Actually, There Are Numerous Ways Trump’s Power is Being Constrained

Here are nine of them

Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash

One of the more frequent complaints from center-left commenters and activists about the second Trump presidency has been how unconstrained it has seemed. Trump appears to continually press the boundaries of presidential power, get Congress to do his bidding, and cow his political opponents into submission, all while the media and the courts wave their hands and say “this is fine.”

Or … is that what is actually happening? Is there really no one putting constraints on Trump’s power and actions? I thought about this over the last couple of days, and came to the conclusion that if you look closer, there are actually quite a few ways that Trump has faced roadblocks and constraints, despite his ambitions to achieve unprecedented levels of power.

Consider these nine ways that Trump’s power is being constrained:

1. Appointments

Back on October 21, Gabe Fleisher pointed out that the second Trump administration has actually seen a record number of withdrawn nominations. As of 11 days ago, there had been 49 withdrawals, and there have been more since then. This easily surpasses the previous record of 35, set by George W. Bush in 2008, at the nadir of the second Bush’s power. Trump will probably pass 60 before the end of the year, and might even double Bush’s previous record before the clock strikes midnight on December 31.

2. Dissent

We often hear how Trump is seeking to squelch all dissent, and that law firms, universities, media companies and more are “bending the knee.” However, I have to be perfectly honest here: if Trump is seeking to stamp out dissent, he is doing an absolutely terrible job of it. As G. Elliot Morris points out, there have been more and larger protests in the United States in 2025 than in any other year in recorded history, except perhaps 1970. Further, progressive media outlets and influencers have never reached a wider audience, or experienced more remunerative gains, than they have in 2025. If thriving, dissenting media and waves of public protest are an example of squelching dissent, then I honestly have to wonder if words still have any meaning.

It is also worth noting how the Trump administration’s attempt to cancel Jimmy Kimmel was not only defeated, but resulted in significant public rebukes of the Trump administration by powerful Republican U.S. senators.

3. Spending

Democrats have rightly decried that Trump has frozen, at least temporarily, hundreds of billions in congressionally approved spending that he just doesn’t like. However, it is not actually as though Congress is just sitting on its hands and letting this happen indefinitely. Even before the shutdown, Democrats and Republicans in Congress were quietly taking significant steps to thwart this seizure of spending power, as Gabe Fleisher points out:

The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed eight of … 12 spending bills, all with bipartisan support. (One was approved 27-0. The others received, at most, three dissenters, except for the Commerce-Justice-Science bill, which passed 19-10 due to a dispute over the FBI building.) And despite Republicans boasting a majority, Democrats were not doing horribly in these negotiations!

They succeeded in protecting funding for the National Science Foundation and the National Weather Service, both targeted by the Trump administration, in the Commerce-Justice-Science bill. And blocking proposed Trump cuts to the Labor Department, Education Department, and National Institutes of Health in a bill approved 26-3 by committee. And keeping the GAO, another Trump enemy, funded in a bill approved 26-1. And even reviving environmental justice programs in a bill approved 26-2. What’s more, several of these measures added guardrails to prevent Trump impoundments, by including detailed tables and instructions that would normally have been put in non-binding reports directly in the legislative text.

Many Republicans in Congress have made it clear that they do not like the Trump administration freezing money they approved and spending money they have not approved. So, they are quietly working with Democrats to make sure it doesn’t happen in the next fiscal year. Republicans in Congress are putting real guardrails on Trump’s spending power—they just are not announcing these guardrails as guest speakers at No Kings protests.

4. Troop deployments

Constraints are also being put on Trump’s ability to withdraw, or deploy, American military forces as he sees fit. The Senate passed a bill back in October that restricted Trump’s ability to withdraw troops from Europe or Korea. A recent withdrawal of even 800 troops from Romania received highly vocal criticism from Republican lawmakers, something which I assume will be followed up with action similar to the spending bills mentioned in the previous point.

Domestically, Trump recently threated to send “more than the National Guard“ into cities as he deems fit. That’s some real tough guy talk, but honestly I’d like to see him try. Trump has tried for over a month just to send a few hundred members of the National Guard on limited missions to Oregon and Illinois, with no success. His efforts in both cases remain bottled up in the courts and, as both the Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit continue to prevaricate, will likely remain so for some time. Even the troops he has sent to D.C. are mostly doing “beautification” work, apparently at the behest of the Republican governors who agreed to send them.

5. No convictions of his political enemies

The Trump administration has managed to secure indictments of John Bolton, Letitia James and James Comey, three people on Trump’s very long list of political enemies. However, none of these three have been convicted of anything (and probably won’t be, except possibly Bolton). Doesn’t it strike you as notable that the Trump administration has failed to convict any of Donald Trump’s political enemies, even though we are already one quarter of the way to the next presidential election? It does to me, and it shows a pretty clear constraint on his power.

6. Court cases

It is worth noting that Trump has lost quite a few more court cases than he has won. According to a tracker from the Associated Press, the Trump administration has partially or fully lost 139 cases and won 93, with 94 pending.

7. Third term

For a while, Trump publicly entertained the idea that he would serve a third term. Eventually, in early May, he definitively closed the door on the idea. Even when reporters kept egging him on he closed the door again, possibly because Speaker Mike Johnson slammed the door shut at about the same time. While you should fully expect reporters to keep asking Trump about a third term, it’s just not going to happen. Four out of five Americans oppose the idea, meaning that even many MAGA supporters are opposed.

8. Elections

During 2025, elections have proceeded apace in an orderly and democratic fashion. There have been dozens of special elections and those special elections have gone, generally speaking, extremely well for Democrats. Election Day 2025 is right around the corner, with no reports of irregularities that I know. No restrictions have been placed on mail-in voting or absentee voting, despite Trump’s supposed “effort” to stop those. Democrats appear to be cruising to victory almost everywhere. The results have even spooked Trump, who has demonstrated no ability to stop, slow, or alter the results whatsoever.

Even Trump’s attempts to gerrymander his way to a Republican victory in the House of Representatives in 2026 are going poorly, with Democrats currently on track to slightly gain from mid-decade redistricting, pending the Supreme Court’s ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Thousands of candidates of both parties continue to run for Congress and state level offices in 2026 as though everything will proceed normally. This is probably because, well, there is no indication that anything will change. And how could it? The president doesn’t have any power over our elections. Further, thanks to strong results in purple states in the 2022 elections, Democrats actually have more control over election administration in swing states than they did in 2020 (not to mention that Congress, on a widely bipartisan basis, also clearly outlawed the way that Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election). Democratic power over swing state elections should only increase in 2026, which is shaping up to be a very fine year for Democrats that will put further constraints on Donald Trump’s power.

9. Time

Finally, there is something that is increasingly constraining Donald Trump, and which is guaranteed to ultimately defeat him: time. He has already burned through one quarter of the time between the 2024 and 2028 elections, and let’s be honest: when you look back, the past year didn’t really feel like it took very long, did it? It sure didn’t to me, although perhaps I am an outlier in this regard.

We are now temporally equidistant between the 2022 midterms and the 2028 presidential election. With every passing day, Donald Trump grows one day older. Trump is approaching his 80th birthday now. The numbers on the road signs pointing toward his status as a lame duck and his departure from the White House are getting smaller.

Time is the ultimate constraint on Donald Trump, and indeed on all of us. None of us can escape its grip. So, in the meantime, and starting with this wonderful weekend, please make the most of every day.

Thank you for reading Wolves and Sheep and Bowers News Media.