WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s increasingly brazen assertions of executive power are running into an unexpected problem: They risk undermining the very goals they were meant to achieve.
His threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark are accelerating European discussions about looking for alliances beyond the United States. His public verdict in a fatal shooting by an immigration agent — delivered before a Justice Department investigation — risks further politicizing law enforcement. His administration’s attempts to pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to reduce interest rates — culminating in the DOJ’s investigating Powell for criminal charges — threatens to make it harder for Trump to appoint Powell’s successor. And a week after the mission to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro from power, the chief executive of ExxonMobil called the country “uninvestable,” undercutting the economic rationale for the military intervention.
Historians of authoritarianism say leaders facing political pressures often pursue bolder assertions of power, but Trump’s willingness to dispense with the usual diplomatic and legal conventions appears to be producing consequences that could complicate his own policy ambitions.
“Trump was recently on a downward path in terms of popularity with his base, and that is when autocrats do unpredictable things to assert their power,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian of authoritarianism and professor at New York University.
Allied defiance intensifies
That pattern has been most pronounced in Trump’s approach to America’s allies. His repeated threats to use military force to seize Greenland have galvanized not just rhetorical repudiation from European allies but has potentially caused a fundamental shift in defense calculations.
“If Greenland goes, so goes the allies in Europe,” said a former Pentagon official now working in the defense industry, who spoke with MS NOW on the condition of anonymity to protect business interests. “The one refrain I’ve been hearing is we don’t realize how many equities the U.S. has in Europe and how valuable Australia is, too, and they’ll all pull the bridge out from over the moat.”
Multiple European defense partners have begun shifting their business conversations toward China and other Asian markets, according to the former official, raising questions about America’s reliability and putting at risk joint innovation ventures that American defense contractors depend on.
“I have 20 years of national security experience, and this is beyond the money — it’s about the defense capabilities of the U.S.,” the former official said. “The people in the Pentagon are so drunk on power, they’re not taking in the big picture: The U.S. European Command and the United States Indo-Pacific Command are in jeopardy.”
Judicial independence under pressure
As Trump faced headwinds for his foreign crusades, Trump, at home, also openly dismissed the norms of a president’s sober posture toward allowing the U.S. judicial system to run its course.
After the fatal shooting of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis, Trump flouted the restraint that national leaders typically show while waiting for an impartial and thorough investigation, instead posting his verdict on social media within hours.
“The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer,” Trump wrote after watching a video clip.
But former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance said that the president’s explicit defense of the ICE agent’s decision to shoot Good inhibits the DOJ from being viewed as impartially probing the use of force. Consequently, Vance said, the president’s pressure on federal investigators degrades the ability of the government to ensure peace in skeptical American communities.
“If people don’t have confidence in DOJ excessive force investigations, communities will spiral down without closure after events like the shooting of Renee Good,” said Vance, the author of “Civil Discourse,” a newsletter on Substack. “If the president fully breaks it, the consequences will be dire — we could become a country of endless protests with escalating violence from law enforcement on American streets.”
Growing resistance in the Senate
On Sunday, the president’s yearlong push to undercut the autonomy of the country’s central bank — a pressure campaign to persuade Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to single-handedly press for a lowering of interest rates, culminating in a criminal probe of Powell which he alleges is politically motivated — led Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., to vow to block any Trump nominee to lead the Fed until legal questions about the central bank’s independence are resolved.
“If there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none,” Tillis wrote in a social media post, continuing: “I will oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed — including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy — until this legal matter is fully resolved.”
Prominent Democratic lawmakers are now leaning on their Republican colleagues to elevate the opposition. Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., in response to Tillis, wrote that the “abuse of power by this administration is outrageous,” adding: “Senator Tillis has this right, and others should join him.” The stance could complicate Trump’s plans to install a more compliant Fed chairman when Powell’s term ends in May. Other Republicans are joining the resistance on different fronts. Five Republican senators voted last week on a resolution that would limit Mr. Trump’s use of the War Powers Act and attempt to block future Pentagon deployments of American military personnel in Venezuela without congressional authorization. Sens. Susan Collins, R-Maine, Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Rand Paul, R-Ky. and Todd Young, R-Ind., all backed the measure. Trump responded by calling each senator, berating more than one of them, according to a person familiar with the tone of the calls, who described him as “very upset, angry, yelling.” Trump’s frustration, however, could inadvertently upend his Republican majority in the Senate. In a Truth Social post, Trump said those five Republicans “should never be elected to office again.” Collins, specifically, faces a significant challenge in this November’s midterm race in her quest for re-election. The president’s willingness to push against constitutional and international norms has evolved into a defining feature of his second term. That shift was perhaps most clearly articulated during a White House appearance on Friday, when he questioned Denmark’s sovereignty over Greenland. “You know, the fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land purely,” he said from the East Room, with Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio seated nearby. The remark offered an unvarnished view of the president’s growing dismissiveness of longstanding agreements and territorial sovereignty — a framework that has governed international relations for centuries, including the founding of the U.S. itself 250 years ago. For much of his presidency, Mr. Trump has maintained dominant control over the Republican Party, with lawmakers on Capitol Hill showing little appetite for defying him. But the accumulation of brazenly autocratic moves — and the president’s increasingly explicit rejection of democratic guardrails — appears to be testing the outer limits of that deference, potentially reshaping the political landscape as the 2026 midterm elections approach.
Vaughn Hillyard is a senior White House reporter for MS NOW. Recommended
A pattern emerges
