Donald Trump commands the U.S. less like a president and more like Julius Caesar, one conservative legal scholar wrote for The Atlantic, with his unhinged leadership being the result of a decades-long plot by the right that has backfired severely and threatens to fully erode Democracy.
Gregg Nunziata is the executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law and previously worked as legal counsel for Senate Republicans. On Monday, he published an extensive new piece for The Atlantic, decrying Trump's new brand of "American Caesarism in nearly full bloom," emulating the rule of the Roman emperor who destroyed the republic by "claiming to speak for the people even as he disregarded laws and norms to govern by caprice."
"Despite ambitions to fundamentally change the course of the country, this administration has no real legislative agenda," Nunziata wrote. "Instead, the president governs by executive orders, emergency decrees, and extortionate transactions, using his power to reward his friends and punish his enemies. He’s launched foreign military adventures and full-blown wars seemingly based on personal whim, and has made the military a political prop and a tool for domestic law enforcement."
He added: "With Congress sidelined and the courts reluctant to check Donald Trump’s excesses, America has been left with what some legal scholars have described as an 'executive unbound' — and with a president who threatens to supplant the republic in all but name."
This dangerous new status quo, Nunziata argued, "did not emerge overnight" with Trump's arrival in politics. Rather, it was enacted "over the course of decades," with conservative legal minds acting as "key proponents of a vision of politics centered on one commanding figure—a vision that is now destabilizing our country." Based on his own history in the Republican legal movement, he concluded that "conservatives must reckon with our role in bringing the nation to its current breaking point, and work to reestablish the checks and balances that we helped erode."
"If America is to preserve its liberty, conservative legal scholars and judges will need to adjust to a new reality and revisit doctrines that no longer serve to protect the constitutional structure," Nunziata explained. "Some conservatives have already begun moving in this direction. In its recent rulings ending deference to the administrative state, the Court explicitly abandoned the stance of an earlier generation of conservatives. The lawsuit challenging Trump’s tariffs was brought by veterans of the conservative and right-of-center legal movements, who argued that the president had exceeded his authority. These are promising developments — but we need to go further."
Nunziata further urged that "Congress must rediscover its role" within the federal government to better position itself to provide a check against Trumpian abuses of Executive Branch power. "Legislation to rein in our 'unbound' executive," he added, "should be a priority."
"Obvious first steps would include strengthening the enforceability of congressional subpoenas, protecting against politicized law enforcement, and limiting the president’s emergency powers and ability to profit from his service," he wrote further. "America could also recover its capacity to amend the Constitution and use that power to pare back the presidency. A prime target would be the presidential pardon, a vestige of monarchy that has become a source of scandal and corruption."
He concluded: "The conservative legal movement once transformed the national conversation about the courts. It can do the same with executive power — but only if it is willing to redirect its intellectual and advocacy efforts in that direction. If conservatives truly believe in ordered liberty, constitutional limits and the rule of law, then the task ahead is clear: We must help check Caesar. Not for the sake of any party, but for the sake of the republic."