The Loss Of Checks On Presidential Power

The Loss Of Checks On Presidential Power

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/28/us/supreme-court-trump-executive-branch-power.html

In The New York Times, Charlie Savage describes the recent decision by the Supreme Court to block lower courts from taking actions opposing Presidential decrees even ones that are judged illegal or unconstitutional. This is yet another example of the Court being unwilling to do its job as a balance to the power of the executive branch. The Court has already ruled that no presidential action taken as part of the job can be illegal. In other words, if Richard Nixon had had people sneaking around the headquarters of the Democratic Party or the offices of individuals’ psychiatrists now, he could get away with it, even if there were tapes. He wouldn’t be a crook—at least officially.

Congress is totally dysfunctional. It, too, is no longer a check on presidential power. In fact, it is a tool the president is using to advance his agenda using the fear of being primaried to keep his party members quiet and in line. If the President’s centerpiece legislation elicits a tie vote in the United States Senate and barely squeaks by the House, then it is by definition a piece of garbage that will not serve the needs of the American people. One person, the Vice President, determined the Senate’s position on a multi-trillion-dollar piece of legislation. Just two Republican members of the House voted against this bill which will shrink Medicaid rolls by as much as 11 million and maintain a huge tax cut for the wealthy. This is not the way our government is supposed to work.

Having just toured the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC and learned in detail the steps used by Hitler to come to power legally in Germany in 1933, I grasped the parallels. They were not lost on anyone who observes the facts and I am really sorry if this offends some of you out there, but look at the history. Wars on the elite universities or intellectuals, arresting and deporting “undesirables,” altering what is science and medicine—these were all used by the Nazis. I am not sure how far Trump would go, but he certainly will call out the military against civilians and call January 6 a peaceful demonstration. His followers in Charlottesville chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Who do you think runs MAGA world beyond the reach of the TV cameras? That would be the fine citizens that charged up Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. As a sign at a recent demonstration said, “if you want to know what you would have done in Germany in 1933, look in the mirror.”

At MD Anderson things are not as easy to see, but they are very similar, without the Aryans-only overlay.

I used to be one of the cogs in the wheel of checks and balances mandated by the federal government at research institutions like MD Anderson. Clinical research was to follow all the rules. The same applied to research with animals and the use of hazardous reagents. I understood that many of the decisions I made about these very issues angered the president I served. Ditto the faculty. I was serving a higher power—federal law, but at least I was a faculty member both serving and curbing my colleagues. I was not a lawyer in the employ of the institutional executives as is the case now. I was literally a part of shared governance. What I did is what the Supreme Court ought to be doing—serving the higher authority of the Constitution while serving as a check on presidential power.

Now the Supreme Court is basically saying that presidents don’t have to follow the law. I’m going to argue that with the Texas State Legislature giving the President of MD Anderson unbridled authority to hire and fire on a whim, to potentially alter what teaching is done at Anderson, and to eliminate the Faculty Senate as we know it, it has acted as the Supreme Court did and put the President of MD Anderson and those of the other UT institutions beyond the reach of any local checks and balances. Shared governance, even if it was mostly illusory, is over.

The questions are:

Is Congress ever going to do anything to check Trump’s power?

Will the Anderson faculty find a way to check Pisters’ power or better yet, convince Austin and the Board of Regents that he’s just the wrong man for the job and encourage him to find another?