By Mary Jones & Don Perry | Thursday, February 6, 2025 | 5 min read
During his first term, President Trump openly disregarded political norms and legal boundaries that his predecessors had long respected. Now, just weeks into his second term, his approach has become even more brazen.
While past presidents have occasionally tested legal limits, Trump appears to have completely abandoned them. Legal scholars warn that his administration is systematically dismantling the rule of law.
“We are well past euphemisms about ‘pushing the limits’ or ‘stretching the envelope,’” said Peter M. Shane, a legal scholar at New York University. He described Trump’s recent actions as “rampant lawlessness” and “programmatic sabotage.” So far, over two dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the administration’s policies, including at least nine cases related to his attempt to redefine birthright citizenship.
Courts have already blocked several of Trump’s executive orders, including his freeze on distributing $3 trillion in domestic grants and his attempt to transfer a transgender federal inmate to a male prison. Yet these setbacks have done little to slow his aggressive push to reshape the federal government on his own terms.
This week, Trump moved to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and place it under the State Department, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio as its acting director. He had already imposed a “temporary” freeze on foreign aid, contradicting the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Legal experts argue that since Congress established USAID as an independent agency, only Congress has the authority to restructure it. Yet when questioned about whether he needed congressional approval, Trump dismissed the idea outright.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Not when it comes to fraud. These people are lunatics.”
Trump has also been purging officials in defiance of laws meant to protect civil servants and agency leaders from politically motivated firings. By ousting Democratic members from agencies such as the National Labor Relations Board and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission before their terms expired, he has effectively paralyzed these institutions. Congress originally designed these agencies to function independently of the White House, but Trump has disregarded those legal protections entirely.
These actions appear to be setting up legal battles that could give the conservative-majority Supreme Court an opportunity to expand the “unitary executive” theory. This doctrine, championed by Reagan-era legal scholars, argues that Congress cannot limit a president’s control over the executive branch.
The Justice Department has also seen sweeping purges, with Trump firing prosecutors involved in his past indictments, as well as those prosecuting January 6 rioters. Senior FBI officials have been dismissed, and on Tuesday, the administration turned over a list of thousands of agents involved in those investigations, raising concerns that more purges could follow.
None of these firings have followed the required civil service protections, which mandate hearings before the Merit Systems Protection Board. Legal experts warn that Trump’s actions blatantly disregard federal law.
“Trump and his allies are ignoring both federal statutes and the clear limitations of presidential power in Article II of the Constitution,” said Peter L. Strauss, a professor emeritus at Columbia Law School. “The Constitution did not anticipate what we are seeing now.”
Adding to the chaos, Elon Musk has emerged as an influential figure in Trump’s administration, wielding power with little oversight. Employees from Musk’s companies have gained access to sensitive federal systems, including a Treasury Department database that contains Social Security numbers and other private data. His team has also clashed with USAID employees over demands for classified information.
Federal workers who resisted Musk’s involvement have been placed on administrative leave. In one particularly alarming move, Musk’s team temporarily shut down USAID headquarters overnight and took its website offline. The administration has provided no clear legal justification for Musk’s role in government operations, though reports suggest he has been designated as a “special government employee.”
This designation raises serious ethical concerns, as Musk’s companies rely heavily on federal contracts. The administration has not clarified whether Trump has waived conflict-of-interest laws that would normally prevent Musk from influencing policies that could benefit his businesses.
Even before taking office, Trump had signaled his disregard for legal constraints by vowing to overturn a law banning TikTok unless its Chinese owners sold the platform. His directive to the Justice Department to ignore violations of that law set a precedent for his administration’s broader strategy: act first, challenge the courts later.
Throughout his campaign, Trump and his advisors openly planned to restructure the federal government, limit the civil service, and expand presidential authority. What was not clear at the time was the extent to which Musk would be involved in carrying out those changes.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans have shown little resistance. While some Democrats have voiced concerns—including a letter from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stating that dismantling USAID requires congressional approval—Republican lawmakers have largely remained silent.
Similarly, Trump’s mass firing of 17 inspectors general, tasked with exposing government fraud and abuse, was met with only mild objections from lawmakers like Senator Chuck Grassley, who issued a statement but took no significant action.
In 1952, when the Supreme Court struck down President Harry Truman’s attempt to seize steel mills, Justice Robert Jackson warned that Congress must act to preserve its authority or risk losing power to the presidency. His words remain relevant today:
“A crisis that challenges the president equally, or perhaps primarily, challenges Congress. If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that ‘The tools belong to the man who can use them.’”
Whether Trump’s actions will face meaningful resistance remains to be seen. What is clear, however, is that he has no intention of slowing down—and with Elon Musk at his side, his second term is proving to be even more disruptive than his first.
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