How Trump’s actions on due process, courts, elections and executive power stack up against our nation’s founding document

By Mikay­la Bun­nell
UConn Jour­nal­ism

“We the Peo­ple of the Unit­ed States, in Order to form a more per­fect Union, estab­lish Jus­tice, insure domes­tic Tran­quil­i­ty, pro­vide for the com­mon defence, pro­mote the gen­er­al Wel­fare, and secure the Bless­ings of Lib­er­ty to our­selves and our Pos­ter­i­ty, do ordain and estab­lish this Con­sti­tu­tion for the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.”

- The Pre­am­ble to the Con­sti­tu­tion

The first year of Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s sec­ond term has been marked by an unprece­dent­ed num­ber of exec­u­tive orders, depor­ta­tions, Nation­al Guard deploy­ments and for­eign tar­iffs.

Each step of the way, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s actions have been met with protests and legal chal­lenges, with crit­ics say­ing he is putting the Con­sti­tu­tion at risk.

The Con­sti­tu­tion, with its 27 amend­ments, is the supreme law of the Unit­ed States. It cre­ates the three branch­es of gov­ern­ment, estab­lish­es the roles of each and the checks and bal­ances meant to keep them in their zones, lim­its the pow­er of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment over states and estab­lish­es many rights and free­doms for peo­ple in the U.S. (not just cit­i­zens).

Con­necti­cut Attor­ney Gen­er­al William Tong calls the Con­sti­tu­tion a con­tract between the states.

“We’re a fed­er­a­tion of 50 sov­er­eign states joined togeth­er by our con­sent, and we del­e­gat­ed lim­it­ed pow­ers to the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment,” he said. “The Con­sti­tu­tion’s like the deal, the bar­gain, the con­tract, the covenant between the 50 of us… Don­ald Trump and his exceed­ing of his pow­ers is real­ly about his exceed­ing and the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s reach­ing beyond its pow­ers under the Con­sti­tu­tion — basi­cal­ly vio­lat­ing the bar­gain between the states, the fed­er­a­tion.”

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has been accused of over­step­ping beyond the bounds of the exec­u­tive branch, threat­en­ing the pow­er of the leg­isla­tive and judi­cial branch­es in vio­la­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion’s sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers. It has also been crit­i­cized for vio­lat­ing the prin­ci­ples of fed­er­al­ism that lim­it the fed­er­al gov­ern­men­t’s con­trol over states.

Below are con­cepts out­lined in the Con­sti­tu­tion. Click on each phrase to learn more about what the Con­sti­tu­tion says on each top­ic and how the Trump admin­is­tra­tion’s actions com­pare.