President Donald Trump sprang into action on “day one,” as promised, issuing a flurry of executive orders and installing a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) intent on slashing federal spending. And from day one, cries of alarm over presidential overreach — including earth-shattering charges that Trump was violating the U.S. Constitution — began echoing from the hills.
Claims that a president’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution are among the most serious criticisms that can be leveled against the nation’s chief executive. Two of Trump’s earliest actions have provoked the charges: an order to end “birthright citizenship”; and the transmission of authority to DOGE to “delete” federal departments created by Congress and to eliminate tens of thousands of government jobs.
These actions are indeed unconstitutional, and must be barred, to preserve the federal separation of powers established by the Constitution and to protect the fundamental rights the Constitution guarantees for all on American soil.
The 14th Amendment establishes birthright citizenship, stating, “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens.” Specifying that the right to citizenship applies to “all persons,” rather than “citizens,” makes clear the encompassing intent of the mandate, and contradicts Executive Office arguments that children born to parents who are illegally in the U.S. aren’t included.
The Constitution’s protections are fundamental to understanding what it means to be a U.S. resident or citizen. To honor them isn’t — or shouldn’t be — a partisan issue, and to undermine them weakens other constitutional protections that form the basis of our representative democracy. Consider that the 14th Amendment establishes the binding guarantee that no “person” can be deprived of life, liberty or property without “due process of law.” This clarifies that due process, as it must, applies to all — guaranteeing protections against lawlessness, imprisonment or violence, whether perpetrated by governments or other people, and whether afflicted on a citizen or noncitizen.
Four federal judges have now, properly, blocked the president’s executive order on birthright citizenship, on the basis that birthright citizenship is explicitly granted by the Constitution. (Appeals are pending.)
All who live in the U.S. must know their rights, and defend them. This requires familiarity with the Constitution, and the gumption to demand that it be followed. Hawaii meets this standard in joining 13 other states in challenging the constitutional authority for DOGE’s slash and burn approach to government “efficiency.”
In this case, the challenge is based on the Constitution’s mandate that Congress must legislate the creation of federal departments, and that according to the Appointments Clause, the Senate must approve a president’s picks for departments’ leaders. The plaintiff states rightfully warn that “accumulation of state power in the hands of a single, unelected individual” is a grave threat to democracy.
Again, allegiance to constitutional principles and fundamental American values should not be a partisan decision. This case, enforcing respect for the rule of law, must also be upheld.
Ultimate conclusions on a matter’s constitutionality lie with the U.S. Supreme Court, and only its decisions can upend previously accepted interpretations — as the Court did in 2022, reversing Roe v. Wade and ruling that there is no constitutional right to abortion.
That ruling shows that reversals in constitutional interpretation can occur, and dramatically shift the legal landscape. In its 2022 decision on abortion, though, the court explicitly took pains to link its decision to the Constitution’s own language — and the fact that Roe’s “right to privacy” is not included in the document. The above challenges to presidential acts in 2025 are based on other, explicit protections.
Should challenges to presidential action hold up in court, another concern that’s been much debated in these few short weeks of the current presidency is that should the president defy court orders, it could precipitate a “constitutional crisis” by undermining our democracy’s mandate that presidents cannot defy the courts.
“If and when these cases go up to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court rules, then presidents must obey. That’s a deep part of what the Constitution actually provides for,” Yale Law Professor Akhil Reed Amar noted, in a recent CNN interview. “The very first thing [Trump] was obliged to do was to swear an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
President Trump has said that he will follow court rulings, so that may head off this “crisis.” However, all “under the jurisdiction” of the U.S. must remain vigilant.
