buyouts,” and federal funding to environmental and health care programs.

“What we see the administration doing now is essentially saying there is no umpire,” University of Chicago law professor Alison LaCroix shared with CNN, “and the entire playing field exists at the whim of the executive branch. And they don’t have to pay attention to what the other players are doing or the officials. And that is just antithetical to the Constitution in its text, but also in precedent.”

As Trump emerges from his first 100 days, his presidency is strengthening, checks and balances are weakening, and the US is beginning its descent into democratic backsliding. When thinking about this, I often wonder: What got us here? The answer, while multifaceted, always centres on good faith leadership. The concept of good faith leadership, where leaders act in the public interest with honesty and sincerity, has remained a central expectation of US presidents throughout their modern history. For example, while Trump has heavily relied on executive orders to push his agenda, signing 130 this term alone, he is not the only President to have done so. During their respective tenures, Barack Obama (D) signed a total of 276 executive orders, George W. Bush (R) signed a total of 291, and Bill Clinton (D) signed a total of 364. While many argue that previous presidents acted with more sincere intentions than Trump, it is worth asking why presidents are increasingly bypassing Congress in the first place. Ongoing gridlock, political polarisation, and a rise in populism have led presidents to consolidate power to achieve their goals. 

In the 2025-2026 US legislative session, Congress has passed four laws, one of which is a mandatory fiscal funding agenda and another being the Laken Riley Act, a highly debated immigration legislation. While this legislative session has barely begun, the trend of congressional gridlock remains true. With the 2023-2024 118th Congress passing just under 150 bills, it was deemed the “most unproductive since at least the 1980s.” Zooming out, this can be directly linked to the political polarisation that has continued to divide the public, with split and strict partisan control deeming the legislative branch unproductive. This has given rise to the situation we are in now: a populist leader who invokes “polarization as an explanation for democracy’s global woes.”

The US is now at a pivotal democratic moment, where it will either grant full authority to Trump and his administration or hold its leaders accountable in any way possible. With each court case confronting the Trump administration, these slowly become the final barrier and the last institutional line of defence between democracy and the unchecked expansion of executive power. As Trump’s quest to rule from the Oval Office is only beginning, the time for Americans to fight and defend their democracy is growing increasingly dire.