Republicans: I have been where you are now. I have felt the invincibility of a close but decisive presidential victory. I have ignored the warning signs of popular discontent. I have dismissed the flashing red lights of an ultra-narrow House majority and the difficulty of passing comprehensive legislation through the Senate as unimportant, just as you may be doing now. I have celebrated ambitious and legally dubious executive orders, just as Republicans have done in 2025. And a year ago, I cheered on my party’s unpopular, inflationary agenda, just as Republicans are doing today. I have basked in norm-busting proposals to reform the Supreme Court and the civil service in an ideological manner, just as Republicans are doing with the Federal Reserve Bank and the civil service in 2025.
But I am urging you: please stop, before it is too late.
We have reached a point in American history where the system outlined by our founders — one of checks and balances and coequal branches of government — is on the verge of collapse. In the 21st century, presidents of both parties have accelerated the concentration of power in the White House. “The Imperial Presidency” has gone from a fear-mongering phrase used by the commentariat to an everyday reality. Members of former President Biden’s party urged him to cancel student debt without congressional input. President Trump has issued a record-breaking slew of executive orders on all sorts of issues, and he has excercised unprecedented taxation power with his tariffs — something typically reserved in the Constitution for the House of Representatives. The Executive Branch is no longer first among equals; it is clearly superior to the other branches of government.
This is unequivocally bad for the nation. It flies in the face of the balance of powers intended by our nation’s founders, which has served as the fundamental basis for American governance for nearly 250 years. And what’s worse: the moves to accumulate power in the office of the presidency are being actively cheered on by congressional leadership and the Supreme Court.
I understand the urge to celebrate. In the same position Republicans enjoy now, I would (and have) done the same. But it is not sustainable. There is no such thing as a permanent majority in American politics. There never has been, and there never will be.
Each term in power comes to an end — including this one for Republicans. It may happen following a shockingly sharp rebuke in the gubernatorial and local elections of 2025, something that crippled the end of Biden’s term early on in 2021. Or it might follow from the election of a hostile Congress in the midterms, the consequences of which decimated Democrats not named Barack Obama nationwide for much of the 2010s.
When the occupant of the White House switches from Republican to Democrat, all of the power accumulated by the current administration will switch as well. There is only one winner in the arms race of presidential power: whoever happens to be the sitting president at any given time. The loser of that arms race? Well, every other American citizen.
It is incumbent on both political parties, but especially on Republicans as the incumbent political party, to take back power from the courts and the executive branch. Elected representatives in Washington must remember that they are there to represent the interests of their constituents, not of their party’s leader.
Republicans: for the good of the country and the conservative political project, act now to rebalance power among the three branches. Members of Congress should immediately support legislation to take back tariff power from the president. They should end the congressional abdication of war powers by repealing the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). Further, the Republicans in Congress, expressing concern and discontent with cabinet secretaries from the Department of Health to the Department of Defense, should be more forceful in their use of oversight powers, which would give their colleagues license to do the same.
Standing up to one’s own party leader is never easy, and it is especially difficult when that leader enjoys approval from upwards of 80% of your fellow partisans.
This does not change the facts of the situation. I believe that the increasing power of the American presidency is dangerous. It makes the country worse off, and the only way to stop it is for the party in power to consciously constrain its own president. Right now, that burden falls on Republicans. Your country is watching.
