Phill Kline, former Kansas Attorney General and current law professor at Liberty University School of Law, said the mounting litigation against President Donald Trump’s executive actions can be attributed to Congress continuing to provide the executive branch with more power over the years.
Noting the ongoing litigation challenging a number of Trump’s executive orders, specifically his efforts to downsize the federal workforce and save federal funds, Kline said the tension between the judiciary and the executive branch is “not new.”
“Some of the key cases that the district courts are looking at is precedent as it relates to this struggle of power. It’s actually between Congress and congressional actions and the executive branch – how much control does Congress have over the president’s ability to hire and fire employees or create quasi legislative agencies that engage in legislation and judicial acts. It’s not new,” Kline explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“There’s always this gray area where we have to work out through, oftentimes, litigation, sometimes through specific acts of Congress and so forth because the president has the political power to initiate through executive order an executive order that Congress isn’t wanting to question and there’s not a group willing to litigate. We’re always dealing with these issues,” Kline added.
Kline argued that the U.S. is in a period of an “imperial presidency where there’s dramatic powers in the executive branch,” which can be attributed to Congress’s actions over the years.
“Congress has given this power to the executive over and over again. It will pass a law…if the American people are upset about something, they pass a law and say, ‘this is fixed.’ Then, they give the executive branch all the authority to fix it. In other words, a blank check and the blank authority,” Kline explained.
“This is Congress’s fault. They did not exercise discipline,” Kline added.
However, regarding the executive branch under Trump, Kline said it is overall a “good thing” that Trump is using his power as president to downsize government.
“President Trump is trying to exercise the powers afforded him by the Constitution and by Congress to pare it down, and we ought to root for him. That is a good thing. An executive wants to constrict the agencies that he oversees? That’s a good thing,” Kline said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
