In each case, Trump and his team have expanded the limits of presidential power, often incorporating novel or little-used legal theories to support their actions.
Stripping Trump of his birthright citizenship runs counter to more than 125 years of Supreme Court precedent interpreting what most legal scholars thought was the clear language of the U.S. Constitution.
His tariffs, imposed and repealed by presidential decree, clashed with a recent Supreme Court ruling that major new policies must receive explicit approval from Congress.
Trump’s attempt to deploy the National Guard was a rare example of a president attempting to do so despite opposition from local and state officials. The court weighed in to uphold the lower court’s ruling.
But behind these landmark examples was a long list of decisions that gave Trump a more gradual but substantial expansion of his power and benefited his fellow conservatives.
“There may be deviations from time to time, but I think this is a very strong, conservative court with the broadest concept of presidential power we’ve ever seen,” said Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
On Monday, the court’s six conservatives ruled that President Trump can fire members of regulatory federal agencies created by Congress as “independent” based on policy disagreements.
In a separate opinion, the court made an exception for members of the powerful Federal Reserve, which determines U.S. monetary policy, but the decision will give Trump and future presidents more widespread influence over the federal bureaucracy. They will be able to directly select the people who decide labor, elections, communications, environmental and financial regulations.
