Will John Roberts Constrain Trump?
The final weeks of November may be remembered as the moment when Donald Trump crushed the last vestiges of resistance to him in the Republican Party. The sole remaining question is whether that conquest extends to the Republican-appointed justices on the Supreme Court—especially the chief justice, John Roberts.
A stark confluence of events these past few weeks, from the House of Representatives to the Pentagon, has underscored how thoroughly Trump has broken almost all meaningful opposition within the GOP ranks. “There never was that much resistance, but I do think there has been some final capitulation of some of the semi-holdouts, or at least the ones who were keeping their distance,” says the longtime conservative strategist Bill Kristol, a leader of the Never Trump movement. “No one would have predicted the Republican Party would have been in this position” when Trump was initially elected.
The practical impact of this of unilateral presidential power. One lesson of the Trump presidency is that one party alone, even if it controls a chamber of Congress, does not have enough leverage to stymie such a vision. Though the Democratic majority in the House eliminates Trump’s capacity to advance legislative goals, the past year has demonstrated that without support from the Republican Senate, the chamber has very limited ability to overturn Trump’s unilateral actions. Even the impact of a potential House vote to impeach would be blunted if few or no Republicans vote for it, and if GOP senators oppose removing Trump with comparable uniformity.
