Democrats’ Beef Isn’t With Executive Power, It’s With Trump and His Voters

Democrats like broad federal and executive power if it expands the state for their goals, but not if it advances Republicans’ interests.

Democrats’ histrionics over President Donald Trump’s use of executive power conflicts with their history. Numerous Democrat presidents have done as much, or more, than Trump is doing now. Amid Democrats’ histrionics, history, and hypocrisy, their only consistency is a willingness to see federal and executive power used when it expands the state and the presidency for their goals.

Beyond bemoaning Trump’s actions of freezing funding, deporting illegal immigrants, imposing tariffs, and blocking men from participating in women’s sports, Democrats label these actions existential threats to the republic.

Freezing funding for review is dubbed unconstitutional, despite estimates that the federal government made $2.7 trillion in erroneous payments since 2003 and created a $1.8 trillion deficit in fiscal 2024. Deporting illegal immigrants is labeled racist, despite these individuals having broken the law. Imposing tariffs is decried as inflationary, despite the Biden-Harris administration having fueled inflation throughout their four years. And barring men from women’s sports is called transphobic, despite the law’s clear intent to base itself on biological differences rather than ideological preferences.

An irony of history underlies these histrionics. Joe Biden clearly and continually tried to overturn the parameters of presidential power. He repeatedly sought to shift student debt to the general taxpayer, even though the Supreme Court had ruled against it. So much for Democrats’ inflation concerns. Biden opened the border in violation of his constitutional obligation to enforce the law — then he abused his power of parole to open the border wider still. […]

— Read More: thefederalist.com