A left-wing Trump isn't the answer. This is.

Turning “no kings” from a slogan into a full-fledged agenda.

That goes for Democrats too. (Photo by Anadolu/Getty Images)

The United States of America continued crashing down a log flume toward authoritarianism this week, as ABC indefinitely suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over comments he made about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The move came promptly after Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr publicly threatened to go after the broadcast licenses of its network affiliates, a startlingly direct government assault on free-speech rights using brute executive force.

I still have hope we will survive this ride, and if we do, I don’t want to repeat it. Nor do I want a progressive president to one day play tit-for-tat. When Democrats last won a trifecta in 2020, they arrived with a sprawling pro-democracy agenda that it turned out the party wasn’t willing to break a filibuster in order to pass. If the party ever manages to retake control of Washington, it will need to focus much more relentlessly on putting guardrails up against another strongman presidency, and eradicating the many legal tools Trump has exploited to tighten his grip on the country. “No kings” has been a good slogan for this year’s resistance, but it needs to become a core piece of the legislative agenda.

How Trump has crowned himself king

Trump’s power grabs have been unprecedented, but they are built on decades of presidents in both parties expanding the authority of their office. Barack Obama aggressively wielded executive authority to govern in the face of a noncooperative Republican Congress, such as when he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program to stop the deportations of Dreamers, or moved pots of money around without lawmaker approval to keep Obamacare exchanges running smoothly. Biden used the COVID-19 national emergency to justify policies keeping student loan payments paused, well after most people had gone back to basically normal daily life, among other creative maneuvers. He also cited the pandemic when attempting more dramatic exercises of executive power, like mass student-loan cancellation and an eviction moratorium, that were blocked in court.

What distinguishes Trump is the sheer scale of his power grabs, which have placed unprecedented control of the U.S. economy and government in the hands of one very moody and erratic man — as well as how he’s used his authority to transparently reward allies and punish enemies. A complete accounting of this would take up thousands of words and even then would probably leave out some of the more surreal examples. (Remember when he flooded a bunch of land in California just to own Gavin Newsom?) But here are six key themes:

First, his administration has repeatedly declared national emergencies where none obviously existed in order to unlock new powers on issues like immigration and trade, sometimes in conjunction with old, obscure laws he has adopted for new purposes. This is fundamentally different from governing through the normal, highly formalized regulatory process, which is purposely slow and involves many legal checks.

His unpopular tariffs are arguably Exhibit A on this front: Trump declared that the longstanding U.S. trade deficit was suddenly a “national emergency,” then proceeded to upend our global relationships and impose massive new taxes on Americans in large part by invoking a 1977 law that never actually mentions the word “tariff.”

Second, Trump officials have been especially aggressive about doing end runs around Congress to cut spending and gut federal agencies. With DOGE’s assaults on USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he has tested whether it’s possible to unilaterally eliminate agencies. He is also attempting to cancel congressional appropriations at will using a dubiously legal loophole known as “pocket rescissions.”

Third, he is in the process of consolidating power over independent agencies like the Federal Trade Commission, National Labor Relations Board, and the Federal Reserve by firing and replacing their leaders — which makes those agencies easier to politicize.

Fourth, he has used the pardon authority to protect political allies, most notoriously with the Jan. 6 rioters, signaling that his supporters don’t have to be afraid of federal prosecution.

Fifth, he has begun perfecting the art of lawfare against potential opposition, cowing major law firms, as well as universities like Columbia and Brown, into legal settlements by threatening attorneys’ security clearances or attempting to cut off federal research grants. Those efforts are only broadening in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Beyond the Kimmel incident, officials like Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller and Attorney General Pam Bondi are talking about using tools like RICO charges to wage an all-out war on progressive groups they consider responsible for “domestic terrorism.”

Sixth, he has eagerly deployed the military on domestic soil, using emergency declarations to activate it for immigration enforcement, and sending National Guard troops into cities like Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.

We don’t know how successful Trump will be in permanently expanding the power of his office because many of these moves are being litigated in court. It’s a safe bet that some of his most egregious gestures, like trying to end birthright citizenship via executive order, will be struck down.

Many of his tariffs may not survive legal scrutiny, either. But so far the Supreme Court has given him a wide berth to dismember agencies like the Department of Education. And in some cases, like his bullying of universities and the media, having a weak legal case hasn’t mattered much because most of the foes thought they couldn’t afford the risk of fighting back.

The broader picture is frightening: We are looking at a future where the president can potentially single-handedly rewrite our tax and trade laws, restructure the entire federal bureaucracy, and silence opposition by dragging them through court. That sort of personalistic rule is absolutely toxic to a country’s long-term stability and growth because winners and losers are determined by who has the government’s favor — which is why we have been treated to the spectacle of Apple CEO Tim Cook lavishing Trump with a literal gold bar.

Why a left-wing Trump isn’t the answer

Some on the left have begun dreaming of their day on top, when Democrats will be able to run wild with a Trump-esque imperial presidency of their own.

“An ambitious, cutthroat Democrat — one decades younger than [Joe] Biden and hungry to exercise his or her clout — could punish Republicans in the way Trump has relished imposing his will on the country,” the political writer Ross Barkan recently argued at New York Magazine. “And beyond retribution itself, a Democratic president could simply implement progressive policy goals with far more ease in this new era.”

The idea is fundamentally misguided. But the thinking that leads there is not hard to understand.

After all, Democrats are in a mood to fight fire with fire and are gravitating toward politicians like Gavin Newsom who, if you squint just right, look like they could sort-of be progressive Trumps. And if you want to be loftier about it: The energetic use of federal power has been central to the party’s project ever since Franklin Roosevelt created the modern administrative state.

In recent years, the wing of the party led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., which landed a large contingent of staffers in the Biden administration, was especially enthusiastic about creatively leveraging executive power for progressive aims. This, among other things, led the former president to attempt mass student debt cancellation by fiat.

But we are currently witnessing the downside of embracing a system where presidents use every single legal toehold they can find as leverage to pursue their agenda: Reactionary conservatives can do it too. Trumpism is, in the end, a bit like the Wario version of Warrenism.

As a matter of principle, I don’t particularly want to live in a country where presidential candidates vie to run the country as elected strongmen, with each party looking to exact revenge on the other. It is obviously not sustainable either, since it would incentivize each side to play for keeps. And just as a practical matter, it would likely be a losing game for Democrats.

Republicans are happy blowing up large chunks of the government and persecuting their enemies — goals Trump has so far been able to vigorously pursue through sheer executive power. Democrats, in contrast, are legislators who want to create new programs. There aren’t durable ways to do that without going through the boring slog of working through Capitol Hill.

In his piece, Barkan suggests the party’s leaders should “consider how much of an expansion of the welfare state is possible without Congress,” perhaps by trying to create a new health care program from scratch. Even setting aside the fact that a Republican Congress might be able to sue and stop spending that it didn’t approve, why would such a program last through the next Republican presidency?

In short, the power of the presidency currently makes it easy for conservatives to wreck things but not for progressives to build them.

Our very conservative justices are also unlikely to allow Comandante Newsom to bully states into legalizing abortion by threatening to withhold money or push through sweeping new regulations, as Barkan imagines.¹ Could a Democrat just ignore the court? I … guess? But that would be called a lawless dictatorship. And even Trump, despite his occasional defiance of federal judges, has by and large tried to find legal justifications for his actions. Personally, I’d prefer to just ruthlessly eliminate them.

The agenda ahead

A “no kings” agenda should methodically prune away the many emergency presidential powers buried in the federal code, most of which were crafted under the assumption that we would have responsible actors in the Oval Office. There’s apparently an entire “doomsday book” of executive orders sitting in the White House that would do things like impose martial law or shut down telecommunications services — things that are supposed to be used only in true break-the-glass emergencies but suddenly look like a gun on the mantel.

It would also be good to root out ancient laws that are ripe for misuse. Sure, it’s great that the courts have so far rejected Trump’s attempts to deport migrants using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, but maybe it’s just time to get that one off the books.

Many good ideas are already floating around Congress. Democrats have already introduced legislation that would require congressional approval of tariffs; make it more difficult for the president to cancel federal spending; and end all national emergencies after 30 days unless lawmakers vote to extend them, instead of a year. They have produced an actual “No Kings Act” to reverse the Supreme Court’s decision making presidents immune from prosecution over their official actions. They have also introduced a constitutional amendment to curtail the pardon power, along with more modest reforms aimed at affirming that a president cannot pardon himself and adding transparency to the process.

There are also areas that need more thought, like how to stop the president from cutting off crucial science funding to punish colleges, gutting agencies without Congress’ input, and using regulatory power to silence critics, as we just saw with ABC. On that last point: One idea would be to reform the rule that lets the FCC yank broadcast licenses if they “distort the news,” which Carr was threatening to use to punish network affiliates if they kept running Kimmel’s show. The FCC had previously launched an investigation into CBS over whether it “distorted” the news by over-editing an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris before the 2024 election.

Congress last attempted to cut the presidency down to size in the 1970s following the Watergate scandal, which helped bring a huge new wave of Democrats to Washington intent on passing such reforms. Today, any no kings-style plan would likely run into opposition from many Republicans.

During Biden’s presidency, House Democrats passed an expansive package known as the Protecting Our Democracy Act aimed at combating Trump’s first-term excesses, which included proposals now very much relevant like national emergency and pardon process reforms. It died in the Senate thanks to a GOP filibuster, suggesting many needed reforms won’t be doable without ending the 60-vote threshold.

Other reforms could require directly challenging the Supreme Court. The “No Kings Act,” for instance, would explicitly strip its jurisdiction to hear challenges to the law’s constitutionality.

But pieces of this agenda could be bipartisan. Republicans may not remember it now, but presidential terms don’t last forever (knock on wood). Under Biden, Republicans like Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, introduced their own bills cutting back the president’s ability to declare national emergencies, because they were frustrated with how Biden had used the power during the pandemic. Plenty of Republicans are also unhappy with Trump’s trade policy, and might join a quiet effort to restore power over tariffs to Congress.

Even pardon reforms could maybe, just maybe, attract some support across the aisle, given the way presidents from both parties have abused the power. If shouting “no kings” doesn’t work, then maybe liberal reformers just need to keep repeating the name “Hunter Biden.”

1. Specifically, it’s hard to see how that would fly with a court that found requiring states to expand Medicaid would be “unconstitutionally coercive.” Barkan also makes some legal mistakes in his piece. He argues, for instance, that it will be easier going forward for Democrats to push through a regulatory agenda, since the Supreme Court just eliminated so-called universal injunctions that allowed single district court judges to prevent Biden from implementing major policies, like student loan reforms. But that’s not really true, because business trade groups can still sue and win injunctions on behalf of all their members, meaning corporate interests are still perfectly capable of tying up a regulation they don’t like.