For more than two centuries, presidents of both parties exercised wide executive latitude across war, trade, and immigration. The Constitution grants the president authority as commander-in-chief, and presidents have routinely used that power to initiate military action without formal declarations of war.
President Harry Truman sent troops to Korea in 1950 without a declaration from Congress, establishing what scholars call the "Korean precedent" for unilateral presidential action in armed conflicts. President Bill Clinton initiated military operations in Kosovo in 1999 without congressional authorization.
President Barack Obama ordered military intervention in Libya in 2011 without a congressional vote, relying solely on executive authority and the War Powers Resolution framework.
Presidents have also long used unilateral authority in trade. The Constitution assigns control of tariffs to Congress (Article I, Section 8), but Congress delegated broad tariff power to the executive branch through laws passed and signed in the 1960s and 1970s. These laws enabled President Ronald Reagan to raise tariffs on Japanese electronics in the 1980s, President George W. Bush to impose steel tariffs in 2002, and President Barack Obama to enact tire tariffs against China in 2009.
Immigration authority has followed the same pattern. The Immigration and Nationality Act grants presidents sweeping discretion over deportation priorities and entry restrictions. President Obama created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012 without congressional involvement. President Jimmy Carter suspended entry of Iranians during the 1979 hostage crisis. Clinton used parole authority and deferred enforced departure for various groups throughout the 1990s. These actions were controversial, but they were accepted as part of the presidency's discretionary authority under the INA.
That longstanding acceptance changed abruptly -- and not because of an act of Congress, a constitutional amendment, or a Supreme Court overhaul. It shifted because the political class prefers to narrow the powers of the presidency depending on who occupies the office.
The moment President Trump took office, executive actions that had been tolerated for decades under previous administrations were suddenly treated as legally questionable, illegitimate, or even unprecedented. Love Trump or hate him, you cannot miss that powers exercised by presidents from Truman to Obama were completely reinterpreted the moment they were used by a president outside the establishment's favor.
This is not how a constitutional government is supposed to function. Presidential authority should rise or fall through lawmaking by Congress or by constitutional amendment -- not through selective enforcement by bureaucratic institutions, political actors, or unelected gatekeepers. If executive authority becomes contingent on elite approval rather than statutory or constitutional boundaries, then the structure of the republic has already begun to weaken.
The result is an emerging norm in which the presidency itself is subject not to the written Constitution, but to the preferences of the political class. Historically accepted powers, military initiative, tariff authority, and immigration discretion have become negotiable, depending on which faction holds cultural or institutional influence. That is the real crisis.
If Americans allow this to stand simply because some dislike the personality of the current president, then future presidents of both parties will inherit an office diminished by precedent and constrained by actors who were never elected to wield that authority.
The presidency is either a constitutional office, or it is a permission slip. And if it becomes the latter, the republic will not be far behind.
Erick Chomskis is a civilian employee of the War Department. His views do not necessarily reflect those of any government department or agency.