Crying Wolf: Constitutional Crisis?

In, But Not Of: A column examining conservatism in the era of the New Right

Photo by Philippe Murray-Pietsch on Unsplash

Among the more quotable lines in the 1983 film The Princess Bride is swordsman Inigo Montoya’s statement, in response to the repeated misuse of the word “inconceivable,” that “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Today, the same admonishment ought to be directed toward the cavalcade of pundits and politicians who have turned “constitutional crisis” into the buzzword du jour. The phrase has become the Swiss Army knife of political commentary: handy, dramatic—and often misapplied. But, following Montoya’s example, we should pause to ask whether the term means what its users think it does.

The first months of President Trump's return to the White House have provided plenty of fodder for the crisis-mongers. A blizzard of 73 executive orders in 30 days. Mass bureaucratic upheaval led by the world's richest man. The specter of birthright citizenship being stripped away by presidential decree. Each new headline brings fresh declarations that we’re witnessing the death throes of constitutional democracy. And while presidential norm-breaking is deeply concerning and represents a genuine threat to our democratic traditions, we are not yet facing a true constitutional crisis, because our constitutional guardrails continue to hold. The distinction between challenging norms and breaking laws is crucial to understanding our present situation.

True, the Trump Administration is testing constitutional boundaries with unprecedented zeal. His new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) aims to “traumatically affect” the federal workforce, in the memorable words of budget chief Russell Vought. Elon Musk has fed USAID “into the wood chipper.” The president himself declared, with a nod to Napoleon, that “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.” Yet the system designed by the Founders to check executive overreach is responding as intended. The question isn't whether norms are being challenged—they clearly are—but whether our constitutional framework remains capable of constraining raw presidential power. The evidence suggests it does.

For all the sound and fury, something crucial is missing from this supposed constitutional apocalypse: actual defiance of court orders. Critics point to Judge John McConnell Jr.'s recent accusation that the Trump administration is “already ignoring the court” by continuing to freeze funds despite his temporary restraining order. But this severely overstates the administration's actual response. They’ve operated within the bounds of the law, as they've appealed the ruling and argued that they interpret the scope of the judge’s order differently. Eight different judges have now stayed various Trump initiatives. The administration has protested, appealed, and found creative ways to drag its feet, but it hasn't simply ignored those rulings. When courts rule against the executive branch and the executive branch responds through the proper legal channels, the constitutional system is working just fine. As James Madison explained in Federalist No. 51, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature?” The Founders expected presidents to test boundaries and courts to push back. It might be messy and contentious, but that’s how the system is supposed to function. What we're seeing is not a crisis but the natural tension between branches that preserves our republic.

The crucial distinction here lies not in whether presidential assertion is good or bad in the abstract, but in how it functions within our constitutional framework. Presidential testing of boundaries—even aggressively—is an inherent feature of our system, not a bug. The Constitution anticipates tension between branches and builds in mechanisms to resolve it. What matters is not that a president pushes limits, but that when pushed back by courts or Congress, the president ultimately accepts those constraints through constitutional channels. The current administration's actions are concerning precisely because they challenge important norms, but they remain within the constitutional framework as long as they respect the ultimate authority of the other branches within their proper spheres. This distinction—between challenging norms and defying constitutional authority—is what separates constitutional tension from constitutional crisis.

The administration's response to specific rulings bears this out. When a judge blocked the attempted spending freeze—an unprecedented attempt to unilaterally withhold funds Congress had already appropriated—they rescinded the order (while slow-walking compliance in ways that prompted further litigation). When courts barred Musk's deputies from accessing sensitive Treasury systems, the administration modified the problematic executive order accordingly. Even Vice President Vance's statement that "judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power" was followed by... filing appeals through normal judicial processes. A true constitutional crisis emerges when one branch of government openly defies the legitimate authority of another—think Andrew Jackson's (possibly apocryphal) "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!" We aren’t there yet.

What we're experiencing is what Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley aptly called the “jockeying checks and balances of the US government.” The courts continue to check executive orders, though they too must be careful not to overstep their bounds by substituting judicial policy preferences for legitimate executive discretion. Some legal scholars have raised valid concerns about nationwide injunctions issued by single district judges—a relatively recent judicial innovation that gives unprecedented power to halt presidential initiatives across the entire country. For that matter, the administration's pushback against the courts is in certain cases helping keep them in their constitutionally prescribed roles by challenging judicial overreach. This dynamic of mutual limitation is precisely what the Founders envisioned. Beyond the executive-judicial tension, Congress retains its power over spending. The civil service, while being overhauled, maintains its statutory protections. Even Trump's most controversial moves, like pardoning January 6th defendants, have come through constitutionally prescribed channels rather than extra-legal means. The fundamental mechanisms of constitutional democracy grind on. It's inelegant, but it's not yet a crisis.

This distinction matters because crying wolf about constitutional crises makes it harder to recognize and respond to the real thing. If everything is a constitutional crisis, then nothing is. We would do better to save that term for genuine moments of constitutional rupture—which may come, but haven't yet arrived. In the meantime, we should focus on maintaining the principle that no one, not even a president who believes himself uniquely capable of saving the country, is above the law. That's challenging enough without apocalyptic rhetoric clouding the issue.

As Sen. Chris Murphy recently declared, “This isn't hyperbole to say that we are staring the death of democracy in the eyes right now. The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings.” While the sentiment is understandable, Murphy's view is as myopic as it is alarmist. As Lincoln wisely noted in his First Inaugural, if all governmental policy “is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court... the people will have ceased to be their own rulers.” Courts are good and important, but they aren't the core of democracy—the people are. The true strength of our system lies in its distributed powers and competing interests, not in judicial supremacy alone. Democracy isn't dying—it's showing signs of life through the very tension between branches that the Founders designed.

The real test lies ahead. If the administration moves from testing boundaries to actively defying court orders, then we can talk about a constitutional crisis. Until then, like Inigo Montoya, we should be precise with our terms. What we're witnessing isn't "inconceivable"—it's exactly what the Constitution was designed to handle. The system isn't failing; it's holding strong. Until then, let's maintain some perspective.

CINCINNATUS