U.S. President Donald Trump waits to receive Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House, amid negotiations to end the Russian war in Ukraine, in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 18, 2025. REUTERS/Alexander Drago
President Donald Trump and his allies — from Vice President JD Vance to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi — often accuse federal judges of failing to respect the powers that the federal government's executive branch enjoys under the U.S. Constitution. And Trump's critics typically respond that he's the one who ignores the Constitution, which outlines the role that the government's judicial and legislative branches enjoy in the United States' system of checks and balances.
Many of those critics are Democrats, liberals and progressives, but Trump has plenty of detractors on the right as well — including New York Times columnist David French. In his August 21 column, the Never Trump conservative highlights a sentence in the Constitution that he says Trump and others in the MAGA movement are taking out of context and abusing.
That sentence is: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." And according to French, it doesn't mean what MAGA Republicans are claiming it means.
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While U.S. presidents enjoy some executive powers under the Constitution, French emphasizes, the Constitution also lays out a system of checks and balances and makes it clear that presidents don't have absolute, unchecked power.
"When President Trump entered office in his first term," French explains, "he didn't have a clear theory of power. Trump isn't a constitutional scholar, to say the least, and initially, he was surrounded by more or less traditional Republicans who were far more wedded to longstanding American constitutional traditions than he was. This time, however, he's surrounded by a different breed of Republican — people who possess a theory of power, declare that it's found right in the text of the Constitution, and then press that power to its limit and beyond."
Trump's critics frequently describe Congress as a "coequal branch of government" — a phrase that French dislikes. Congress, the conservative columnist argues, is given an especially strong role in U.S. checks and balances under the Constitution.
"Our nation is not supposed to have coequal branches," French writes. "Congress is supposed to reign supreme. Yes, the other branches have the power to check Congress — presidents can veto legislation, courts exercise judicial review — but Congress alone possesses the power of the purse. Congress alone is supposed to possess the power to declare war. Congress can impeach and remove members of the executive and judicial branches of government, including the president and justices of the Supreme Court."
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French continues, "I don't know about you, but I tend to call the person who can fire me 'boss'…. But now, Congress is our weakest branch of government. It’s wholly defined by the president."
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David French's full New York Times column is available at this link (subscription required).