Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on Trump expanding presidential power

Nick Schifrin:

What a political year it has been. President Trump returned to the White House and used the office to expand presidential power in unprecedented ways. And members of both parties in Congress have scrambled to adjust.

Our Lisa Desjardins is here with more.

Lisa Desjardins:

2025 certainly brought Trump back into our daily political lives, but what did it reveal about him and what did he reveal about the country?

Perfect questions and timing for Politics Monday, our duo of Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Tamara, let me start with you. You're right there at the White House. What did this year reveal about Trump and our balance of power?

Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

Well, the balance of power isn't what it used to be. And President Trump was revealed to have -- we knew this, but now we really know it. He has a very expansive view of his executive authority.

And there are fewer people around him who see themselves as guardrails. So he has done -- he's signed more than 200 executive actions. He has sort of barreled into Washington, done what he wanted to do and waited for people to stop him. And then there haven't been that many things to stop him.

The White House and the president have claimed expansive Article 2 powers. And Congress has sort of shrugged and has done very little to push back. And I think the jury is still out on the courts.

Lisa Desjardins:

Amy?

Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

I agree with those.

And the courts are going to be very important. Some of the issues in which he has really expanded authority beyond the norms of anything that we have seen sort of in this modern era include tariffs and trade. And the court is going to weigh in on that. And it may be the one place, at least in 2026, where the court does deliver a loss to the president.

That is the assumption from many who watched that case being debated. But it's also remarkable the degree to which the president has been able not just to reassess the relationship between the executive and the legislative branch, but also the role that the executive branch is playing in pretty much every aspect of American life, the pressure campaign that the Trump administration has put onto, and in many cases successfully done, with academic institutions, law firms, cultural institutions.

Obviously, we know the Kennedy institution and the Kennedy Center being a prime example of that, but being able to really push many of these institutions to, for example, cancel or curtail their DEI programs. This is not something that we normally think of as executive authority, but I think it speaks to the point Tam brought up earlier, that this is a president who believes that the executive has power that goes beyond just what sorts of laws are being determined out of Washington.

Lisa Desjardins:

Amy, his supporters, of course, like a lot of the things that Trump has been doing, as you're saying here.

But, to Democrats, they see a barrage of a president who has shut down agencies that they thought were independent, sent in a billionaire and his proteges to literally traumatize federal workers, a very aggressive, the most aggressive tactics I think we have seen in generations by ICE.

Amy, what have Democrats done in reacting and what have they not done and why?

Amy Walter:

So I think what's really interesting about all of this, Lisa, you have a president who came into office with pretty decent approval ratings, not great, but pretty decent approval ratings.

And for the first time, Democrats really had to reassess the way in which they looked at and the way that -- the sorts of tactics they were taking in opposition to Donald Trump. In his first term, they sort of consoled themselves with this idea that he was deeply unpopular, he didn't win the popular vote, and that he was something of an anomaly.

By the end of 2024 and into the beginning of 2025, those assumptions were no longer true. This is a president who won the popular vote and came into office with the public being somewhat optimistic about what he would be able to do, especially on the economy.

Well, now here we are a year later. His approval rating, even as he's accomplished so many of the things he set out to accomplish, his approval rating very deeply underwater, specifically on the economy. And I think what Democrats are recognizing right now, which is very different from where they were, say, at this point in 2017, is that a campaign going into the midterms about, like they did in 2017, that focuses on all the norms that Trump is breaking, is not going to have the salience that it did back then.

Instead, they're focusing on this issue of affordability. Really, the broken promise they argue that Trump made in his campaign to lower prices, that's where they're going to be spending most of their time. So it took them much of the year to get to this point, but I think that's what we're going to see the 2026 campaign center on.

Lisa Desjardins:

In this conversation about Democrats, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich today had an op-ed in The Guardian, where -- the headline there is: "Americans Are Waking Up." He says a reckoning is coming. That's from the Democratic side.

We have been talking about President Trump, but yesterday in The Wall Street Journal, we saw an op-ed from Speaker Mike Johnson, who claims there that Republicans had a great year. And, certainly, he has, I think, exceeded expectations.

But, Tam, I want to ask you. The speaker wants to talk about Republican tax cuts, but what's at risk for him politically from this past year?

Tamara Keith:

Yes, so the speaker absolutely wants to talk about that One Big Beautiful Bill that is the one thing that they really were able to get done. And it was a Christmas tree, to borrow from the season. It had a lot of things piled onto it that were part of the Republican wish list, part of President Trump's campaign promises.

So that includes a lot of funding for ICE and also these tax cuts. I think the real risk for Speaker Johnson is just that his own members are not happy with him. They are vocally not happy with the way he's managed the House of Representatives, from taking the House out of session for the entirety of the government shutdown, when they could have been doing other things, to not letting members who are at risk of losing in the midterms push forward legislation that they believe their constituents need.

And the evidence of this are these discharge petitions, which, when I was first covering Congress back in 2010...

Lisa Desjardins:

When we first met, yes.

Tamara Keith:

When we first met all those years ago, those discharge petitions were a joke. It was a thing the minority did because they couldn't do anything else. So, they'd say, oh, I have got a discharge petition.

Well, now members of the majority are using a discharge petition to express their displeasure with the speaker. However, he's pretty safe because President Trump likes him and there's almost no one else who could do that job.

Lisa Desjardins:

So much to talk about in the last year.

On Tuesdays, I put out a political newsletter called Here's the Deal. And at the end of the year, we have a tradition where we kind of come with the political word of the year. Our readers vote on it. They had to choose from four, dismantle, affordability, shutdown, and immigrant. We will announce the winner in the newsletter tomorrow.

But I want to ask you what you think the political word of this year might be in our last minute or so, Amy. No pressure.

Amy Walter:

Well, affordability clearly -- yes, exactly.

(Laughter)

Amy Walter:

Affordability is up there, but I would put another one in there, which is re-redistricting.

This was a year in which we saw more districts be redrawn mid-decade than in any time in political history. And what we're -- what's not clear, Lisa, is whether this was a one-time thing or whether this is now going to be something of a norm, and, as such, it will be in your dictionary for years to come.

Lisa Desjardins:

Tam, you get the last political word of the year.

Tamara Keith:

I was going to say gerrymander, but that's basically the same word as Amy. So let's go with affordability, because I think that is the word that, at the beginning of the year, people weren't using that word. President Trump likes to say this, and then this new word affordability came around.

Well, in fact, it is a word that has sort of shot up in the lexicon in terms of the amount that people are discussing it. And it really speaks to the points of pain for voters and what they're expressing in the polls. The reason the president's underwater on the economy...

Lisa Desjardins:

Why people are pessimistic, right.

Tamara Keith:

... why people are pessimistic, it's affordability.

Lisa Desjardins:

Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, thank you both so much.

Tamara Keith:

You're welcome.

Amy Walter:

You're welcome.