Bloomberg columnist Ronald Brownstein says President Trump is governing as if all the constraints from his first term have collapsed. He may be right, but “both he and his party could ultimately regret it.”
“Maybe because Trump has spent a lifetime dodging accountability in the legal system, the idea that his actions could have unintended consequences seems foreign to him,” argues Brownstein. “He has especially good reason to feel unbound now. The institutions that might have restrained him — and usually did restrain other presidents — are buckling under his relentless drive to centralize more presidential power.
Brownstein says the six Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices recently signaled they see themselves as “handmaidens to Trump’s accumulation of power” when they voted to stop lower courts from imposing nationwide injunctions against his policies. Meanwhile, over in Congress, two of a handful of independent Republican legislators — Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C) — announced they would not seek reelection, which shows Trump’s talent for eradicating dissent within his party.
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Without guardrails, Brownstein says Trump has used troops to defend federal buildings in LA and provided security for federal immigration and drug enforcement agents on raids. His “one big beautiful bill” extends tax cuts he passed in 2017, and threatens to cause nearly as many people to lose health insurance as “his failed first-term attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act.”
Brownstein adds the president can also bomb Iran without giving Congress a second thought. And since he’s filled his government with loyalists, the only thing that’s showed any sign of restraining him was bond markets when they threatened to tank from his tariffs.
But there are constraints, and Brown University political scientist Corey Brettschneider suggests Trump and Republicans may soon face them.
Other presidents have sought to accumulate power and undermine Constitutional freedoms, and Congress and the Supreme Court have usually failed to stop them. In those cases, Brettschneider says it fell to voters to rein in presidents like John Adams and Woodrow Wilson with “citizens pushing back” and building “a coalition in opposition” when rights and liberties were threatened.
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Trump’s “towering overconfidence,” says Brownstein, is emboldening him “to take serial risks that may ultimately hurt the American people and provoke a public backlash, particularly among … swing voters” who installed Trump and his party into positions of power. Trump and his party will need those voters in 2026 to retain power.
“Trump is repeatedly raising his bets as if he believes he can draw only aces from the deck,” said Brownstein. “He might do well to remember that back in Atlantic City, his ventures into the casino business more than once ended in bankruptcy.”
Read the full Bloomberg report at this link.