In his second term, former President Donald Trump has launched an aggressive campaign to reshape the American presidency, challenging long-standing constitutional limits on executive power. What may appear as scattershot political attacks — from targeting elite universities to berating corporate giants and threatening individual critics — is seen by many constitutional experts as part of a broader and more strategic effort: to weaken the traditional checks and balances designed to constrain the presidency.

Trump’s frequent clashes with Congress, the courts, state governments, and civil institutions, critics argue, reflect a deliberate attempt to centralize authority in the White House — a move some describe as one of the most significant threats to American democracy in modern history.

An Unprecedented Push Toward Centralized Power

While past presidents have tested the boundaries of executive power, Trump’s efforts stand out for their breadth and intensity. He has acted to marginalize Congress, defying statutory requirements and bypassing legislation through emergency declarations. He’s dismantled parts of the federal bureaucracy, replaced independent agency heads, and used mass firings to assert control over civil servants and inspectors general.

Trump has also directly challenged the authority of the federal judiciary. Though he has yet to openly defy the Supreme Court, his administration has resisted lower court rulings, such as failing to rectify the wrongful deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia despite a federal order.

At the state level, Trump has ignored the principles of federalism, which historically limited federal overreach. His administration has arrested state officials over immigration policy disagreements and sought to force conservative cultural policies on liberal states.

Most alarming to legal scholars is Trump’s growing pattern of targeting civil society. He’s threatened universities over academic policies, attempted to punish law firms for political associations, and used the Department of Justice to investigate political opponents and critics. In several cases, courts have blocked these actions as unconstitutional, citing violations of free speech and due process.

“This sheer scope of behavior — targeting nearly every institutional barrier — is something we haven’t seen before,” said Eric Schickler, a political scientist at UC Berkeley.

Rewriting the Founders’ Vision?

For Trump and his closest advisors, this aggressive assertion of presidential dominance isn’t a subversion of the Constitution — they argue it’s a restoration. Figures like Russell Vought, Trump’s former budget director, claim that federal agencies and unelected bureaucrats have usurped too much power. To fix this, they argue, the president must reclaim full control over the executive branch and beyond.

But many scholars reject this interpretation, noting that the Constitution was designed explicitly to prevent any one person or institution from holding unchecked power. Founding fathers like James Madison envisioned a system where “ambition would counteract ambition,” ensuring no branch could dominate the others.

Trump, however, has openly expressed a contrary view. During his first term, he famously declared, “I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

Historians and legal scholars worry that this philosophy undermines the very framework the Constitution was built upon — especially when it is enforced by an increasingly partisan political environment that blurs institutional loyalties. Where Madison envisioned public officials defending their branch’s prerogatives, today’s political reality often sees those officials prioritizing partisan allegiance over institutional independence.

Can the System Withstand the Strain?

Opinions are sharply divided on whether America’s constitutional system can endure Trump’s second-term ambitions.

Yuval Levin of the conservative American Enterprise Institute believes the courts will ultimately limit Trump’s excesses. He predicts that while the Supreme Court may expand the president’s control over executive agencies, it will resist broader efforts to control other branches and civil society.

Others, however, are less confident. Legal scholars on the left fear that a Supreme Court dominated by Republican-appointed justices may not consistently restrain Trump — and even if it does, there’s no guarantee he will comply with its rulings.

Brown University professor Corey Brettschneider, author of The Presidents and the People, points to historical examples of successful pushback against presidential overreach. But he cautions against assuming the system is invulnerable. “We’ve survived crises before,” he said. “But we can’t be naïve — the system is fragile.”

Schickler, too, notes that while the Constitution has withstood significant stress for more than two centuries, it is not immune to collapse. “It broke once before — during the Civil War,” he said. “It might not break the same way again, but the risk is real.”

A Test of American Democracy

Whether Trump’s efforts to expand presidential power will succeed or backfire remains uncertain. While some believe his overreach could ultimately lead to judicial pushback and a weaker presidency in the long term, others fear that without strong resistance from Congress, the courts, and civil society, Trump’s actions could permanently reshape — or even undermine — American democracy.

For now, Trump’s second term appears to be an unprecedented stress test of the constitutional order. The coming months may determine whether the system designed by the nation’s founders still has the strength to hold.