Published April 20, 2025
The first 90 days of President Trump’s second term have been marked by a series of aggressive legal maneuvers. Among them: shaking down law firms the president regards as “anti-Trump”; threatening to revoke tax-exempt status from Harvard; the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador and green-card holders on campus; and more.
Regarding the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members, the Supreme Court on Saturday ordered a hold on the administration’s plans, writing: “The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
Many critics argue that the administration’s actions stretch the limits of executive power. Others argue that they are outright unconstitutional.
The Trump White House and its defenders say that this is hysterical—and that the president is only using the powers of the presidency arrogated since the Obama administration. In the case of deporting illegal immigrants, to choose one example, they say he is doing nothing less than restoring the rule of law that the Biden administration flouted.
We decided to ask seven of the sharpest legal minds in the country from across the political spectrum—including a Bush White House lawyer, a progressive constitutional scholar, and a former federal judge—one simple question: Is the Trump administration acting lawlessly?
What should we make of Trump’s legal strategy—if there indeed is a clear strategy? What stands out about this moment? Is this the usual clash between the courts and the executive branch? Or are we heading into uncharted waters?
The consensus is striking—and perhaps surprising, given the ideological diversity of these contributors. All agreed that the president’s legal tactics reflect a dangerous willingness to ignore statutory and constitutional constraints—and that he must be reined in quickly.
Here’s what they said:
I Support Trump’s Policy Goals, but Oppose Turning Law Into Politics
By Ed Whelan
Evidently for Donald Trump, law is nothing but politics. So it’s not surprising that he would apply his tactics for political battles in the legal realm: Always be on the attack. Never admit error. Stoke grievances. Proclaim false victories. Posit conspiracies. Condemn betrayal. Decry tyranny. Own the libs. Redefine reality. Sow chaos. Improvise on the run. And so on.
A primary means by which Trump has implemented this political vision is to make the Department of Justice an extended arm of the White House. The attorney general has always been accountable to the president, but DOJ has long enjoyed considerable day-to-day operational autonomy. That separation has been driven by the concern to avoid both the appearance and the reality that the White House’s political interests are distorting the administration of justice.
The Trump White House has no such concern. On the contrary, it wants it known that DOJ is pursuing the White House’s political interests. So the de facto attorney general—to whom nominal attorney general Pam Bondi and other top DOJ officials answer—appears to be White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a non-lawyer whose sharp political skills include an inclination to utter brazen falsehoods.
The White House has also marginalized DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel. That office has long had the responsibility to review a president’s proposed executive orders and proclamations to ensure that they are lawful. The Office of Legal Counsel has a strong institutional bias in favor of executive power, but its unwillingness to rubber-stamp Trump’s decrees has rendered it unwelcome. The unsurprising result is that many of Trump’s executive orders and proclamations have serious legal vulnerabilities.
As someone who supports many of Trump’s policy goals, I fear that the administration has no coherent legal strategy. Its temperamental disposition to see law as politics will not help it win legal battles. And its growing but wildly overblown perception of the judiciary as its enemy portends a stark conflict that will leave us all worse off.
Click here to continue reading.
Edward Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies. He is the longest-serving President in EPPC’s history, having held that position from March 2004 through January 2021.
