President Trump Is Not Causing a Constitutional Crisis, but Preventing One

I have seen breathless assertions lately in the national “media” that President Trump’s recent actions have sparked a constitutional “crisis.”  I couldn’t disagree more.  What we are witnessing is a new President exercising his constitutional powers in a decisive manner.

How so?

Most notably, President Trump has paused the discretionary spending of enormous sums of federal dollars.  In my view, it is not only perfectly legal and well within the authority of the Chief Executive to take this step, but I believe it’s also an obligation of a new presidential administration to review discretionary funding to see that it complies with both federal law and Trump policies.  

As many scholars have noted, when Congress funds an agency it gives broad discretion to the Executive Branch regarding how these funds are administered.  This is why I believe most of the legal challenges against these executive orders will ultimately fail.  When a Chief Executive exercises his core constitutional powers as he does here, his authority is at its greatest.  I strongly agree with Vice President J.D. Vance’s recent tweet that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”  That’s the very definition of, and foundation for, our constitutional Separation of Powers and this used to not be a controversial view. 

As such, Trump is defending representative democracy by attacking the unelected bureaucracy, as the American people clearly want him to do.  For judges, the failing national media, or misguided Democrats to seek to prevent this voter-mandated progress is to violate the fundamental principle of a ‘government by consent of the governed.’

However, as an aside, let me address one action of President Trump that is more removed from his core powers—his executive order to end birthright citizenship.  Birthright citizenship is a legal doctrine guaranteeing, with a few exceptions, that children born in the United States are citizens of the United States.  The reason I make this distinction is because this order directly targets an issue addressed by the U.S. Constitution and will most likely need to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.  I actually think that is President Trump’s strategy—knowing it would be immediately challenged in court and end up before the Supreme Court.

Birthright citizenship derives from the 14th Amendment which states in pertinent part that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”  It is that middle clause that gives rise to heated debate.  What does “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” mean?

Let me simply say that the issue of birthright citizenship is, at the very least, unsettled.  The U.S. Supreme Court has never specifically ruled on whether those born to parents who are here illegally are automatically citizens.  The 1898 U.S. Supreme Court case (U.S. v. Wong Kim Ark), upon which proponents of birthright citizenship primarily rely, presents different facts (children of legal, permanent residents) than the ones at issue here: aliens in the country illegally.  That is why I believe the correct view is that “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” means more than simply being born and present in the U.S. conveys full, automatic citizenship. 

In fact, a key Senator in the adoption of the 14th Amendment stated that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the U.S. means subject to its full and complete jurisdiction—i.e., an individual not owing political allegiance to any other country and no foreign government having jurisdiction over that individual. It is simply untenable, I respectfully submit, that this concept of complete jurisdiction can apply to illegal aliens.  There is no legally plausible way an illegal alien can be considered to owe allegiance to the United States.   As such, the Supreme Court must address this ambiguity.

However, aside from this issue I sincerely believe that President Trump is acting squarely within his constitutional authority as he makes a dizzying array of decisions to begin reigning in the enormously wasteful behemoth we know as the federal government. 

I continue to be stunned each day as Elon Musk and his band of brilliant 19–20-year-olds grind through the data and records of  federal agencies and identify grossly wasteful and often anti-American use of hard-earned American taxpayer dollars. 

Those who seek to thwart the implementation of the People’s will for their government so clearly stated on Nov. 5, 2024, are themselves committing potential treason, and are themselves creating the ‘constitutional crisis.’