President Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington DC, on June 27. Ken Cedeno / Reuters
What Matters – Trump doesn’t have to grab power; Republicans are giving it to him
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf, CNN, 5 minute read, Published 2:00 PM EDT, Sat June 28, 2025
CNN — Republican majorities in the Congress and conservatives on the Supreme Court are ceding power instead of protecting it, giving President Donald Trump more and more control over what the Constitution separated in three.
Congress is supposed to declare war
But Republican lawmakers cheered when Trump launched an air offensive against Iran rather than balking that many were kept out of the loop.
House Speaker Mike Johnson didn’t seem to mind reports that the White House would be limiting its information-sharing with lawmakers. His response suggested concern about leaks than about guarding lawmakers’ duty to oversee the executive.
A similar story with tariffs
Regulating international trade is something the Constitution puts on lawmakers’ plates. A series of laws over the past hundred years slowly gave power over tariffs to the president, but Trump has taken that authority and weaponized it to make demands of other countries, as he did Friday when he cut off trade talks with Canada, the latest twist in a trade war he engineered and is scripting like a reality show.
Now, the Supreme Court has clipped the power of lower courts
Conservative justices limited the ability of district court justices to issue nationwide injunctions against executive policies.
“This really brings back the Constitution,” President Donald Trump said without a whiff of irony at the White House on Friday.
The decision also literally lets him ignore the plain language of the 14th Amendment, at least for now.
