Article II of the United States Constitution plainly states “[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” As Justice Scalia opined in his famous dissent in Morrison v. Olson, “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” And it certainly does not mean that executive power is shared by Congress or executive branch officials — the latter a concept that was debated and rejected during the Constitutional Convention.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats howl that President Trump’s executive actions “threaten democracy,” hearken a monarchy, and have filed a torrent of lawsuits seeking to stop his allegedly unconstitutional conduct. In a recent speech, Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor chimed in adding “[o]ur founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the purse.” These criticisms distort the history of executive power that Presidents have wielded under Article II from Washington to the present. 

Justice Sotomayor is correct that in the wake of the Revolution the Founders were initially circumspect of a strong executive.  These suspicions are imbued in the Article of Confederation, which embedded all power in the Congress of the Confederation and a lacked national executive. But that structure of government proved unworkable and the Founders’ antipathy to a strong executive soon waned. By the time of the Constitutional Convention in 1789, they had reached a different conclusion. They agreed that a strong unitary executive was needed to effectively run the young Republic.

The vote was unanimous; Article II of the Constitution vests the executive power of the United States in the President and no one else.

Every President since, regardless of party, has relied upon Article II as justification for his executive actions. George Washington dismissed dozens of executive branch officials, including his Secretary of State. Thomas Jefferson went a step further and order the dismissal of prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts, which he believed were unconstitutional (they were). Later, Andrew Jackson, in an act prescient of President Trump’s actions towards USAID, declared war on the second Bank of the United States and directed that all Treasury deposits be withdrawn from the bank. When his Treasury Secretary, William J. Duane, refused, President Jackson fired him.

A hundred years later, Harry Truman issued an executive order directing the Secretary of Commerce to seize control of the nation’s steel mills (which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional). In sum, despite Democrats’ pleas, President Trump’s executive actions are hardly unprecedented; are somewhat benign in comparison to the actions of his predecessors; and are firmly grounded in the text and history of Article II of the Constitution. 

Ironically, the Democrat lawfare that seeks to temper President Trump’s executive power is bound to have the opposite effect. While some of these lawsuits have been successful at the trial court level, these victories should prove fleeting as the appellate courts and ultimately the United States Supreme Court review the issue. Ultimately, these higher courts will cement the President’s broad executive power under Article II and affirm that the executive power of the United States is vested in the President and the President alone.

Wally Zimolong is a political and election law attorney based in Pennsylvania. He represents Republican elected officials, candidates, and PACs. In 2024, he was litigation counsel for President Donald J. Trump, the Republican National Committee, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee in numerous election cases.