The Trump blitzkrieg is running into resistance

ALL US presidents ultimately end as “lame ducks”. This usually happens in the last year or two of their second term, when they can neither be re-elected nor accomplish much.

Then, it’s no longer fashionable to be seen consorting with the sitting president; the only people still keen to come to the White House are either those asking for pardons from criminal convictions or those old donors who have yet to get some presidential medal. Distancing oneself from a presidency about to expire is an essential tactic in American politics.

Donald Trump should not be in this lame duck predicament. He still has more than three years left to his presidency. His Republicans also control both houses of the US Congress. And there’s still that grand ballroom to be built as an annexe to the White House. So, to repeat that old American saying, “you ain’t seen nothin’ yet” from the current Trump presidency.

And yet, in a clutch of recent electoral contests, US voters have rebuffed Trump in such decisive numbers that political observers are wondering if the sun is about to set on his presidency, that we may have just witnessed “peak Trump”.

In the states of New Jersey and Virginia, Democratic governors won by thumping majorities. More gallingly still from Trump’s perspective is the election of Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old political novice espousing a radical left agenda, as mayor of New York, the country’s largest city. In each ballot, turnout was sharply up; Mamdani’s win was bigger than that of any previous New York mayor since the heady days of “Flower Power” during the 1960s.

Add to this the fact that Trump’s personal popularity ratings have slumped, and that the US Supreme Court may end up declaring illegal his key tariff policy, and a good case can be made that the president is already a lame duck.

But is this a fair reflection, or just an exaggeration put forward by liberal media commentators hostile to The Donald?

In truth, it’s a bit of both: the president still wields immense powers, but he no longer seems as unassailable as he was only a few weeks ago. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, Britain’s wartime leader, this may not be the beginning of the end for the Trump presidency, but it could well be the end of the beginning.

The institutional wrecker

Trump claims to have great respect for the foundational documents of the United States. One of his first actions after returning to the White House in January 2025 was to ask for a copy of the Declaration of Independence – whose 250th anniversary will be celebrated in 2026 – to be placed in the Oval Office. He is also fond of invoking the US Constitution.

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Yet no US president in at least a century has challenged the legal limits and constitutional conventions more than Trump. Between Jan 20, 2025, when he was sworn into his second presidential term, and Oct 20 this year – a period of nine months – he has issued 212 executive orders, more than what Joe Biden, his predecessor, issued in four years, and almost as many as then-president Barack Obama signed during eight years in office.

At the stroke of a pen, Trump abolished government agencies and refused to spend money authorised by the US Congress. He also assumed direct command of various National Guard units and enlisted multiple federal agencies to detain and deport undocumented immigrants. Universities were told to accept political conditions on what they teach and how they teach it, or lose any federal money.

No institution is safe from political interference. Trump went after Jerome Powell, who heads the Federal Reserve, the central banking system of the US, whose independence from political interference is meant to be protected by law. And when this failed, he went for Lisa Cook, the first black woman to sit on the Fed’s board.

Trump also replaced the US attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia – one of the most sensitive posts at the US Justice Department, which oversees around 300 lawyers and staff, and handles sensitive national security cases – with a person who has no prosecutorial experience.

But, of course, the most prominent display of presidential power involves the use of trade tariffs. On Apr 2, Trump imposed duties on most countries in the world, but then started tweaking the rates more on whim than logic. India was slapped with higher duties just because it imported oil from Russia. At the same time, Canada suddenly faced higher tariffs because a Canadian politician commissioned a TV advertisement which annoyed Trump.

Method in the chaos

At first glance, Trump’s way of governing appears capricious and chaotic. But there is method in this chaos. In many respects, Trump is a revolutionary. He is in office not only to govern, but also to change the US irrevocably.

He and many of his disciples genuinely believe in the existence of the so-called “deep state”, an institutional structure which would prevent them from governing. So, brushing aside legal restrictions on the unlimited use of presidential powers is not only seen as advisable, it is also regarded as an absolute necessity for the Trump project.

In issuing orders with scant regard to whether these are legal or fall within his competency, Trump is also aided by two other considerations. The first is that, over a century of the US acting as a global power, Congress granted the presidency a whole host of powers which can be used in extreme circumstances. Nobody reckoned that one day, the White House would be occupied by Trump, who claims that it’s up to him to decide what is an emergency, and how he would deal with it.

The second instrument in Trump’s armoury is the knowledge that, even if the extensive exercise of his presidential powers is challenged, it will take months if not years before the legal process runs its course. By then, his objective would have effectively been attained.

In most of the current litigation over Trump’s exercise of executive powers, a pattern has emerged: lower-level US courts tend to rule against presidential action, higher courts then suspend the lower courts’ rulings, and all matters end up before the US Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Trump bulldozer continues to batter all institutions in its way.

The Empire Strikes Back?

Is Trump about to hit a roadblock in his tactics? It certainly seems so.

The fact that the opposition Democrats have just won the governorship elections in the states of New Jersey and Virginia is not surprising; both reliably vote Democratic, and Virginia has not had a Republican governor in more than half a century. But the Democrats’ ability to mobilise the vote so soon after being roundly defeated in the 2024 presidential elections is impressive.

And although there is still a year to go until next November’s mid-term elections, the Democrats’ latest electoral performance has had the effect of at least persuading some Republican lawmakers that they no longer need to listen unconditionally to Trump’s orders, including on cutting off funding to Democratic-leaning states.

But the biggest ticking time bomb for the Trump administration is the expected ruling of the Supreme Court in the dispute over presidential powers to impose tariffs.

Predicting which way the court may rule remains a fool’s game. But the judges’ remarks during the examination of witnesses in this case indicate that the court is deeply uncomfortable with Trump’s extensive use of presidential decrees to tax trade, a power which the US Constitution explicitly reserves for Congress.

Trump’s argument that he is responding to a supposed economic emergency and that, therefore, his powers are within those given to him by Congress is undermined by clear evidence that the president frequently imposed tariffs for political rather than economic reasons.

A common refrain heard in Washington is that Republican appointees on the Supreme Court are in the majority and that, therefore, they are unlikely to rule against Trump. It is true that, to date, the court has been remarkably lenient towards Trump on his use of presidential powers.

Still, it is wrong to assume that, just because Republican presidents appointed them, judges on the US Supreme Court would be prepared to sacrifice their respect for the Constitution or jeopardise their professional integrity. After all, once they are appointed to the Supreme Court, they are untouchable by the president. And there is the matter of legacy – of not wanting to be remembered for bending the law to please Trump.

If the Supreme Court rules that the US president was wrong to use existing powers to conduct tariff wars, Trump may have the option of using other pieces of legislation to continue imposing trade charges. And it is possible that, even if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs, it won’t order the cash already collected from these tariffs to be reimbursed to those who paid it. Still, there is no question that an adverse ruling will gravely clip presidential powers; the tariffs are Trump’s preferred and often deployed weapons.

Right from the first day of his return to the White House in January, Trump has been anxious to dispel predictions that he could ever become a lame duck. That’s why he has encouraged speculation that he may find a way to stay in office beyond his current and supposedly final term.

Surprisingly, however, recent events point to looming hurdles in the way of the Trump blitzkrieg. He may start facing the consequences of his political decline earlier than previous US presidents. THE STRAITS TIMES