If there is one thing about politics that Americans can agree on, it’s this: There’s never been a U.S. president quite like Donald J. Trump.
President Trump has already signed more executive orders than any president in the past 40 years issued in their first 100 days – in less than half the time. With the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency, he empowered Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, to reshape the federal workforce. Taken together, many of the president’s moves seem geared toward a fundamental shifting of the balance of power toward the executive branch, as the Monitor’s Henry Gass and Linda Feldmann explore in the cover story featured in the March 17 issue of the Monitor Weekly.
So, what will this shake-up mean for the U.S. government long term?
Some will tell you that it marks the start of a slide toward authoritarianism. But many of the 77 million Americans who voted for President Trump applaud his efforts, believing that this is exactly the jolt the government needs to rein in out-of-control spending.
Henry and Linda have a different message: We simply don’t yet know what the impact will be.
“We can’t really get too ahead of ourselves” by making assumptions about where this current disruption will lead, Henry says. “It can be easy to sort of blow things out of proportion.”
At the Monitor, “Our constant edict is to project calm in our coverage. But it’s not calm for calm’s sake,” says Linda, the Monitor’s Washington bureau chief. It’s because it’s important to get the story right, she says. “If we become agitated and fearful, and just sick with worry, then you lose your ability to think clearly.”
It is true that the U.S. government is in a period of profound change that will undoubtedly impact the country for years to come. As citizens of a representative democracy, Americans need to be alert to those shifts. In their story, Henry and Linda draw from combined decades of experience covering the federal government and courts to show how the current political landscape fits into the long and complex history of American politics, dating back to the country’s founding.
“From the perspective of the courts and the judiciary, it is still very early days. It’s important to keep that in perspective,” Henry says.
While some cases have started to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, so far, that has all been on an emergency basis. That means the justices have only ruled on discrete procedural technicalities. They have not yet weighed in on the major questions about power and authority that the administration’s actions are raising. That test is still to come.
While fear can be a common response to uncertainty, Linda reminds that the United States has endured for 250 years. “This country has gone through some profound disruptions, and we have survived – and even thrived.”
This column first appeared in the March 17 issue of The Christian Science Monitor Weekly. Subscribe today to receive future issues of the Monitor Weekly magazine delivered to your home.
