If the polls are proved right, Donald Trump faces a damaging set of midterms results. This could change the balance of power. Will Trump be a lame-duck President, or will he be emboldened to rule by executive order?
For some, the last two years of Trump’s presidency have swept away the norms which for decades held presidential power in check. But others see that he is finally being restrained by the system – and that his authority is ebbing away.
So, is America’s democracy about to crumble? The BBC’s former North America correspondent and ‘News Agents’ co-host, Jon Sopel, and former chief of staff of the US Department of Homeland Security during Trump’s first term, Miles Taylor. give their perspectives.
Barack Obama, when he was president, was wont to quote from Dr Martin Luther King’s 1965 speech in Montgomery, Alabama: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice”. In this dizzying second term of Donald Trump, maybe that optimistic quote should be changed to take cognisance of a new reality: that “the arc of the immoral universe is short, and bends towards corruption”.
There hasn’t been a presidency like it. Nothing even close. It almost seems laughable that a decade ago, when Trump was first elected, the commentariat cognoscenti were confidently predicting that Trump wouldn’t change the presidency, but that the presidency would change him.
That is just so wide of the mark. He has been impeached twice, been convicted of criminal charges, was responsible for an attempt to overturn the result of the 2020 election. And now in his second term we have seen him monetise the presidency in ways never seen before – he is over $2bn (£1.5bn) richer than when he came to office in January 2025, according to official filings. Through crypto, the trading of favours and the use and abuse of power, it has been bonanza time for the Trump family.
He has used the justice department to punish his enemies and rewarded his dodgy allies with pardons for their criminal misdemeanours. On the international stage, for reasons that are hard to fathom, he has seemed to want to punish his allies and suck up to America’s long-standing enemies and rivals.
It has also been a time when those who are meant to operate the checks and balances on an overmighty executive have gone Awol. Hardly anyone has dared to stand up to him.
Congress has been supine; those around him in the White House have been spineless amoebas; those sitting round the cabinet table in the room adjacent to the Oval Office give every appearance of trying to outbid each other in sycophantic, stomach-wrenching praise of the President.
He has taken on civil society, hammered the media, suborned the legal profession, bullied business. And every time there is another surrender; another white flag hoisted, so Trump’s autocratic tendencies get further embedded.
The question is, is this the future of the republic? Or will it revert to the norm? America, ever since the founding fathers started with their blank sheet of paper to write a constitution that would create an “ever more perfect union”, has always held itself to lofty ambitions, even if – in reality – it often fell somewhat short. This is a country that believes in its own exceptionalism, the shining city on the hill, the leader of the “free world”.
It was striking that when Joe Biden became president in 2021, he took it upon himself to reassure the other world leaders at the G7 in Cornwall that “America was back”. Trump and Trumpism were an aberration. It was gone. But then came the 2024 election. The question is now whether Biden was the anomaly.
If the Democrats do well in the midterm elections – as they are forecast to do – that might change things a bit. Some of the more egregious behaviour of Trump and those around him will probably be curtailed because of the investigative powers that congressional committees will now have. There will be more oversight, and an increasing sense that the President is a lame duck with his powers on the wane. Maybe, just maybe that will encourage Republicans to regain some moral backbone – but that is far from certain.
Yet the president and the presidency has never been more powerful. Academics call it the unitary executive theory. And which new president coming to the Oval Office is going to say, “I think I ought to have less power”?
Sure, a new Democrat president could rule in a much more traditional way, obeying the norms that went before Trump. But he won’t have to. He might just enjoy flexing his muscles in just the same way that the present incumbent has.
A US president can still run foreign policy pretty well unchecked. Remember Congress had no say in whether Trump started the war – sorry, conflict – with Iran. At home, the Department of Justice will continue to do his bidding; ICE officers will continue harassing people on suspicion of being brown; the tariffs will remain even though they are contributing to America’s persistently high inflation rate.
A new Democrat president in 2029 could change all of this. But there are structural shifts that are much more long lasting. The most notable is the Supreme Court. With its six-three conservative majority, it will continue to be a massive influence on all America’s hot-button issues: abortion, guns, voting rights. And a ruling it made in the fag end of the Biden administration on presidential immunity and power will be felt long after Trump leaves office.
In effect, the Supreme Court ruled that in the conduct of his duties the president can claim widespread immunity from prosecution. And you can be sure there will be pre-emptive pardons issued to his family before he leaves office to shield them from investigation, just as Biden did – disreputably in my opinion – with his son, Hunter, before he left the White House.
America’s democracy has rarely been tested, twisted and warped in the ways it has across Trump’s two terms in office. On January 6, 2021, when the mob ran amok it was one man, the vice president, Mike Pence, refusing to do his boss’s bidding that saved the US from a full-blown constitutional crisis. Would you bet on that happening again?
Hence then, the article about trump s scheming has changed america forever was published today ( ) and is available on inews ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Trump’s scheming has changed America forever )
Also on site :
- China sees the yuan vs. dollar rivalry like Pepsi vs. Coke, expert says — ‘never the market leader, but serviceable in a pinch’
- ’90s Rock Band Made Famous by Aaliyah Vampire Movie Returns With First New Music in 10 Years as Gen Z Gives Them a Second Life
- Steep Height? No Sweat: ‘Everest: The Other Side’s Jim Morrison And Jimmy Chin Repel Down Side Of West Hollywood Building [Video]