BY MICHAEL S. JOHNSON  |  FEB 3, 2025 (Updated 2/19/25)

“The Founders knew they were creating something different and, hopefully lasting. They were visionary. No constitutional democratic republic has survived as long as ours. Maybe our longevity is to the credit of (John) Adams and other Founders who were smart enough not to create a pure democracy or a monarchy, as some preferred, but a democratic republic with three branches of government, each serving as a check and balance of the other.” — Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People, (Chapter 15, Pg 265)

The separation of powers and the checks and balances that make our government functional are part of the genius of our Constitution and a reason for its historic longevity.

President Donald Trump’s early actions tell us he rejects the premise of checks and balances and with an unorthodox view of the separation of powers and believes he can muscle his way past them.

The alarm bells are ringing.

The checks and balances are embedded in Articles I, II, and III of the Constitution, along with separation of powers among the branches of government, each of which is distinct, function separately but answer to each other and hopefully function as one. I will try to connect my dots here with the disclaimer that I’m not an historian, nor a constitutional scholar. What I do know is that Mr. Trump’s autocratic view of the first three Articles has him speeding along an unfamiliar road without political or ideological GPS.

I’ve always found it helpful to take a step back before leaping forward, so back to history.

The separation of powers was conceptualized long before the American constitutional convention was even convened. It was predicated on the writings of Baron de Montesquieu, one of the European philosophers who influenced the Founding Fathers. James Madison quoted Montesquieu in Federalist #47: “the accumulation of all powers legislative, executive and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective (my emphasis) may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Madison, one of the principal authors of our Constitution, did not quarrel with the idea but in his rebuttal to opponents of the constitution’s ratification insisted “that the maxim on which it relies has been totally misconceived and misapplied,” by those critics. Madison wrote that Montesquieu’s theories were based on a British system, not ours, and that the philosopher “did not mean that these departments (branches of government) ought to have no partial agency in, or no controul over the acts of each other.”

In other words, the new American Republic installed a separation of powers, but not without the checks and balances to distinguish us from the British.

All of this came into focus when I read a short essay by Russell Vought published in 2022.

Who, you ask?

Russell Vought is Mr. Trump’s nominee for director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a powerful and influential White House agency that has for years been masterful at accumulating control within the Executive Branch.

Vought wrote in 2022 that the country is in a “post-constitutional moment in our history,” created over years by progressives’ intent to upend much of the constitution. Vought said his solution, then and now, “is to become radical constitutionalists. What I mean by that,” he added, “is the Founders designed our system of titanic struggle between the branches…they gave us a separation of powers, which was absolutely essential to protect our freedoms and way of life.”

But Vought then used the Madison quotation from the Federalist to back up his contention, conveniently ignoring Madison’s admonition in the same Federalist paper that there could be no strict separation of powers without the guardrail of checks and balances. It was as though separation was valid but checks and balances were anathema to what he wanted to accomplish in the second Trump Administration.

“Even before he takes the reins at the White House budget office, Russell Vought has started trying to remake Washington,” the Washington Post reported on Jan. 24. “He has promised to pursue stark spending cuts, and he’s signaled support for wresting some powers of the purse away from Congress. He’s proposed vast changes to Medicaid and other safety-net programs…purging the federal workforce” and “early exodus of career civil servants.”

Vought said in a speech last year while working on Project 2025, “We have detailed agency plans. We are writing the actual executive orders. We are writing the actual regulations now…”

Mr. Trump must have gotten carpal tunnel syndrome signing all of those executive orders. The question then becomes, did the new President read them?

There is a multitude of actions the President has taken that conflict with the constitutional balance among the branches and the rule of law, from his wholesale firing of inspectors general and other government employees, ending birthright citizenship and dismantling independent agencies that Vought claims are products of the post-constitutional era, to pardoning all of those convicted as part of the attack on the Capitol Jan. 6, 2021, all of which are an assault on separation of powers and checks and balances.

But one of the most glaring examples gone awry is the badly written OMB government-wide directive presumably halting the allocation of federal grants. The action, without notice, without explanation or guidance, was immediately condemned. A lawsuit was filed against it. US District Judge Loren AliKhan didn’t hesitate to block the order temporarily. The memo was soon rescinded.

The White House tried to explain the freeze asserting that it was not a blanket stoppage, but an attempt to just shut down the release of last-minute spending by the Biden Administration, much of which, they claimed, carried the former President’s progressive earmarks. No matter.

Congress should have been involved.

The fiasco brought about another issue and a congressional check on the executive. OMB apparently is pushing President Trump to use impoundment as a means of curtailing spending already authorized, appropriated, and signed into law. Impoundment is the practice of presidents withholding funds mostly because the president doesn’t like some or all the purposes for the funds designated by Congress. The procedure has been exercised modestly by nearly every president dating back to Thomas Jefferson, but in the 1970s, President Richard Nixon attempted to expand the reach of impoundment.

Congress said no.

Congress passed, and the President signed, the Impoundment Control Act of 1974. Vought would like it repealed.

Post columnist Karen Tumulty wrote recently that Vought reiterated at his confirmation hearings in January “his and Trump’s claim that a president has the constitutional authority to impound money—though the courts have ruled otherwise.”

“I am hard-pressed to think of what a more substantial shift of power from Congress to the President would be,” Maryland professor Philip Joyce told Tumulty.

All of this makes you wonder whether Vought has bought into Trump or Trump has bought into Vought (remember Trump claimed during the campaign that he had never read Project 2025).

There is so much to absorb from the first weeks of the Trump presidency. Vought apparently has partnered with Elon Musk, in another questionable venture to go after the leadership and funding of the independent agencies, which Vought claimed are a product of post-constitutionalism. We cannot continue with a government and a constitution torn apart by a struggle for more and more power and less and less accountability and forethought.

Therein lies one of the most fundamental problems in the dysfunction of our government, regardless of which party occupies the White House or Congress. All of this rancor; all of these tug-of-wars for power; all of the delusional dreams of global supremacy, manifest destiny, governance by fiat, and the unrelenting manipulations of public emotions and aspirations never, ever end well.

Now President Trump has blown up relations with our European allies and climbed into bed with one of the world’s worst tyrants, Vladimir Putin (more on that in another column).

This tornadic activity over the past couple of weeks, not expected to lessen in velocity, has caused more fear and unbridled chaos. And as the Wall Street Journal noted in an editorial, “Mr. Trump wants to disrupt Washington, and voters will thank him if he does. But governing by chaos doesn’t work. To succeed, his executive actions need to be nailed down and carefully explained…”

President Trump has never been a detail person as he has demonstrated time and again. He has this ‘don’t bother me with the details, just do it’ kind of approach.

The problem is the Constitution is not a detail.

This aggressiveness is not what the people agreed to. A recent Wall Street Journal survey found, that “most people want a tempered, less assertive set of policies than Trump promised in the most unbridled moments of his campaign. The appetite is for MAGA lite, rather than extra-strength MAGA.”

The Journal found that a slim majority want significant changes, but 60 percent oppose…replacing thousands of career civil service workers…and “oppose eliminating the Education Department, and oppose superseding congressional powers over federal spending and, while they want the border wall built, they say “only those with criminal records should be removed…and 70 percent would protect longtime residents from removal if they don’t have criminal records.”

Trump entered office for the second time with the second lowest approval rating of all presidents. You know who had the lowest? No, not Joe Biden. It was Donald Trump in his first term. That reinforces the findings in the Journal poll. It fits.

I believe that Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune have character and respect for their respective houses of Congress. I believe that of democratic leaders, as well, such as Hakeem Jeffries and senior statemen such as Steny Hoyer. I think they all understand the Constitution and the critical role checks and balances have played in the longevity and great strength of our democratic Republic.

What strength there is among members of Congress is going to be tested every day in one of the most unstable and volcanic periods in our political history. Their will has already been tested and that has been over the easy stuff.  There will be more, tougher tests of strength between the House and the Senate, between Republicans and Democrats, and between the houses of Congress and the Executive. They all will be trudging up the steps of the Supreme Court looking for an honest referee.

Members of Congress are given the unenviable and some believe impossible task of protecting their institution, serving their constituents, engaging in civil debate, and producing public policy good for the nation, all while traversing the choppy waters of the Trump era in a rowboat without a paddle.

Additionally, the people should always be reminded that the White House is not ‘the People’s House’, and not home to the pre-eminent branch of government. That distinction goes to the Capitol a couple miles down the road. There sits the first branch of government and the one closest to the people, their first line of defense against tyranny. Within its walls is the true People’s House.

In the end, however, the greatest champions in Congress will not succeed unless Americans fulfill their responsibilities as citizens. In the end, as President Dwight Eisenhower once said, politics is too important to be left in the hands of the politicians.”

Our future is in the hands of the citizenry. One of my good friends in Minnesota agreed. He said it well in a social media post: “Wake Up People! The assault on the Constitution has begun. Now is not the time to follow blindly. Get informed. Seek truth. Be heard.”

Good advice.

Editor’s Note: Mike Johnson is a former journalist, who worked on the Ford White House staff and served as press secretary and chief of staff to House Republican Leader Bob Michel, prior to entering the private sector. He is co-author of a new book, Fixing Congress: Restoring Power to the People and an earlier book, Surviving Congress, a guide for congressional staff. He is co-founder and former Board chair of the Congressional Institute. Johnson is retired. He is married to Thalia Assuras and has five children and four grandchildren.