In a 2021 column for this publication and in my latest book, “Grand Old Unraveling,” I argued that the U.S. Constitution isn’t working.
Earlier this month, Washington Post columnist Karen Tumulty contended that we are witnessing a “constitutional collapse.” She is right.
President Trump has accelerated the unraveling of that once meticulously constructed document. He has halted the work performed by several agencies funded by Congress, fired thousands of civil service employees without cause and removed inspectors general and leaders of the U.S. military. He has even attempted to rewrite the Constitution by voiding birthright citizenship guaranteed in the 14th Amendment.
In an interview with me, Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) deplored Trump’s “highjacking” of congressional powers, noting that Republicans in Congress are “not willing to do their jobs.”
Attempting to prick the conscience of his Senate colleagues, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) wonders why they have not fought to preserve their constitutional power of the purse. Sadly, the only answer he can find is, “We gave it up!”
With the emergence of what American Enterprise Institute scholar Jack Landman Goldsmith calls Donald Trump’s “Caesarean presidency,” Republicans have been content to forfeit their constitutional responsibilities. Defending Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) says that while Musk’s actions may be unconstitutional, “nobody should bellyache.”
Not surprisingly, as Scanlon told me, there have been “daily crossings of constitutional boundaries” in the 40 days of Trump’s second administration.
This abdication of congressional responsibility did not begin with Trump. For decades, Congress has been willingly ceding vast authority to the president, including the power to declare war. It has written vague statutes and left it to the executive branch to provide the regulations needed for implementation and. It has allowed presidents to declare emergencies that allow for the waiving of laws and other unchecked actions.
The late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) once lamented the absence of congressional leadership. In 2017, he refused to overturn the Affordable Care Act, saying, “We are an important check on the powers of the executive. Our consent is necessary for the president to appoint jurists and powerful government officials and in many respects to conduct foreign policy. Whether or not we are of the same party, we are not the president’s subordinates. We are his equal.”
That is no longer true. The presidential system created by the Founders has morphed into an American-style parliamentary system. Party-line voting has become the norm in Congress. And confirming presidential nominees is now a matter of party loyalty.
One senior White House official described the current confirmation process as a “pass-fail” test, adding, “The Senate needs to advise and consent, not advise and adjust.”
Yet it is too easy to blame our leaders for our constitutional collapse. The decline of civic education is a major factor contributing to the Constitution’s demise. Following the 2001 passage of George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Law, with its emphasis on reading and math test scores, civics classes are now of secondary (or even tertiary) importance. The result is a grotesque lack of civic knowledge.
A 2024 report from the Sandra Day O’Connor Institute for American Democracy found that one in three respondents did not know there are three branches of government, much less what those branches are and what they do. The 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress showed the civics scores of eighth graders had declined. The citizenship exam given to those seeking to become naturalized U.S. citizens is one that many native-born Americans would undoubtedly fail.
In 1796, President George Washington called for the creation of a national university, saying, “The primary object of such a national institution should be the education of our youth in the science of government.” More than a century later, public schools took upon themselves the task of providing civic education to newly arrived immigrants.
A 1920 Massachusetts conference of educators concluded, “We believe in an Americanization which has for its end the making of good American citizens by developing in the mind of everyone who inhabits American soil an appreciation of the principles and practices of good American citizenship.”
The lack of basic civic education makes the task of explaining what is happening in the nation’s capital extraordinarily difficult. Scanlon noted that in a “post-truth age” people not only don’t understand how government works but “they are easily swayed by every Tom, Dick and Harry Huckster with a Twitter account.”
In 1789, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Whenever the people are well informed, they can be trusted with their own government [such that] whenever things get so far wrong as to attract their notice, they may be relied on to set them right.”
But when citizens are poorly informed, they can be easily manipulated by those seeking to undo our founding principles. Then, to paraphrase Jefferson, it becomes impossible to set things right.
Donald Trump has shown little respect for the Constitution. In his first term, he argued that Article Two gives him “the right to do whatever I want.” At the start of his second administration, Trump posted a quote purportedly from Napoleon: “He who saves his country does not violate any law.”
In 2022, resurrecting the tired old chestnut that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump called for “the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” Today, he has set about doing just that.
And he has help. Russell Vought, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, believes we are in a “post-constitutional moment.” The result, says Vought, is the creation of a “new regime that pays only lip service to the old Constitution.”
Federal officeholders, including the president, are required to swear or affirm they will “defend” the Constitution. But for Trump and his compliant Republican colleagues, these are merely pro-forma pledges. For them, paying lip service to the Constitution means reciting words without meaning.
The Constitution has already collapsed.
John Kenneth White is a professor emeritus at The Catholic University of America. His latest book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.
