Trump and the Quest for Control

Thwarted in the domestic sphere, he’s moved on to foreign policy.

Photo by the White House

In the last 72 hours, Donald Trump has said or posted about 34,000 words.

He has talked about the Kennedy Center, fraud in blue states, St. Patrick’s Day, and Mark Levin. He has leaked a Republican congressman’s terminal diagnosis and claimed to have predicted 9/11. He has called for journalists to be charged with treason and accused Mickey Mouse of “being woke” All while offering updates on an ongoing war and a partial government shutdown. It’s a lot to sort through.

But there’s one comment among the many that I don’t think has received the notice it deserves.

It came in a Truth Social post on Sunday night, attacking the Supreme Court. The post itself has been covered widely in the media (though perhaps not as much as a presidential attack on the Supreme Court would have been in an earlier era. Then again, there is a lot of news competing with it.) Towards the end of the missive, after two paragraphs raging against the court’s decision on tariffs, Trump added:

They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so. All I can do, as President, is call them out for their bad behavior!

Too true, Mr. President.

This is a stark turnaround from early 2025, when Trump was posting things like “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law” and raising questions about whether he would defy the courts. A year later, Trump has grown no fonder of the federal judiciary, but his rhetoric has turned from bold threats to meek compliance. When judges rule against him, all he can do “is call them out for their bad behavior!” Trump now says. He can complain about a ruling on social media to his heart’s content, just like any commentator. But he is imbued with no extra powers as president to subvert court orders. That he is conceding this fact is highly notable.

The central story of Trump’s presidency has been his quest for control: he has spent the last 14 months roaming across the policy landscape, trying to seize unilateral power over almost every function of the U.S. government.

He has not always been successful, although Trump’s Sunday night admission on Truth Social was a rare case of him acknowledging it. While trying to expand executive power in novel ways, he’s often run into the same checks as other presidents: namely, the other two branches of government (the courts and Congress), and public opinion (the voters).

This morning, I want to check in on that search for control, by looking at some of the more recent roadblocks Trump has faced on the domestic front, before turning to ask whether, in taking a renewed interest in foreign affairs, Trump has finally found what he is seeking: an area where his power is truly absolute.

Throwing people in jail isn’t easy

On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump repeatedly said that he would jail various political rivals upon entering office, hoping to exact revenge for the criminal indictments that had been leveled against him. He has succeeded in solidifying control over the Justice Department, such that something that frustrated him during his first term (he did not have an AG in place willing to prosecute people at his direction) no longer appears to be an obstacle. But solidifying control over the Justice Department is a very different thing than solidifying control over the legal system writ large, and there are many hurdles the executive branch has to go through before someone ends up in prison.

Trump has been stopped at several of these stages, from a grand jury rejecting charges against six Democratic lawmakers to a judge dismissing charges against James Comey and Letitia James. This week, Trump was rebuffed at an even earlier stage in the criminal process, when U.S. District Judge James Boasberg quashed the Justice Department’s attempt to subpoena the Federal Reserve as part of an investigation into whether its chairman, Jerome Powell, had misled Congress about a renovation project.

Boasberg opened his ruling by quoting Trump’s repeated demands that Powell lower interest rates. The judge also detailed other facts from the last year, noting that U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro (who brought the case) previously tried to bring charges against the six Democratic lawmakers, soon after Trump called on social media to “lock them up,” and a different U.S. attorney had been fired for refusing to prosecute one of Trump’s political rivals.

Judges “are not required to exhibit a naiveté from which ordinary citizens are free,” Boasberg wrote, quoting the renowned appeals court judge Henry Friendly. “It is a natural inference that the President’s appointee was responding to his desires (whether real or perceived) here,” Boasberg added.

Boasberg cited a 1991 Supreme Court case holding that “grand juries are not licensed to engage in arbitrary fishing expeditions, nor may they select targets of investigation out of malice or an intent to harass.” He decided that the Powell subpoenas did not pass that test:

A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning. On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual. The Court therefore finds that the subpoenas were issued for an improper purpose and will quash them.

Almost every one of Trump’s revenge prosecutions has now been stalled.

MAHA goes to court

The Trump administration ran into another legal check this week, when U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy blocked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. from dramatically overhauling the federal childhood vaccine schedule.

Murphy ruled that Kennedy’s actions — taken in response to a Trump memo ordering HHS to review its childhood vaccine recommendations — did not live up to the mandate of 42 U.S. Code § 243, which requires the HHS Secretary to assist with the “prevention and suppression of communicable diseases” and the “preservation and improvement of the public health.”

The Trump administration argued that Congress intended for HHS to carry out that mandate however it saw fit, without judicial intervention. At a hearing earlier this month, Murphy asked a Justice Department lawyer whether that would extend to a hypothetical HHS that said “we think measles is good for you” and encouraged people to “go have lunch with someone with measles” or to “get a shot that gives you measles.”

The DOJ attorney replied that a court would not be able to review whether or not such a declaration by HHS comported with its legal mandate.

“This argument can only be countenanced if one completely abandons the idea of objective fact, a nihilist endeavor this Court does not find appropriately read into Congress’s public health statutes,” Murphy wrote in his ruling this week. Murphy said that a judge was empowered to review whether HHS actions fit within the public health mandate Congress gave it, and that he did not believe that Kennedy’s changes did so. (In other words: Murphy ruled that this wasn’t a Humpty Dumpty Law.)

Murphy further ruled that the vaccination schedule revamp — which was unveiled without consulting HHS’ Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — violated the Administrative Procedure Act of 1946, the so-called “constitution of the regulatory state,” which prohibits executive branch agencies from taking actions that are “arbitrary and capricious.”

Similarly, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration had violated the APA in its moves to dismantle the state-funded broadcaster Voice of America. He ordered the agency to bring more than 1,000 employees back to work and to resume international broadcasting. (I flagged all the way back in February 2025 that the APA would prove troublesome for the Trump administration.)

Of course, any of these legal losses could be appealed. Judge Murphy, in particular, has repeatedly seen his rulings against the Trump administration (mostly on immigration) overturned by appeals courts and the Supreme Court. His latest ruling goes so far as to block Kennedy’s appointees to a key HHS advisory panel, deeming them “unqualified.” It is very possible that higher courts will ultimately say that the executive branch does deserve deference to control this area.

Even if Trump wins out on the law, the MAHA agenda also appears to be faltering in the court of public opinion. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the White House is putting the HHS on a “tighter leash” and trying to control its messaging on vaccines in response to polls showing that RFK Jr.’s vaccine moves are unpopular.

A similar dynamic has played out on immigration, where the Trump administration has “scaled back its deportation strategy” after the backlash in Minneapolis, according to the New York Times, leading to a nationwide dip in immigration arrests.

In general, with the administration’s rhetoric on vaccines, compliance with judicial rulings, and now immigration, we see a White House that is sanding down its harder edges after finding that its aggressive rhetoric has failed to win public support. Per Axios, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair told House Republicans last week to stop using the phrase “mass deportations” — a stark messaging reversal and bow to political reality, considering that was a slogan of Trump’s 2024 campaign.

Meanwhile, Congress is about to deliver a blow to Trump as well. The Senate voted Tuesday to begin consideration of the SAVE America Act, the bill that Trump has prioritized above any other. The chamber is expected to take several days (maybe even weeks) to debate the measure, which would require individuals to provide proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID to cast a ballot. But almost everyone involved agrees that the debate will be for show. Senate Republicans have spurned Trump’s calls to eliminate the filibuster, which means the bill will likely need 60 votes to eventually advance. It does not have them, which means Trump’s top legislative priority is poised to fail.

Hamilton 1, Madison 0

Faced with all these constraints in the domestic sphere, it is little surprise that President Trump has spent most of 2026 focused on foreign policy, widely seen as the area where he wields the most unquestioned level of control.

If it seems strange to you that Trump has an easier time removing the Supreme Leader of Iran than he does a junior employee at Voice of America, well, it wasn’t always obvious that presidential power would shake out this way.

The first full draft of the Constitution that delegates considered at the 1787 convention would have given Congress the broader power to “make war,” not just to “declare war.” James Madison was the one who proposed switching to the latter phrase; in his notes, he said this was intended to give “the Executive the power to repel sudden attacks.” (One delegate, supporting the change, expressed confidence that the president “will not make war but when the Nation will support it.”)

But even the Founders themselves were not sure what to do with a system that let Congress start wars but made the president commander-in-chief. An early conflict came in April 1793, one month into George Washington’s second term, when the president issued a Proclamation of Neutrality, declaring that the U.S. wouldn’t take a side in the brewing war between Great Britain and France.

Democratic-Republicans viewed this as a major affront to Congress’ power to decide whether or not the U.S. was at war (and, in this case, whether the terms of a treaty with France required the U.S. to intervene, which Washington said was not the case). Madison — no longer such a fan of presidential power now that he and his onetime ally Washington belonged to opposing parties — wrote a series of pamphlets under the name “Helvidius,” arguing that “the powers of making war and treaty” are “substantially of a legislative, not an executive nature.”

“Those who are to conduct a war cannot in the nature of things, be proper or safe judges, whether a war ought to be commenced, continued, or concluded,” Madison wrote.

Madison was writing to rebut Alexander Hamilton, who had penned his own pamphlets defending Washington under the name “Pacificus.”

“While therefore the Legislature can alone declare war, can alone actually transfer the nation from a state of Peace to a state of War—it belongs to the ‘Executive Power,’ to do whatever else the laws of Nations cooperating with the Treaties of the Country enjoin, in the intercourse of the [United States] with foreign Powers,” Hamilton had said.

In this case, the debate was about whether presidential power extended to declaring peace, but Hamilton made clear elsewhere that this executive authority to “do whatever else” (short of war) required by U.S. “intercourse…with foreign Powers” included protecting the U.S. with the short-term use of force if necessary. In 1801, he argued that “when a foreign nation declares, or openly and avowedly makes war upon the United States, they are then by the very fact, already at war, and any declaration on the part of Congress is nugatory: it is at least unnecessary.”

In this situation, a president was able to “exercise every act of hostility, which the general laws of war authorise,” even without congressional approval.

As you can see, we have been fighting these battles since the very beginning of the republic, and (as is often the case) there are plenty of dueling quotes from the Founders for each side to cling to.

On Capitol Hill this week, Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) said that Thomas Jefferson “went after the Somali pirates and he didn’t bother to ask for congressional approval.” The pirates in question were not from Somalia (they were from modern-day Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco), but it’s true that Jefferson initially deployed naval forces to defend U.S. ships when the pirates attacked American sailors.

However, he was very clear that he was “unauthorized by the Constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.” He told Congress that he would not take “measures of offense” without their authorization, which they soon gave.

Just as early presidents were more deferential to Congress’ warmaking powers, so the Supreme Court was also once more likely to get involved in war disputes. One notable example is Fleming v. Page from 1850 (of potential interest to our friends in Greenland), when the court ruled that a president lacked the power, without congressional approval, to take over territory by force:

The United States, it is true, may extend its boundaries by conquest or treaty, and may demand the cession of territory as the condition of peace, in order to indemnify its citizens for the injuries they have suffered, or to reimburse the government for the expenses of the war.

But this can be done only by the treatymaking power or the legislative authority, and is not a part of the power conferred upon the President by the declaration of war. His duty and his power are purely military. As commander-in-chief, he is authorized to direct the movements of the naval and military forces placed by law at his command, and to employ them in the manner he may deem most effectual to harass and conquer and subdue the enemy. He may invade the hostile country, and subject it to the sovereignty and authority of the United States. But his conquests do not enlarge the boundaries of this Union, nor extend the operation of our institutions and laws beyond the limits before assigned to them by the legislative power.

In the fullness of time, however, Hamilton has pretty much won his debate with Madison. Congress now regularly opts to take a back seat in war-powers disputes, and the Supreme Court generally declines to get involved, even when members of Congress try to make them.

Checks, foreign and domestic

The upshot of all of this is that many of the checks that frustrate Trump in the domestic-policy arena all take a backseat in the foreign-policy sphere. Congress has given him implicit consent to prosecute war in Iran (although they will still be needed to fund the war if it goes on long enough. It’s hard to imagine the courts taking up a case tied to the conflict. Of course, public opinion doesn’t disappear (and a majority of Americans oppose the war), but voters do tend to pay less attention to foreign policy than domestic policy, giving presidents somewhat freer rein to take action, even unpopular action, without risking political consequences.

Trump’s average net approval rating is down only about one percentage point since the beginning of the war, despite launching an unpopular military action. In addition, foreign policy has barely edged up in polls of Americans’ most important issue, suggesting that most voters do not have Iran top-of-mind when answering questions about politics.

But even as the usual checks recede, other ones emerge, which means Trump still isn’t always as firmly in control of events as he would like. He has proved remarkably successful in controlling the internal affairs of Venezuela, thanks to the acquiescence of Delcy Rodríguez. Exerting the same control over Iran has been more difficult. U.S. intelligence agencies continue to assess that the existing regime’s grip on power is strong, even if the country they are gripping onto has grown weaker. (The agencies also assess that the government has only grown more hardline, a dynamic that may be exacerbated by Israel’s killing on Monday of top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, a relative pragmatist whose death is expected to strengthen the country’s more radical military elite.)

Trump has not yet been able to force Iran to surrender or to allow him to designate its new leader, as he had wanted. Another open question is whether Trump will succeed in flexing power over the internal affairs of Cuba. According to the New York Times, Trump is seeking to push Cuba’s president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, out of power as part of economic negotiations with the island nation. “I do believe I will be having the honor of taking Cuba,” Trump said on Monday, adding: “Whether I free it, take it, I think I could do anything I want with it.”

In addition to having to deal with the internal politics of his adversaries — and of his own coalition — there are also allies to contend with. Trump chose not to coordinate with U.S. allies in the run-up to the war, and he is now seeing the consequences. On Sunday, Trump appealed to U.S. allies to help protect the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively shut down. He quickly ran into a wall of no’s.

“We are not party to the conflict and therefore France ​will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context,” said French President Emmanuel Macron. “Canada was not consulted, did not participate in the military action, and has no intention of participating in the offensive military operation,” echoed Canadian Foreign Minister Anita Anand.

By Tuesday, Trump had given up. “The United States has been informed by most of our NATO ‘Allies’ that they don’t want to get involved with our Military Operation against the Terrorist Regime of Iran,” Trump wrote. He added: “We no longer ‘need,’ or desire, the NATO Countries’ assistance — WE NEVER DID.”

Like his post about the Supreme Court, this was a concession masked in defiance. Even in the foreign-policy realm, Trump’s control isn’t as absolute as he desires.