So far, a little over half a year into his second term, President Donald J. Trump has issued 181 executive orders. He has already passed his immediate predecessor’s four-year total of 162. If he keeps up his current pace, Mr. Trump will reach 342 executive orders by the end of the year. The only other chief executive who averaged above 300 orders per year was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

These orders, along with other executive branch actions, have been subject to an immense amount of litigation. One organization is tracking 298 cases challenging Trump administration actions; another, following a slightly different methodology, counts 358.

Ten days after Mr. Trump’s second inauguration, the editors of America highlighted three areas of executive action that we said “stood out not only for their moral and practical implications but because, exercised by unilateral decree, they assert executive power unconstrained by the checks and balances of our constitutional system.” They were: the claim to be able to restrict birthright citizenship; the firing of inspectors general without providing notice or explanation to Congress; and the “temporary pause” on grant funding opposed to Mr. Trump’s presidential priorities.

Seven months later, the damage done by President Trump’s disdain for limits on his power has grown precipitously.

In returning to these three issues, the editors continue to stress the importance of recognizing the depth of the unfolding constitutional crisis. It demands responses both of opposition to specific imprudent, immoral or illegal actions and also of deeper structural reforms to restore the balance of power in American government.

The three issues we highlighted have developed along very different tracks. The funding “pause” has been replaced by a chaotic tangle of spending cuts and restrictions, with only a small fraction submitted to Congress for its approval. The damage done by some unilateral actions, perhaps most especially in the shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has been profound.

The structural question that arises from the refusal to spend appropriated funds and in related areas like the imposition of tariffs is the executive’s claim to unilateral economic authority, despite the Constitution’s primary allocation of these powers to Congress. This power is often being wielded to threaten other actors, such as universities dependent on grant funding or international trading partners, into compliance with the policy goals of the administration.

The firing of the inspectors general was challenged both in court, where the case slowly grinds on, and by a bipartisan letter to the president from legislators. However, this case has fallen nearly entirely out of the news; the Trump administration never responded to the letter. 

In several unsigned orders on its emergency docket in July, the Supreme Court allowed the president to dismiss officials even while they challenge his actions in court. Mr. Trump also recently fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics in response to jobs numbers that he disliked. While his legal authority in this case is clear, this firing highlights the risks of appointment and dismissal powers unconstrained by prudence, traditional norms or any structural limits.

On the issue of birthright citizenship, the Supreme Court recently handed down an opinion that postponed addressing the substantive constitutional question. Instead, it used the case to narrow the conditions under which universal injunctions, having immediate nationwide effect to restrict executive action, could be issued by district court judges. But even as the court expanded executive power by insulating it from some injunctions, it offered a few avenues for pursuing similar injunctions on other grounds and a 30-day pause in which to do so. 

During that time, the American Civil Liberties Union swiftly brought a class action suit, under which a new preliminary universal injunction was issued. Thus, the United States has returned for now to the status quo ante regarding birthright citizenship. Eventually, probably at the end of its next term in June 2026, the Supreme Court may finally decide the substantive question of whether or not the president may summarily redefine the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship to all those born “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.

For now, the Supreme Court seems to be giving President Trump considerable leeway. While he has suffered some notable defeats, particularly in a stunning middle-of-the-night emergency order to prevent some deportations, the court has generally allowed Mr. Trump’s assertions of unlimited authority over the entire executive branch to stand while the cases challenging them proceed. 

While a slow and deliberate pace for appellate litigation is normal and the justices likely hope that it will cool the temperature on heated issues, it may be having the opposite effect at present. The Supreme Court’s decision to proceed normally while the executive branch is provoking a crisis significantly increases the stress on the American constitutional system. Whether or not the court’s approach proves prudent is an open question, but the fact that those costs are being borne by others while the justices move slowly is undeniable. 

However, the court’s slow pace should not be automatically assessed as directly serving Mr. Trump’s goals. In the birthright citizenship case, for example, the court took care to allow another path for an injunction to replace the one it set aside. There are certainly good reasons to object to many of the court’s recent decisions, as reflected by the decrease in public trust for the court, but treating the Supreme Court as merely another partisan actor on the side of the Trump administration is a mistake. Rather than defending the rule of law, such an approach adds to the stress on constitutional norms by accelerating the reduction of legal reasoning to mere power politics.

Instead, Americans who are alarmed about assaults on democratic norms need to recognize that the courts alone are not a sufficient bulwark for the rule of law. In the near term, this means building political consensus to constrain executive power—which will require creative coalition-building that must prioritize involving the few Republicans who are willing to buck Mr. Trump’s control of the party.

In the longer term, it means recognizing that while Mr. Trump’s violation of norms far exceeds that of any of his recent predecessors, he represents a culmination, rather than a beginning, of the excessive growth of executive power. As has happened before and will happen again, the American constitutional system urgently needs both structural reform and a renewed set of norms to maintain a system of limited and balanced power among the branches of government. Since any reform of this sort is inevitably slow, it requires attention and discussion even while facing more immediate challenges.

This article appears in September 2025.