As Trump sets about tearing down all the past norms and conventions of Presidential power – both physical and metaphorical – what could rein him in, and what jeopardy might he and his ‘court of jesters’ face if they carry on?
Since taking office:
Let’s start with the basics. It’s been a very long year since Trump’s return to the White House in January 2025. In that time, Trump has tested the limits of executive power – both at home and abroad – moving fast to make good on what he openly promised on the campaign trail: punish his perceived enemies, purge the state, and bend the U.S. government to his personal will. So far, so on track.
On day oneof his presidency, he issued a record 26 executive orders (EOs). Firstly Trump froze most new hiring across the federal civil service, halting federal agencies from filling vacant posts without (his) explicit White House sign-off. Trump also revived and rebranded his old “Schedule F” plan (previously revoked in 2020) – now called “Schedule Policy/Career” – which lets Trump strip job protections from thousands of senior civil servants in “policy-influencing” roles, meaning career civil-servants with expertise in their roles could be fired at will to be replaced with Trump loyalists.
Presidential directives are supposed to follow the law
EOs are unilateral directives from the President which manages operations of the federal (national) government and have the force of law upon federal agencies, but they must be rooted in existing laws. This can make EOs a powerful but limited tool, allowing the President to manage the federal government and implement policy, but ultimately, they are still supposed to be subject to the checks and balances from the judicial and legislative branches. Critics have called EO 14171 an attempt to turn the neutral civil service into a presidential patronage machine; Trump, in his now familiar Orwellian double-speak, calls it “accountability.”
Then there’s the Justice Department. Trump installed Pam Bondi as Attorney General. Bondi is a true Trump acolyte who, in 2013 early on in her association with Trump, and the foundation ‘And Justice for All’ (a political group supporting Bondi) received a donation from the Trump Foundation, and subsequently declined to be involved in the ultimately successful lawsuit against Trump University. Bondi has since used the Department of Justice (DOJ) as a blunt political instrument. saying openly that the DOJ’s new mission is to end “weaponisation” against Trump and instead will focus on “violent crime,” language that sounds neutral in terms of law enforcement until you notice what’s missing:
- White-collar crime: in February of 2025 Bondi disbanded the national security division’s corporate enforcement unit and placed limits on the types of crimes related to foreign lobbying that prosecutors can pursue.
- Federal civil rights enforcement: former DOJ employees have resigned or been fired, suggesting a new environment where disagreement on priorities (such as prosecuting January 6 rioters) is not tolerated, potentially impacting various enforcement areas.
- Investigations touching the President: both critics and legal experts – including conservative former prosecutors – have warned that Bondi is turning the DOJ into Trump’s “personal law firm” due to her close loyalty to the President and the administration’s intervention in legal matters, including the dismissal of certain high-profile cases and firings of career staff who resisted.
But this was just the start. Under Bondi, the Department has moved aggressively against Democratic critics and sought criminal charges against figures Trump has publicly feuded with, like former FBI Director James Comey. Trump publicly celebrated Comey’s indictment for allegedly lying to Congress over ‘Hilary’s emails’ and said he hoped “there will be others,” while denying that he was directing prosecutions. Although this indictment failed, the DOJ still continues its pursuit of Comey.
Election monitoring in certain states
Trump has also aimed federal power at the US domestic democratic processes. The Justice Department has announced “election monitoring” operations in largely Democratic-led states like California, insisting this is about “ballot security” and “transparency”.
In the US, some state;s officials and civil rights groups say this action looks a lot like intimidation – where we see the federal government inserting itself into blue-state elections after years of Trump alleging, without any credible evidence, that Democrats steal votes. However, this is not illegal: the DOJ can send observers. But in context – from someone who still claims the 2020 election was stolen from him and who promised “retribution” – it all reads a lot less like neutral oversight and more like groundwork for contesting any inconvenient result and targeting your political enemies.
Inside the executive branch, Trump has also greatly tightened ideological controls on what is said about him and his presidency. In April 2025, the DOJ imposed sweeping new rules gagging department employees from posting almost anything on social media that touches their work, including even resharing official DOJ press releases if it could “harm the department’s efficiency or impartiality”. On paper that sounds like boring HR policy. In practice, critics argue it’s a loyalty filter: career lawyers and agents who criticise political interference risk discipline or firing under Schedule Policy/Career, while political appointees loyal to Trump will be shielded.
This resembles textbook authoritarian consolidation: first you purge disloyal technocrats, then you criminalise and stigmatise dissent from those who remain, introducing insecurities into the minds of your critics who, due to the introduction of the EO “Schedule Policy/Career” now need to show loyalty to keep their jobs. Human Rights Watch and others have made this argument in Hungary, where Viktor Orbán’s government hollowed out independent institutions and brought public broadcasters and much of the press to heel in the name of “national sovereignty”.
Trump wants federal government to disrupt opposition groups
Trump has never given the impression that this is not the point. He talks openly about a federal government that will “investigate and disrupt” groups he claims are dangerous to public order but as he’s the one defining what that is it now includes anti-fascist organisers, progressive prosecutors, journalists, and former officials who crossed him, precisely those who in normal times we might expect to be a check and a balance against those who push against social, political and moral norms.
However, this is the sort of language familiar from other democracies that slid towards competitive authoritarianism. For example, after Turkey’s failed coup in 2016, President Erdoğan used emergency decrees to purge well over 100,000 civil servants, judges, teachers and soldiers, branding them all as security threats and tightening his personal grip on the state. Trump’s America is not Turkey 2016 but the emerging patterns should be an uncomfortable reminder of what can happen..
Some moves, to be fair, are well within Trump’s conventional powers. Any president can issue executive orders about internal White House programmes; any president can fire certain political appointees; any president can push a law-and-order message and appoint hard-line judges and prosecutors who share it. Trump replacing the director of the National Portrait Gallery because she supposedly supported “DEI,” and at the same time hanging a newly stylised presidential portrait of himself in federal buildings, is petty, vindictive and vain – but lawful.
Likewise, the president is allowed to nominate judges, including deeply ideological ones, and a Republican-led Senate has begun rapidly confirming his picks to lifetime posts on the federal courts of appeal. That’s the nature of politics, not (by itself) autocracy.
But taken together – the purge authority, the politicised prosecutions, the election interference theatre, the gagging of dissent inside government – we’re not looking at normal “strong leadership.” We’re looking at an American president trying to personalise the state. And that’s where it gets dangerous, fast, for both the U.S. and, indirectly, everyone else who must live with America’s power.
But isn’t the American system supposed to stop this?
For UK readers: the U.S. president is both head of government (the PM’s role) and head of state (the King’s role). The president runs the executive branch (the cabinet and civil service heads of government departments), commands the armed forces, and issues executive orders. They do not write laws (that’s Congress), and they are not supposed to be above the law (that’s the courts).
The U.S. Constitution rests on “checks and balances”. Congress can refuse money or pass laws limiting the president; courts can strike EOs down; the civil service is meant to keep doing its job regardless of who sits in the Oval Office; and if a president goes too far, the House of Representatives can impeach and the Senate can remove them.
In theory, then, Trump can swing a wrecking ball to practiced norms but Congress, the courts, and ultimately the voters can grab it mid-swing.
However, is this happening in practice? It appears that those checks are wobbling.
In Part 2 we’ll look at the role of Congress and the US Supreme Court in curbing, or not, the power of Trump
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