07/11/2026

Clocking It: The Political Rundown — The Verdict

Earlier this week, Halfway Clocked laid out the philosophical architecture of American governance. The Founders, drawing on centuries of political thought from Aristotle to Montesquieu, constructed a system designed to do one thing above all else: prevent the concentration of power. They divided authority among three branches, gave each the means to resist the others, and trusted that ambition would counteract ambition. “If men were angels,” James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “no government would be necessary.”

Men are not angels. The Founders knew this. And so they built a system where no single branch could dominate, where the president could veto legislation but Congress could override, where the Senate could confirm appointments but the president could make them, where the courts could declare laws unconstitutional but the president could appoint the justices.

That was the Halfway Clocked picture: a system designed to frustrate tyranny by making power fight power.

Now comes the question that the Founders could not have anticipated. What happens when a president decides that the system itself is the enemy? What happens when the executive branch treats Congress as an obstacle to be circumnavigated, the courts as an inconvenience to be ignored, and the separation of powers as an archaic inconvenience?

We are living through the answer.

Since January 20, 2025, Donald Trump has waged an unprecedented assault on the constitutional architecture the Founders so carefully constructed. He has fired independent agency heads at will, deployed the military against American cities, ignored court orders with impunity, and started a war without congressional authorization. He has reduced the separation of powers to a dialogue between only two branches: the executive and the judicial, and even that dialogue, he seems determined to end.

The verdict is not complicated. The second Trump administration has systematically dismantled the checks and balances that have protected American democracy for 250 years. And the damage will outlast his presidency.

The Supreme Court’s Gift: Firing at Will

The most significant assault on the separation of powers came not from Trump alone, but from the Supreme Court he helped reshape.

On June 29, 2026, the Court handed down a 6-3 decision that effectively ended 90 years of precedent. In Trump v. Slaughter, the majority ruled that the president can fire the leaders of independent federal agencies at will, toppling the 1935 Humphrey’s Executor precedent that had long protected agency heads from partisan removal. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, declared that “subordinates who exercise the president’s power are subject to removal by him.”

The implications are staggering. Approximately two dozen multi-member agencies, including the Federal Trade Commission, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the National Labor Relations Board, and the Election Assistance Commission, are now subject to presidential control without cause. Congress, which designed these agencies to be independent of partisan politics, has been stripped of its authority to insulate them from executive interference.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent was scathing. “Today, this Court undoes centuries of political practice and concludes that all three branches of Government have been acting in open defiance of the Constitution all this time,” she wrote. “Its conclusion is wrong.” She continued: “The Court gives the President a power unknown even to the English Crown against which the Founders revolted, elevating him above his once coequal branches by transforming a duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed into a license to act in defiance of those very laws.”

The ruling has had immediate consequences. On July 9, 2026, Trump terminated the remaining three members of the Election Assistance Commission, the independent federal agency that assists election administration officials nationwide. The terminations followed Trump’s push for more federal intervention in voting processes, traditionally the purview of the states. Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California called it “a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference.”

The firing of Lisa Cook, the first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, further illustrated the pattern. Trump attempted to remove Cook in August 2025 based on contested allegations of mortgage fraud, marking the first effort to remove a governor in the central bank’s 111-year history. The Supreme Court blocked that firing, but only because the Federal Reserve was deemed “special”. As Slaughter noted: “Somehow Wall Street is special and gets special treatment, but other than that, the agencies that look out for everyday Americans do not.”

The War Powers: Congress Sidelined

The Founders gave Congress the power to declare war for a reason. They wanted deliberation, not impulse. They wanted the representatives of the people, not a single executive, to decide when the nation would go to war.

On February 28, 2025, Trump launched a war against Iran without seeking congressional approval. The administration has argued that a ceasefire in April “reset the clock” on the 60-day requirement under the War Powers Resolution, but legal experts are skeptical.

Congress finally responded. On June 23, 2026, both chambers of Congress approved a concurrent resolution instructing Trump to halt the war or seek congressional authorization, the first time since the War Powers Resolution was enacted in 1973 that both chambers have done so. Four Republicans joined Democrats in the 50-48 Senate vote.

The resolution is largely symbolic. It does not have the force of law, and Trump has already dismissed it as “poorly timed and meaningless”. But the symbolism matters. As Tufts University law professor Michael Glennon noted: “You have both houses of Congress, which are under the control of the Republican Party, standing up to the president and saying no. That’s almost unprecedented.”

The fact that a Republican-controlled Congress felt compelled to rebuke a Republican president on a matter of war is a damning indictment of how far the separation of powers has eroded. The Founders envisioned Congress as a coequal branch, not a rubber stamp. In Trump’s second term, it has largely become the latter—and even when it finds its voice, the president simply ignores it.

The Military on American Streets

The Insurrection Act of 1807 authorizes the president to deploy the military domestically to suppress insurrection or rebellion. The Founders would have been horrified by its use. They had fought a war against a king who used standing armies to suppress dissent. They had enshrined civilian control of the military as a foundational principle.

In 2025, Trump deployed National Guard troops and active-duty Marines to multiple American cities, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Portland, and Washington, D.C.. The deployments were justified using data that critics say was “often outdated or just plain incorrect.” The costs have been staggering: approximately $496 million in 2025 alone, with the Washington deployment alone costing $55 million per month.

California Governor Gavin Newsom called the Los Angeles deployment “illegal” and estimated it cost taxpayers $111 million. Three states, California, Oregon, and Illinois, filed lawsuits challenging the deployments. District courts in Oregon and Illinois blocked the administration’s efforts, and the Seventh Circuit upheld the block. But the administration continued to deploy troops elsewhere, treating court orders as suggestions rather than commands.

The Founders did not envision a president who would use the military against American cities. They did not envision a president who would treat the Posse Comitatus Act, which restricts the use of the military for domestic law enforcement, as an inconvenience. And they certainly did not envision a president who would deploy troops to suppress protests against his own immigration policies.

Ignoring the Courts: A Constitutional Crisis in Real Time

Perhaps the most dangerous assault on the separation of powers has been the administration’s systematic defiance of court orders.

Since February 2025, district court judges have ruled that the Trump administration was violating court orders in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including cuts in federal funding, mass layoffs, deportations, and immigration practices. That is about one out of every eight lawsuits in which courts have at least temporarily blocked the administration’s actions.

The administration has deported scores of accused gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador despite court orders blocking the removals. It has withheld billions of dollars in foreign aid despite judicial directives to release the funds. It has failed to restore programming at the Voice of America. It has continued detaining immigrants without bond despite a federal judge’s ruling that the policy was unlawful.

In February 2026, District Judge Sunshine Sykes accused the Trump administration of “terrorizing immigrants and recklessly violating the law” and said it was seeking “to erode any semblance of separation of powers.” “It could only do so,” she added, “in a world where the constitution does not exist.”

Georgetown constitutional law scholar David Super warned: “The federal government should be the institution most devoted to the rule of law in this country. When it ceases to feel itself bound, respect for the rule of law is likely to break down across the country.”

Legal scholars and former federal judges say they can recall at most a few cases of noncompliance over the full four-year terms of previous presidents, including Trump’s first term. The Trump administration has racked up more than 30 such cases in just over a year.

The Weaponization of Government

The assault on the separation of powers extends beyond the traditional branches. Trump has also targeted the institutions that serve as “soft power” checks on executive authority: universities, law firms, and the news media.

The American Bar Association documented how Trump’s administration launched broad investigations into approximately 75 universities, threatening to cut off billions of dollars in federal grants. Brown, Columbia, Cornell, and Northwestern have settled investigations and committed $400 million to be paid to the administration or to Trump’s causes. Harvard has sued but is reportedly negotiating.

Trump has also gone after law firms with diversity policies or associations with attorneys he regards as antagonists. Sanctions have included taking away security clearances, cutting off government contracts, and denying access to federal buildings. About 10 firms have negotiated deals to provide nearly $1 billion in pro bono legal services for Trump causes.

The chilling effect is intentional. When law firms are afraid to challenge the president, when universities are afraid to speak truth to power, when the news media is afraid to report—the separation of powers becomes a dead letter.

The Cultural Meaning — The Verdict

Here is the cultural reality that matters most.

The Founders built a system designed to prevent the concentration of power. They divided authority among three branches, gave each the means to resist the others, and trusted that ambition would counteract ambition. They knew that power corrupts, and that the only reliable check on power is other power.

That system is under siege.

The Supreme Court has handed Trump the power to fire independent agency heads at will, ending 90 years of precedent and stripping Congress of its authority to insulate agencies from partisan control. Trump has started a war without congressional approval and ignored a bipartisan resolution demanding he seek authorization. He has deployed the military against American cities at a cost of nearly half a billion dollars. He has defied court orders in more than 30 lawsuits. He has weaponized the Justice Department against his perceived enemies. He has silenced universities and law firms through the threat of financial ruin.

Halfway Clocked showed us the architecture: the separation of powers, the checks and balances, the carefully constructed system designed to prevent tyranny. This week’s Verdict shows us what happens when a president decides that the system is the enemy.

The Founders could not have anticipated a president who would treat the Constitution as an obstacle to be overcome rather than a charter to be upheld. But they built the system precisely because they knew that power would always seek more power. They built the system because they knew that men are not angels. They built the system because they knew that the only defense against tyranny was to make ambition counteract ambition.

The question is whether the system they built is strong enough to survive the man who is testing it.

The Supreme Court has failed the test. Congress has largely abdicated its role. The president has declared open war on the separation of powers. And the American people are left to wonder: if the branches will not check each other, who will check the president?

The verdict is not that the Constitution has failed. The verdict is that the people who are supposed to uphold it have failed the Constitution. And unless that changes, unless Congress finds its spine, unless the courts enforce their orders, unless the American people demand accountability, the separation of powers will become a historical artifact, not a living principle.

The Founders built a system to prevent the concentration of power. They could not force the people who operate that system to respect it. But they trusted that the American people would rise to defend it when the moment came.

That moment is now.

Clocked. That’s the tea.

Sources

· Federalist No. 51, James Madison (1788)
· U.S. Constitution, Articles I, II, III
· Trump v. Slaughter, 604 U.S. _ (2026) · Trump v. Cook, 604 U.S. _ (2026)
· “Takeaways from the Supreme Court’s decisions expanding Trump’s firing power,” CNN, June 29, 2026
· “US supreme court rules Trump can fire leaders of independent agencies,” The Guardian, June 29, 2026
· “Supreme Court expands Trump’s power over the federal bureaucracy,” ABA Journal, June 29, 2026
· “Dismantling Guardrails: Trump 2.0,” American Bar Association, March 2026
· “Trump 47 and the Judicial Burdens of Presidential Unilateralism,” Cambridge University Press, April 13, 2026
· “Congress passes war powers measure for first time, breaking with Trump over Iran,” BBC, June 23, 2026
· “Senate Votes to Check Trump’s War Powers, Rebuking Him on Iran,” The New York Times, June 23, 2026
· “U.S. agency that supports election administration has no commissioners after Trump administration moves,” CBC News, July 10, 2026
· “Takeaways from AP report on Trump administration’s defiance of lower court orders,” AP News, May 2, 2026
· “Trump administration is increasingly ignoring US courts, new analysis shows,” The Guardian, May 2, 2026
· “Redefining Executive Force After Trump v. Illinois,” Stanford Law School, May 19, 2026
· “Trump’s National Guard deployments costing $117.5 million a month,” The Straits Times, January 29, 2026

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About the Author

Andrew Greene is a quality-obsessed, results-driven powerhouse with nearly two decades of experience transforming complexity into clear, actionable solutions. His secret weapon? A mix of analytical sharpness, problem-solving precision and a communication and leadership style that’s equal parts clarity and charisma. From Quality Assurance to political data analysis, you can think of him as the Swiss Army knife of operational excellence, minus the corkscrew (unless it’s a team celebration).