President Trump has had a long-standing antipathy toward the departments and agencies of government and the employees that populate them. At various points, the president has felt tricked, targeted, and squeezed by bureaucrats. During his first term, he described government employees as incompetent and corrupt, labeling them “swamp creatures” and “the deep state” (Parshall and Twombly Reference Parshall and Twombly2020; Skowronek, Dearborn, and King Reference Skowronek, Dearborn and King2021). Key first-term officials pledged to “deconstruct the administrative state,” but Trump left office frustrated with opposition from inside his own government and his own inability to rein it in (Lewis Reference Lewis2019).Footnote 1 His return would be different. Trump’s allies promised “shock and awe” (Costa Reference Costa2025; Levine Reference Levine2024).
The second term has been different. Trump was much better prepared to reshape the bureaucracy this time. During his four years out of office, his loyalists outlined a strategy to implement more consistently an expansive theory of presidential power. This involved purging lawyers from the executive branch who were perceived as insufficiently loyal to the president and adopting a more assertive legal approach intent on pushing the bounds of power (Kroll Reference Kroll2025; Stein Reference Stein2025; Swan, Savage, and Haberman Reference Swan, Savage and Haberman2023). This legal approach has allowed the president to attack the institutional features of the administrative state and gain unprecedented control of government personnel. Trump’s actions to assert control of the executive branch have been breathtaking in their speed, volume, and diversity (Savage Reference Savage2025d).
Overall, President Trump is operating consistently with his statement that “I have Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president” (Brice-Sadler Reference Brice-Sadler2019). The president is behaving as if his dramatically expansive interpretation of what the US Constitution allows him to do is correct. He has sought to trample over a significant amount of settled law, regulation, and practice that is inconsistent with his expansive view.
Trump’s actions raise the more general question of how to make sense of his presidency in historical perspective. Was it predictable in some sense? Presidency scholars have contributed landmark research characterizing presidents based on personal characteristics (Barber Reference Barber2008; George and George Reference George and George1998; Greenstein Reference Greenstein2009); historic patterns (Skowronek Reference Skowronek1993; Skowronek, Dearborn, and King Reference Skowronek, Dearborn and King2021; Tulis Reference Tulis1987); common incentives at work in different institutional configurations (Canes-Wrone Reference Canes-Wrone2005; Edwards Reference Edwards1989; Moe Reference Moe, Chubb and Peterson1985); and behaviors associated with populist leaders more generally (Howell and Moe Reference Howell and Moe2020, Reference Howell and Moe2025). Are Trump’s actions, particularly in his second term, in some ways predictable?
This article is a distillation and accounting of how the Trump administration has approached governance of the executive branch in his second term. It describes the operating philosophy and legal approach developed by Trump’s former administration while he was out of office. Key to understanding the president’s actions is the legal philosophy known as the unitary executive theory, the administration’s commitment to ignoring laws the president believes are unconstitutional, and the political advantage the president gains even when the other branches succeed in checking his actions. Next, the article explains how this legal theory and approach have been deployed to expand presidential influence over government personnel at all levels. The article concludes with the implications of these actions for governance and for our understanding of the Trump presidency in history more generally.
THE LEGAL THEORY UNDERGIRDING THE PRESIDENT’S ACTIONS
The Trump administration has adopted an expansive view of presidential power based in the unitary executive theory. This controversial theory was developed most explicitly by conservative legal theorists in the 1980s (Dearborn Reference Dearborn2025a; Howell and Moe Reference Howell and Moe2025; Skowronek et al. Reference Skowronek, Dearborn and King2021).Footnote 2 It served as a justification for increased presidential control over a bureaucracy that had expanded to implement New Deal and Great Society programs. The basis of the theory is the different constructions of Article I and Article II in the US Constitution.Footnote 3 Article I, which describes the powers of Congress, provides the legislature with the powers “herein granted” and lists a set of powers. By contrast, Article II, which describes the executive, states: “The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” Unitary executive theorists highlight two aspects of Article II’s vesting clause. First, the clause vests power in an individual (i.e., the president) rather than a collection of individuals—for example, the executive branch as a whole or the president and the other branches. Second, the document arguably vests (all of) the executive power in the president, not only what is “herein granted” as in the powers given to Congress in Article I.
The Trump administration has interpreted Article II to mean that the president has all executive power, with the exception of a few limitations included in the document, such as that the Senate must approve presidential nominations and that Congress can determine how to fill lower offices. As Skowronek, Dearborn, and King (Reference Skowronek, Dearborn and King2021) highlighted, unitary executive theorists accentuate the separation of powers and the lodging of exclusive executive power in a president, and they downplay checks and balances, dismissing Neustadt’s (Reference Neustadt1960/Reference Neustadt1991) claim of the idea of separate institutions sharing powers as “mushy thinking” (Barr Reference Barr2019).Footnote 4
Practically, the Trump administration operates under a legal theory that suggests that the president is sovereign in the direction and management of the executive branch. The president can interpret what the law means and determine priorities (Executive Order 14215).Footnote 5 What government employees owe is responsiveness to the president. When presidents encounter resistance to their directions, they are within their rights to overrun obstructions. This is the case even when federal employees believe that the administration is flouting the law because the president can determine what the law means.
Under this theory, the president’s powers are expansive and many existing laws purporting to limit presidential activity are unconstitutional. Strong unitary executive theorists assert that congressional efforts to insulate government agencies or programs from executive control are unconstitutional (Sunstein and Vermeule Reference Sunstein and Vermeule2020). This includes efforts such as the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 that purport to limit the president’s ability to fire civil-service employees.Footnote 6 Rather than see that such laws are faithfully executed as the US Constitution requires, President Trump believes he is not compelled—and may be positively obligated—to ignore what he believes are unconstitutional laws (Prakash Reference Prakash2008).
The Trump administration has paired an extremely aggressive legal approach with the president’s embrace of the unitary executive theory. In some cases, this includes the right to ignore court orders that the administration believes are in error (Faulders Reference Faulders2025; Raymond Reference Raymond2025). More commonly, the administration has claimed the right to presumptively not enforce laws that it believes are unconstitutional and to take actions that are illegal under settled law and precedent (because it believes the courts have wrongly decided). The Trump administration also has opportunistically interpreted the inherent executive power to set priorities among laws, choosing which ones to enforce and how and against whom to enforce them (Yilek Reference Yilek2025).
In November 2024, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy (2024) explained in a Wall Street Journal editorial that two recent US Supreme Court decisions made vast swaths of government policy and activity unconstitutional. Unprecedented cuts to agency workforces and spending were justified now that this activity was unconstitutional. In West Virginia v. EPA (2022), the US Supreme Court ruled that agencies cannot take actions on major economic or policy questions unless Congress specifically authorized the agency to do so. In Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024) the Justices overturned Chevron U.S.A. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (1984) and determined that courts should not defer to agencies in the proper interpretation of statutes. Musk and Ramaswamy (Reference Musk and Ramaswamy2024) explained that these decisions meant that thousands of agency rules were promulgated under an unconstitutional system and past court approval was no refuge. President Trump refused to enforce significant rules promulgated on the basis of vague authority and fired employees hired to implement them. His administration assumed unprecedented authority to decide what was a legitimate agency action under an agency’s authorizing statutes and which actions had been taken in excess of that authority under a process now declared unconstitutional. Whereas the Chief Justice took pains to clarify in Loper Bright v. Raimondo that prior cases validating agency action relying on Chevron were good law, the Trump administration challenged this pronouncement by choosing not to enforce many rules. Ironically, the choices to unilaterally change agency policies through non-enforcement arguably are themselves the types of policy changes that West Virginia v. EPA suggested would require legislative rather than executive action.
WHAT ABOUT FAITHFUL EXECUTION OF THE LAWS?
The US Constitution obligates the president to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. Does the adoption of the unitary executive theory and an assertive legal approach conflict with this obligation? Previous presidents have been reluctant to take actions that were illegal on their face or had a high likelihood of being overturned by Congress or the courts. Respect for the autonomous authority of law and fear of political repercussions reined in constitutional adventurism. The legal determinations of an independent Office of Legal Counsel and other government lawyers held sway. In the Trump administration, the president removed lawyers who were willing to contest his interpretation of law with lawyers who were willing to find arguments to support his expansionist views (Goldsmith Reference Goldsmith2025). Previous presidents also feared the political downside of making specious legal arguments publicly or having courts declare their actions unconstitutional. They avoided angering members of the House and Senate, whose cooperation they might need in the future.
For President Trump, however, his aggressive legal approach is a win-win. If he can obtain rulings from sympathetic judges to validate his actions, that is a win. If the cases drag on through many twists and turns and eventually become moot because Congress ratifies his actions or the fiscal year ends, that also is a win. If Trump ultimately loses a court challenge, he can portray himself as a fighter, thereby animating his base by his willingness to challenge the “corrupt system.” That also is a win. The president has little or no incentive to restrain his actions unless those actions drain support from key supporters.
WHAT HAS HE DONE?
President Trump has used the unitary executive theory and an opportunistic interpretation of numerous statutes to assert greater control over the departments and agencies of government and their activities. He is pursuing greater control of government employees at all levels to eliminate personnel-related resistance to his directions. Sometimes the administration connects the personnel actions to broader reorganization efforts, such as eliminating the US Agency for International Development and transforming the US Department and Health and Human Services so that it aligns with Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda (Davies et al. Reference Davies, Hauslohner, Hudson and Olivo2025; Weber et al. Reference Weber, Diamond, Achenbach, Roubein and Sun2025). In other cases, Trump appointees justify these as part of larger efforts to shrink government, improve responsiveness, or simply because the president has the power to remove employees under the unitary executive theory.Footnote 7
President Trump’s efforts to assert control start at the top (Mackenzie Reference Mackenzie1981; Weko Reference Weko1995).Footnote 8 During the spring of 2025, he fired numerous officials who were serving statutorily specified fixed terms and whose involuntary removal was to occur only “for cause” (Kanu Reference Kanu2025; Savage Reference Savage2025a). The view of proponents of the unitary executive theory is that such removal protections are unconstitutional despite the US Supreme Court’s Humphreys Executor v. United States decision in 1935 that ratified such protections for agencies exercising quasi-legislative or quasi-judicial functions. Trump removed Democrat-appointed commissioners, including Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris of the Merit Systems Protection Board. These actions led both agencies to lose quorums, making them unable to fulfill key statutory responsibilities. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Federal Election Commission, and Tennessee Valley Authority also lost quorums during the first six months of the Trump presidency, in part because of his choices to fire commissioners who had removal protections (Bednar and Phillips Forthcoming Reference Bednar and Forthcoming2026). The president also has removed Democrat-appointed commissioners on the Consumer Product Safety Commission and the Federal Trade Commission to clear a path for him to secure more quickly a Republican majority.Footnote 9 Several cases related to these removals remain to be resolved by the US Supreme Court.
Below the level of Senate-confirmed appointees, President Trump has taken steps to expand his control over key personnel. He created two new categories of employees that lack removal protections—namely, positions that make policy, advocate for policy, or are deemed to be involved in policy making. In President Trump’s view, employees without employment protections will be more responsive to his directions. On July 17, he issued Executive Order 14317 that created Schedule G, a new class of high-level positions to be filled by people who can be hired and fired outside of the merit system. Schedule G is for “positions of a policy-making or policy-advocating character normally subject to change as a result of a presidential transition.” These are new positions that the president can fill, thereby adding new layers of political appointees in departments and agencies.
On Inauguration Day in 2025, President Trump also reinstated Schedule F (Executive Order 14171) to give himself more flexibility over employees in what his administration defines as policy-related positions, including lawyers, scientists, and managers. The president created Schedule F in his first term, only to have President Joe Biden rescind it in the first week of his presidency. The order directs agencies to submit lists of these positions to the Office of Personnel Management for inclusion in this category. Positions included in this category would lose their removal protections.Footnote 10 The Trump administration predicts that this ultimately could affect 50,000 positions in and around the policy-making process.Footnote 11 The full effect of the president’s order will not be felt until a proposed rule that implements the new rules and revokes the Biden-era policy is promulgated.
President Trump paired these actions with a fundamental reshaping of the Senior Executive Service (SES). The SES is a corps of mid-level managers who work for Senate-confirmed presidential appointees and manage rank-and-file federal employees in the civil-service system. The SES is composed of 10,000 managers, and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 limits the number of political appointees to no more than 10% of the SES. Some executive positions can be filled only by career members of the SES (i.e., career-reserved positions). Career members are selected into the SES based on evaluations by Executive Resources Boards from inside an agency. Appointees are selected by the president’s team. On Inauguration Day, President Trump issued an executive order that reduced the number of career-reserved positions, disbanded agency Executive Resources Boards, and directed the reconstituting of these boards with an appointee as chair. The order further directed agency officials to “use all available authorities to reinvigorate the SES system and prioritize accountability”—which later was clarified to mean that adherence to the president’s policies was the most important element of assessing performance (Friedman Reference Friedman2025).
Among the rank and file, the president froze pay and hiring and followed multiple paths to shrink the size of the federal workforce. Some federal workers were fired immediately or placed on administrative leave (Fitzgerald, Yousif, and Epstein Reference Fitzgerald, Yousif and Epstein2025; Savage Reference Savage2025c). Other employees were offered a federal buyout, what the Trump administration called the “fork in the road” (Cameron, Ngo, and Green Reference Cameron, Ngo and Green2025). The administration fired many probationary employees who had not yet obtained competitive status, and it pursued widescale layoffs through reductions-in-force (RIF) (Cai et al. Reference Cai, Stoklos, Detsch and Booker2025). The administration justified RIFs on the basis of the unitary executive theory in some contexts (Katz Reference Katz2025) and reorganizations and lack of work in other contexts (Doubleday Reference Doubleday2025; Sullivan and Demirjian Reference Sullivan and Demirjian2025). The administration claimed that such actions are justified when agencies are performing tasks not directly required by their statutory mandates or when employees are doing work that the administration defines as unconstitutional (e.g., diversity, equity, and inclusion) (Garisto, Kozlov, and Tollefson Reference Garisto, Kozlov and Tollefson2025). In parallel, President Trump took actions to weaken government-employee unions and to end union contracts in federal employment (Gurley, Davies, and Raji Reference Gurley, Davies and Raji2025). In total, the Trump administration oversaw the departure of 200,000 federal workers during the first eight months—even while expanding the workforces of Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Gerton Reference Gerton2025; Partnership for Public Service 2025b; Santana Reference Santana2025). The administration also has sought to change hiring criteria by asking applicants to write short essays explaining their favorite Trump Executive Order and how they will advance the president’s priorities (Kornfield and Natanson Reference Kornfield and Natanson2025).
Notable among the personnel actions were President Trump’s removal of executives and personnel involved in implementing civil-service laws. He targeted the leadership of the Federal Labor Relations Authority (unions), Merit Systems Protection Board (civil-service violations), Office of Government Ethics (ethics), Office of Special Counsel (whistleblowers), and Office of Personnel Management (hiring, classification)—agencies that are responsible for ensuring the integrity of federal hiring and protecting the rights of federal employees. Changing leaders disrupts these protections through the loss of quorums and leadership (Bednar and Phillips Forthcoming 2026; Devins and Lewis Reference Devins and Lewis2023; Richardson, Piper, and Lewis Reference Richardson, Piper and Lewis2025). This makes it more difficult for federal employees to contest the actions of the Trump administration and paves the way for Trump to assert greater control over agency action.
CONCLUSION
President Trump’s second term is a fulfillment of the commitment he made during his first term to deconstruct the administrative state partly by eliminating employees that he perceives as corrupt or insufficiently loyal. Trump has coupled his expansive view of the president’s powers under the US Constitution with a willingness to flout existing laws that he believes are unconstitutional and an aggressive use of existing legal authorities. This organized strategy has allowed him to begin a process that is fundamentally reshaping the administrative state, beginning with its personnel system.
Trump has coupled his expansive view of the president’s powers under the US Constitution with a willingness to flout existing laws that he believes are unconstitutional and an aggressive use of existing legal authorities. This organized strategy has allowed him to begin a process that is fundamentally reshaping the administrative state, beginning with its personnel system.
Given these dramatic changes, the question remains about how to make sense of President Trump in historical perspective. Does his presidency, particularly his second term, represent continuity or change? The president arguably resembles a new Andrew Jackson: breaking norms, challenging convention, targeting elites, and upsetting the political system. Although this is distressing, his presidency still fits firmly within the standard give and take of presidential politics. In other ways, however, President Trump seems to be sui generis, threatening not only convention but also the rule of law itself. His actions have so troubled some scholars that they have issued dire warnings about the future of democracy in the United States (Howell and Moe Reference Howell and Moe2025; Snyder Reference Snyder2017). Ultimately, whether Trump is another president like Andrew Jackson or a threat to democracy itself will depend on the actions of the public in elections and on the resilience of the other governmental branches. President Trump’s approval rating has hit historic lows in the first year of his second administration, and the US Supreme Court has docketed key cases related to personnel and executive power.
Regardless of what the courts decide on the personnel cases, however, President Trump has been successful in uprooting, disrupting, and cowing federal employees. Many have left voluntarily; others have been removed. Another class waits for another opportunity to leave government employment once they find an acceptable opportunity. The government is having difficulty in hiring for jobs where it is growing (Stein Reference Stein2025). The president undoubtedly has made the administrative state smaller, less active, and more personally responsive to him. Decades of social science research suggest, however, that these efforts come at a cost (Light Reference Light2008; Resh Reference Resh2015; Richardson Reference Richardson2019). A deconstructed administrative state does not only do less; it also does things badly. It does not prepare adequately for emerging problems such as terrorist attacks and natural disasters (Lewis Reference Lewis2019). It does not have the foresight or capacity to properly regulate financial products that could sink the entire economy. It leaves on the table solutions to the major problems of homelessness, rural health care, and the opioid epidemic—problems that the national government has a pivotal role in solving. Modern problems are national and complex, and their solutions depend on excellent personnel working in effective systems (Evans and Rauch Reference Evans and Rauch1999; Rothstein Reference Rothstein2011).
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
George Edwards and anonymous reviewers provided valuable feedback on a draft of this article. Julian Hill provided excellent research assistance. Any errors that remain are my own.
CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
The author declares that there are no ethical issues or conflicts of interest in this research.
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