\n<\/p>\n
Washington, DC \u2013<\/strong> For United States President Donald Trump, 2025 was a year of crisis.<\/p>\n Roaring into office on January 20 on the heels of a raucous political comeback, the president\u2019s own telling describes a series of actions that have been swift and stark.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n To name a few, he has envisioned rooting out a migrant \u201cinvasion\u201d that includes staunching legal immigrants, and, potentially, targeting US citizens; he has touted a hard reset of uneven trade deals that pose \u201can unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security\u201d; and, in the final months of the year, he has gone on the military offensive against \u201cnarcoterrorists\u201d that he claims seek to topple the US through illicit drugs, possibly used as \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n For legal observers, Trump\u2019s approach has been a yet-undecided stress test on presidential power, cranked by the gears of broadly interpreted emergency statutes and untrammelled executive authority.<\/p>\n Decisions by the court, lawmakers and voters in the 2026 midterm elections could determine how that strategy resonates or is restrained.<\/p>\n \u201cThe use or abuse of emergency powers is only one corner of a larger picture,\u201d Frank Bowman, professor emeritus of law at the University of Missouri, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cIn many cases, the administration is simply doing stuff that certainly any pre-existing understandings of executive authority would have said you cannot do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The US Constitution, unlike many countries, has no catch-all emergency power authorisation for presidents.<\/p>\n In fact, the US Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that presidents have no such implied authorities, explained David Driesen, professor emeritus at Syracuse University College of Law. Still, Congress has passed \u201cnumerous statutes that grant the president limited emergency powers under limited circumstances to do specific things\u201d.<\/p>\n Nearly every modern president has used emergency powers with varying degrees of gusto, with Congress and the Supreme Court historically wary of reining in those actions.<\/p>\n Like many US presidents, Trump has also used broad and ambiguous national security claims to justify expanding his reach.<\/p>\n But several factors have set Trump\u2019s second term apart, most notably the lack of distinct inciting events for many of the powers claimed, Driesen said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve never seen a president invoke emergency powers to justify practically all of this policy agenda,\u201d he told Al Jazeera, \u201cand I\u2019ve also never seen a president use them to seize powers that really are not in the statutes at all.\u201d<\/p>\n Put simply, he added, \u201cto Trump, everything is an emergency\u201d.<\/p>\n The tone was set on day one, with Trump\u2019s broad executive order declaring that irregular crossings at the southern border meant nothing less than \u201cAmerica\u2019s sovereignty is under attack\u201d. The order has been used to indefinitely suspend US asylum obligations, surge forces to the border, and seize federal land.<\/p>\n The same day, Trump declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to designate Tren de Aragua (TdA) and La Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) as \u201cforeign terrorist organizations\u201d, posing a threat to the \u201cnational security, foreign policy, and economy\u201d of the US.<\/p>\n The administration has, in part, relied on and expanded that order in efforts to circumvent due process in its mass deportation push and to rhetorically justify a militaristic approach to Latin America.<\/p>\n Simultaneously, Trump also declared a wide-ranging energy emergency on his first day in office, laying the groundwork to bypass environmental regulations.<\/p>\n To be sure, as Bowman explained, Trump\u2019s use of official emergency statutes has been only a piece of the puzzle, combined with his broad interpretation of constitutionally mandated power to reshape the government in ways big and small.<\/p>\n That has included cleaving civil servants from congressionally created government departments via the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), trying to fire heads of independent agencies, renaming institutions \u2013 possibly illegally \u2013 in his likeness, and allegedly bypassing required approvals to physically transform the White House.<\/p>\n But the invocation of emergency statutes has remained a backbone of his second term. Trump invoked an emergency to justify sanctioning the International Criminal Court (ICC) for its investigations into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.<\/p>\n He used the \u201cemergency\u201d of fentanyl smuggling to justify tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China, later unilaterally labelling the drug \u201cweapons of mass destruction\u201d.<\/p>\n In April, in one of his most challenged uses of an emergency authority, Trump cited an emergency statute to impose sweeping reciprocal tariffs against nearly all US trading partners.<\/p>\n In review, 2025 has shown virtually no willingness from Congress, where both chambers remain narrowly controlled by Trump\u2019s Republican Party, to challenge the president.<\/p>\n Rulings from lower federal courts, meanwhile, have offered a \u201cmixed picture\u201d, according to the University of Missouri\u2019s Bowman, while the country\u2019s top court has left wider questions unanswered.<\/p>\n Bowman noted the six conservative members of the nine-judge panel ascribe to varying degrees to the \u201cunitary executive theory\u201d, which argues the drafters of the constitution envisioned a strong consolidation of presidential power.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the one hand, Trump is obviously willing to declare emergencies where no rational person would really believe they exist,\u201d Bowman said.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the other hand, at least the lower courts have pushed back, but it remains to be seen whether the Supreme Court will back them up.\u201d<\/p>\n For example, Trump has been temporarily allowed to continue the deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, a federal district where he declared a \u201ccrime emergency\u201d in August. City officials have said the characterisation defies facts on the ground.<\/p>\n Despite claiming similar overlapping crime and immigration crises in liberal-led cities in states across the country, Trump has had far less success. Lower courts have limited deployments of the National Guard in California, Illinois, and Oregon.<\/p>\n Trump has also floated, but not yet invoked, the Insurrection Act, another law in the crisis portfolio dating back to 1792 that allows the president to deploy the military for domestic law enforcement to \u201csuppress insurrections and repel invasions\u201d.<\/p>\n A judicial response to the tactics behind Trump\u2019s deportation drive has also been mixed.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s use of the Alien Enemies Act \u2013 a 1798 law designed to quickly expel foreign nationals during times of war \u2013 to swiftly deport undocumented individuals without due process has been constrained, but allowed to proceed by the Supreme Court with limited due process protections.<\/p>\n In one of the most-watched cases on the docket, the Supreme Court is expected to make a ruling when it returns to session in January on the legal justification of Trump\u2019s reciprocal tariffs.<\/p>\n A lower court has previously ruled that Trump deployed the emergency statute illegally. Some conservative justices on the top court have also expressed wariness over the president\u2019s claim.<\/p>\n The panel has appeared more amenable in a landmark case determining whether Trump can fire heads of independent agencies, also set to be decided in the new year.<\/p>\n When it comes to unilaterally making war, Trump has been bounding down a well-trodden path of misused presidential power, according to Matt Duss, the executive vice president of the Washington, DC-based Center for International Policy.<\/p>\n The end of the year has been marked by US military strikes on alleged drug smuggling boats from Venezuela, decried by rights groups as extrajudicial killings.<\/p>\n The administration has claimed, without evidence, that over 100 people killed had sought to destabilise the US by flooding it with drugs. Trump has made a similar claim about the Nicolas Maduro-led government in Venezuela, as he has continued to rattle the sabre\u00a0of land strikes.<\/p>\n The actions have been accompanied by a pugilistic rebranding of the Department of Defense as the Department of War, a reframing of criminal Latin American cartels as so-called \u201cnarcoterrorists\u201d and declaring a new drive to bring the Western Hemisphere firmly under the US sphere of influence.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have to understand this in the context of multiple administrations of both parties abusing executive authority to essentially go to war,\u201d said Duss, who explained that the practice accelerated in the so-called \u201cglobal war on terror\u201d post-September 11, 2001 attacks.<\/p>\n Most recently, Republicans \u2013 and a handful of Democrats \u2013 in the House of Representatives voted down two separate war powers resolutions that would require congressional approval for future strikes on alleged drug boats or on Venezuelan territory.<\/p>\n The vote, Duss said, underscored \u201cTrump\u2019s near-total control of the Republican Party despite the fact that he is blatantly violating his own campaign promises to end wars, rather than to start them\u201d.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s control over his party and his influence writ-large over the country will largely be tested in next year\u2019s midterm elections. The vote will determine control of the House and the Senate.<\/p>\n A slate of polls has indicated at least some degree of wariness in Trump\u2019s use of presidential power.<\/p>\n In particular, a Quinnipiac poll released in mid-December found 54 percent of voters think Trump is going too far in his authority claims, while 37 percent think he is handling the role correctly. Another 7 percent believe Trump should go further in using the power of the presidency.<\/p>\n Another Politico poll in November found that 53 percent of US residents think Trump has too much power, while the president has seen an overall slump in his approval ratings since taking office.<\/p>\n To be sure, a panoply of factors determine US elections, and it remains unclear if voters were more likely to respond to the results of Trump\u2019s approach to the presidency, or to the approach itself.<\/p>\n \u201cDoes the average person really think much about any of the theoretical bases for the things Trump is doing? And frankly, would the average person care very much if the results were, in the short term, results of which they approved?\u201d University of Missouri\u2019s Bowman mused.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t know the answer \u2026 How all this is perceived across the country, and what\u2019s going to happen next, is anybody\u2019s guess.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Washington, DC \u2013 For United States President Donald Trump, 2025 was a year of crisis. Roaring into office on January 20 on the heels of a raucous political comeback, the president\u2019s own telling describes a series of actions that have been swift and stark. Recommended Stories list of 3 itemsend of list To name a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6878\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
Emergency powers and \u2018national security\u2019<\/h2>\n
A \u2018mixed picture\u2019<\/h2>\n
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Public opinion<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"