T
he Founders missed Frankenstein by 30 years and the Mar-a-Lago face — that overworked, unnatural, unmistakably altered look — by a few hundred more. But they may have recognized the presidency we have now: a grotesque concentration of authority in the hands of Donald Trump. The modern executive branch is a creature made monstrous by what George Washington called “unprincipled men.” The Framers had another name for them: Congress.
If the presidency seems dangerous, don’t fixate on Article II, the part of the Constitution laying out the powers of the presidency. The office expands because Article I permits it. The Constitution opens with Congress — taxation, spending, war, commerce, and the laws “necessary and proper.” That’s constitutional architecture; the branch that writes the permissions controls the outcome.
The Framers feared concentrated executive authority. They had, after all, just fought a king. So they built a system in which Congress would write the rules and the president would execute them. James Madison’s design in Federalist No. 51 was mechanical: ambition counteracts ambition. The branches were meant to grind against each other. Liberty lived in the friction — but Madison assumed ambition would guide the legislative branch like it does the presidency. It doesn’t anymore.
In a polarized Congress, ambition runs through the party, not the institution. Safe districts and incumbency mean many members fear a primary more than a general election. They are threatened by ideological purists, not swing voters. The incentive is clear: protect the party’s president, not the branch’s prerogatives. The rivalry Madison imagined has been replaced by partisan alignment. The check on the president dissolves; the office of the president grows.
It didn’t start with Trump. Over the 20th century — especially after 1945 — Congress began delegating vast discretion to the White House. Statutes grew elastic: “in the national interest,” “as the president shall determine,” and so on. War accelerated the habit, and the rise of open-ended “national emergencies” made that temporary flexibility feel permanent. After Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution in 1973 to reclaim authority over military engagement. Presidents of both parties have treated it as a courtesy memo, and Congress has done little to enforce it.
After Vietnam, Congress also passed the National Emergencies Act of 1976 to prevent indefinite rule by declaration in the event of a national emergency. But ending an emergency requires a joint resolution, which a president can veto. Congress needs a two-thirds vote to override a presidential veto, which means, in practice, a president needs only one-third of one chamber plus a simple majority of the other to sustain the emergency. In a polarized era, that minority shield is often enough.
The hurdle for Congress is real — but it is statutory design. Congress wrote those rules. It could impose automatic sunsets, narrow the triggering authorities, or condition appropriations.
But here’s what Congress does instead: It leaves decades-old war authorizations on the books, then feigns shock when presidents launch strikes without a new vote. It appropriates billions to ICE and Customs and Border Protection, funds tactical units and expanded enforcement authorities, then expresses alarm when federal agents deploy into cities over local objections. It renews national emergency declarations year after year and preserves statutes that allow tariffs under “national security” rationales, and sanctions without fresh congressional approval, then complains about executive overreach. It funds the executive branch at higher levels, leaves the executive’s authority to transfer funds intact, and, when funds are redirected or aggressively interpreted, holds hearings that regulate it about as effectively as a tweet.
Congress possesses the power of the purse — the bluntest instrument in the Constitution — yet it almost never uses targeted appropriations cuts or funding conditions to reclaim a specific executive power. Government shutdowns become theater, and real structural reform remains a nonstarter.
Partisanship didn’t just dull Congress’ oversight of the president, it rewired it. Lawmakers defend the presidential constraints in Article I only when it injures the other party’s president. When their own occupies the Oval Office, they cede power to the president to cover their own asses. Political scientists call it “congressional drift,” when lawmakers prefer broad delegations that spare them hard votes. Let the president decide; if he fails, blame him, and if he succeeds, claim alignment. They keep nominal authority and outsource accountability, and voters, at least so far, have rewarded the arrangement.
Courts intervene only when Congress has clearly withheld its own power. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952), the Supreme Court stopped President Harry Truman from seizing steel mills during the Korean War because Congress had not authorized it. The boundary mattered because Congress had drawn it, and drawn it clearly.
The same principle has surfaced repeatedly. In Biden v. Nebraska (2023), the Court rejected sweeping student-loan cancellation because Congress had not clearly authorized debt forgiveness on that scale. And in Learning Resources v. Trump (2026), it invalidated global tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, holding that the statute did not grant tariff authority. Writing in that case, Justice Neil Gorsuch reminded readers that “most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs)” are supposed to pass through Congress.
But the modern Supreme Court wants Congress to speak — and to speak plainly. For decades, under a doctrine known as Chevron deference, courts deferred to agencies — the Environmental Protection Agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, the Department of Education, and their counterparts across the administrative state — when statutes were ambiguous. In 2024, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo overruled Chevron, holding that courts — not agencies — must exercise independent judgment when interpreting ambiguous federal law. That era is over. In Biden and Learning Resources, ambiguity was fatal. Combined with the “major questions” doctrine — which requires unmistakable clarity before agencies may wield vast economic or political power — ambiguity no longer enlarges executive authority. It triggers judicial resistance.
The common thread is not judicial activism or restraint. It is legislative drafting. If Congress draws a line, courts enforce it. If Congress writes vaguely or broadly, presidents test it — and now courts often narrow it. Either way, the presidency rests on permissions Congress writes.
It doesn’t matter the president. Absent congressional authority, the court blocks the action. Everything else proceeds because lawmakers decline to use the powers they possess. The creature changes faces — powdered wig, Texas drawl, Mar-a-Lago sheen — but the pattern does not. Each time, Congress adjusts a stitch, adds a limb, looks away when it lurches off the table and into public life.
Bad presidents are temporary. Congress is the through-line — and it keeps feeding a fire that will not spare it.
