GEOFF BENNETT: Today marks one year since President Trump took the oath of office for the second time.

Over the past 12 months, the president has pushed the boundaries of executive power, challenged the Constitution, and reshaped the federal government.

He's imposed unilateral tariffs, asserted control over independent agencies.

The Department of Justice has launched investigations into his political opponents.

He's deployed the National Guard and active duty troops to American cities over the objections of local officials.

He's launched military operations in Venezuela and Iran, while threatening action in Greenland.

And he's followed through on his pledge to carry out a nationwide mass deportation campaign.

To help make sense of all these moves, we're returning this week to guests from our On Democracy series, which explores the laws, institutions, and norms that have shaped this country and the different pressures they face today.

Our first conversation is with Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.

Welcome back to the program.

ILYA SHAPIRO, Manhattan Institute: Good to be back with you.

GEOFF BENNETT: I know, in speaking with you, that you believe that presidents deserve wide latitude to execute their agendas.

But at what point does expansive use of presidential power cross a line into abuse of power?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, I don't think that presidents get wide deference just by sake of being presidents.

There are constitutional limits.

There are separation of powers.

And what we have seen in the last year, just in terms of court cases, especially what we have seen from the Supreme Court, is that the president does get a lot of leeway in reorganizing the executive branch.

He's the head of the executive branch.

We will see.

I think the Supreme Court is going to rule that he gets to remove the heads of executive branch agencies.

On the other hand, when the president tries to make his own laws or change the laws in some way, he runs into trouble.

And we have seen that as well, when, for example, using laws in a new way to use the National Guard in cities that the Supreme Court has paused, or with the tariff, which I think the Supreme Court is likely going to rule against him on that, although Secretary of Treasury Scott Bessent has said there are other ways of putting other kinds of tariffs more narrowly.

Wish they had a thought of that at the beginning.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, yes, I know you ground your thinking in originalism.

So where in the Constitution do you see the authority for a president to treat independent agencies as if they are extensions of the West Wing?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, we have in the Constitution three branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial.

There's no fourth branch or fifth branch for agencies that are unaccountable to anyone else.

So the question is, is an agency kind of some quasi-legislative body, or is it executive?

Because if it's part of the executive branch, then the president, as the head of the executive, should be able to control it.

And that is ultimately why I think the Supreme Court is going to allow him to remove these agency heads.

The Fed is different.

And, as we're speaking, tomorrow, the Supreme Court is poised to take up a case about the removal of a governor of the Fed.

The Fed's a little different because it's quasi-legislative, quasi-executive.

It's its own sort of thing.

And the president isn't even inserting the power to remove a governor for any reason.

He says he has cause to remove Governor Cook.

GEOFF BENNETT: A question about the politics of all this, because many of the same conservatives who used to warn against the imperial presidency now support President Trump's actions.

What accounts for that?

Is it just tribal politics?

Or is there something else at play?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, people change where they stand based on where they sit all the time.

There are hypocrites on the left and the right.

I like to think that I'm being consistent in believing that the president does have power over the executive branch, but wanting limited government overall.

And so I have certain quibbles with the Trump administration in terms of policy, in terms of the scope and the growth of even taking bits of private companies for the U.S.

government to own.

But the nature of what we're seeing is just a difference of degree, not kind.

We have presidents of both parties going back decades and even over a century that keep growing this what's come to be known as the imperial presidency.

It's unfortunate, but it's not just the president acting badly.

It's also Congress being satisfied with passing the buck to the president so it doesn't have to bear the consequences of those policy decisions.

GEOFF BENNETT: What about the DOJ investigations, the Justice Department opening inquiries and investigations into President Trump's perceived political rivals?

I know you have criticized politicized prosecutions in the past.

Why shouldn't Americans see this as exactly the kind of abuse of prosecutorial power that conservatives once warned about?

ILYA SHAPIRO: When President Trump was campaigning for his second term, he said, citing the lawfare against him, that he would be different, that he was going to put a stop to this politicization.

And I think he's succumbed to a bit of the temptation to get involved in that with the tit-for-tat politicization sometimes, with James Comey, for example, going after the governor of the Fed, the chairman of the Fed, Jerome Powell.

So I think there are excesses there.

But certain investigations that the Justice Department has been criticized for as being politicized are actually going after real wrongdoing.

GEOFF BENNETT: The military strikes in Venezuela that were launched without explicit congressional authorization, has Congress become irrelevant to decisions of war and peace?

ILYA SHAPIRO: I think it has when we're talking about something other than a major war.

What's a major war?

Well, Iraq or Afghanistan, something that's certainly longer than just getting in, getting out, the Maduro operation in Venezuela, or even the drone strikes on the fishing boats.

We have this War Powers Act that's over 50 years old.

Most presidents have paid lip service to it while maintaining that it's unconstitutional.

It was passed over President Nixon's veto.

President Clinton had a longer-than-90-day excursion into Kosovo, into the Balkans without congressional approval, and nothing happened.

I think this was -- what President Trump is using in terms of the use of force is more minor than what a lot of his predecessors were doing.

GEOFF BENNETT: Really?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Certainly.

President Obama had kinetic military action in Libya over several days.

I mean, this is greater than what Trump has done in Venezuela, in Iran, or anywhere.

He hasn't done anything in Iran yet.

He just gave the green light to Israel to do it, and with some assistance there.

So, yes, I think a lot of people have short memories.

And Clinton probably is the biggest example.

GEOFF BENNETT: James Madison, as you will know, warned that the accumulation of legislative, executive, and judicial power in the same hands is the very definition of tyranny.

Are we closer to that danger today?

ILYA SHAPIRO: If we are, it's not because of President Trump.

It's because of this dynamic of Congress ceding its power to the presidency.

Again, Congress is controlled by both parties.

The president is controlled by both parties.

There's this dynamic that I think Madison missed of the incentive to pass the political buck, so that your constituents who are upset, the congressmen can then say, no, don't blame me.

It's the deputy undersecretary of such and such that promulgated that regulation that is hurting you.

So, yes, there are definitely problems with the way our system is functioning.

And I'm seeing good things out of the Supreme Court, for example, overturning judicial deference to agencies taking -- executive agencies, taking expansive power, and to presidents, for that matter, checking President Obama, President Biden, President Bush, and President Trump.

So we will see.

There's this give-and-take that's certainly playing out.

GEOFF BENNETT: So is there any concrete action the president has taken so far that, in your view, you would say this crosses a constitutional line, full stop?

ILYA SHAPIRO: I think, for me, the worst thing he's done legally is the continued postponement of the law requiring divestment of TikTok by ByteDance.

This was a law passed with a supermajority in Congress, that never happens anymore, approved by unanimous vote of the Supreme Court.

And yet the president has three or four times, four times now, I think, said, we will give a 90-day pause, which the law does provide for if all that's left in a deal for divestiture is the lawyers to paper it over, which hasn't happened.

So this doesn't satisfy anybody's narrative, but I point to TikTok as the biggest violation by President Trump.

GEOFF BENNETT: Ilya Shapiro of the Manhattan Institute, always enjoy speaking with you.

Thanks for being here.

ILYA SHAPIRO: Thank you.