President Donald Trump has ushered in a new iteration of the American presidency, assuming more power than any president of either party in recent memory.
Democrats consider Trump’s actions an affront to democracy and the Constitution, but many of them don’t want to rule out exerting those same powers to undo Trump’s agenda.
NOTUS spoke to members of Congress — some of whom are viewed as 2028 presidential contenders — along with strategists and scholars about how the next Democratic president could and should wield the power of the executive. Most expressed a willingness to use the new tools Trump has carved out, saying that if Republicans can do it, Democrats can, too.
All the people NOTUS spoke with emphasized the importance of restoring congressional authority and the rule of law.
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“In order for us to correct the abuses that are happening now, we have to act the same in similar capacities that Trump has given himself,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said. “The Republican majority has decided, for example, that rescissions are a tool they want to use. And so, I don’t think that we serve anybody, and I especially don’t think we put things on the right course by setting a precedent that one party can have greater power when they are in the majority.”
Without approval from Congress or judicial review, Trump has slashed and reorganized agencies, frozen and rescinded money previously appropriated by Congress and relied on executive orders to implement policies as consequential as overhauling the tariff schedule.
Democrats have spent Trump’s second term sounding the alarm about a constitutional crisis he has created as a result of his willingness to govern in this way. Trump said he views his power as being constrained only by his own morality.
Every time Trump is successful in enacting policy via executive action, he sets a new precedent and greenlights use of the same methods for whoever holds the office next.
“Donald Trump has made clear that there are no guardrails on executive power that are effective,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a 2020 presidential candidate and lawyer, told NOTUS. “So, the idea that the next president somehow just doesn’t pick up the tools and use them to execute on the policies that they run on makes no sense.”
“We can’t play the game that Republican presidents get lots of power and Democratic presidents don’t,” Warren said.
This was a common idea among the Democrats who spoke to NOTUS.
As Jaime Harrison, former chair of the Democratic National Committee, put it of Democratic officials, “I think they have to wield those powers aggressively in terms of getting back to the rule of law.”
Harrison said that after an era of “extreme governance,” there will be a hunger to return to some semblance of normalcy. Still, he told NOTUS that voters will expect the next Democratic president to act decisively to deliver progress on their priorities.
“My biggest frustration sometimes with my party is that we allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good,” Harrison said.
Rep. Ro Khanna and Sen. Chris Van Hollen emphasized the importance of abiding by the constitution. Khanna described the ideal approach to post-Trump executive power as “robust action within the constitution,” which he calls “energetic constitutionalism.”
“I understand presidents want to use their executive power, but whoever it is, whether it’s a Republican or Democrat, should follow the law,” Van Hollen said.
Jack Yao, a Democratic strategist in California, said that protecting democracy remains a top concern for Democratic voters. “Fighting fire with fire” is also important, and something California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been doing well, he told NOTUS.
The 2028 presidential election is more than three years away, and when NOTUS asked Sen. Chris Murphy how the next Democratic president should use the power of the executive, he said he was focused on addressing the crisis at present.
Sen. Cory Booker offered a similar answer.
“Honestly, I think we’re in a constitutional crisis right now,” Booker told NOTUS. “I think that the way that Congress has abandoned their power and allowed him [Trump] to do things that our founders would have never, ever have imagined — we have to stop this. We have to balance this, and honestly, I can’t even talk about another presidency because we need to stop this now. No Congress should surrender power to the president.”
Sen. Mark Kelly pointed to Trump’s comments about not needing midterm elections as another example of Trump attempting to gain power that isn’t his to have.
“This is what happens, too, is when leaders of countries start to get more power and more influence, as it comes time for election time they start to get worried,” Kelly said. “Is the next guy going to turn these new powers against me? So, we need whoever winds up in the White House next time to hit the reset button.”
Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College, told NOTUS that presidents assuming great, ostensibly unconstitutional amounts of power is not unprecedented and pointed to leaders, including Abraham Lincoln.
What is unprecedented, Rudalevige said, is the extent to which the current Congress has given power up to the executive. He told NOTUS that 2028 is less a question of what the next president does and more of whether or not Congress chooses to take its power back.
“I wrote a book 20 years ago that effectively concluded that you can’t have an imperial presidency without an invisible Congress, and the current Congress seems really committed to being invisible,” Rudalevige added.
Time and time again, both Congressional leadership and rank-in-file members of the Republican conference have rejected opportunities to rein in Trump’s power.
All of the Democrats who NOTUS interviewed mentioned the need for balance to be restored.
“We do need to reassert Congress’s authority,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “To me, it is actually more about reasserting congressional powers and reestablishing Congress’s power, and in doing so, we strike that balance.”
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