Analysis: How Trump is already wielding power
President-elect Donald Trump is already flexing raw power, showing he may try to subvert Washington’s checks and balances and leaving foreign leaders scrambling to come to terms with his victory.
Early signs from Mar-a-Lago suggest that when he moves back into the White House in January, bolstered by a thumping win and a democratic mandate, he will act with maximum force.
Trump has already issued orders on social media to Senate Republicans running in this week’s majority leader election to endorse recess appointments for his Cabinet nominees — and all three candidates quickly signaled they’re open to the idea. He’s showing he plans to rule a GOP monopoly on power — if Republicans win control of the House, which CNN has not yet projected — with unchallenged authority. He sees Congress as a rubber stamp rather than a separate, co-equal branch of government.
Longer-term implications of Trump’s triumph are sinking in. Speculation about future Supreme Court positions and potential retirements is highlighting the next president’s potential to extend the dominance of the ultra-conservative majority he built into the middle of the century.
Federal workers are now dreading an expected purge of career bureaucrats by Trump allies keen to install political appointees who will not hesitate to carry out orders that could shred the regulatory state and central government authority.
And there are discussions in the Pentagon about how the military would respond to any order to deploy against Americans, following Trump’s warnings as a candidate that he could shatter taboos on the use of forces on US soil.
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