In his first week in office, President Trump displayed an unusually expansive vision of executive authority. He challenged long-established norms and openly defied legal regulations that stood in the way of his ability to accomplish his goals.

Among the norms and regulations the president ignored were the language of the 14th Amendment concerning birthright citizenship, a statute concerning presidential impoundment of funds appropriated by Congress, the recently passed ban on TikTok and a law laying out procedures for dismissing inspectors general. And even before he took office, Donald Trump threatened to bypass the Senate’s role in vetting his nominees for Cabinet positions.

As the New York Times’s Peter Baker explained, “Mr. Trump, in effect, declared that he was willing and even eager to push the boundaries of his authority, the resilience of American institutions, the strength of the nearly 2 1/2 century-old system and the tolerance of some of his own allies.” Baker explained that “even more than in his first term, he has mounted a fundamental challenge to the expectations of what a president can and should do.”

None of that should be surprising.

Recall that in 2019, the president, referring to the part of the Constitution governing the powers of the presidency, said, “I have an Article 2 where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.” Even President Biden pushed hard against the limits of his authority when he

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