Executive Power

Steven Greenhut | 1.30.2026 7:30 AM

The freer the nation, the less the public needs to care about anything that its leader might say or do. In freer nations, the leader's powers are strictly limited, and the citizens' rights are protected. Yet in America today, we are dependent on every whim, utterance and narcissistic rage post from our president, as he pursues policies that could disrupt our lives. In that way, we're more like North Korea than our founders' America.

This has always been true to a degree, but since Donald Trump took office last year, Americans have been experiencing a severe form of political whiplash. Firmly in control of the nation's massive federal apparatus, MAGA and its Republican lickspittles in Congress have thrived on chaos. Every day, the president issues some new threat. He imposes new tariffs on countries that don't kiss the ring, then backs off, then imposes even harsher ones.

After getting his feelings hurt for not receiving a peace prize that he believes he deserves, Trump threatened to invade a territory controlled by an ally. "Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize… I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace," he wrote in a letter to the prime minister of Norway (who neither controls the........

© Reason.com