Trump's clash with the courts over deportation is stoking fears of a 'constitutional crisis.' But what does that even mean?

Ever since President Trump returned to the Oval Office in January, he has sought to stretch the limits of presidential power. He has challenged the 14th Amendment with an executive order. He has blocked payments approved by Congress. Through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), he has fired civil servants and dismantled America’s top foreign-aid agency.

And now, in what could be his most controversial (and consequential) move so far, Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — a wartime law that hasn't been used since World War II — to deport more than 200 Venezuelan migrants without immigration hearings.

In response, critics have accused the president of creating a “constitutional crisis.”

Are they overreacting? Or could Trump's actions really push America into uncharted territory? Here’s everything you need to know to understand the current power struggle — and where it might lead next.

What is a ‘constitutional crisis’?

There is no universally accepted definition of a constitutional “crisis”; what differentiates a crisis from, say, a dispute is inevitably in the eye of the beholder.

But broadly speaking, a constitutional crisis can arise when one part of the government clashes with another part of the government to such a dramatic degree that the country’s foundational legal document — i.e., its constitution — seems unable to resolve the conflict.

The most notorious constitutional crisis in U.S. history took place in 1860 and 1861, when several southern states seceded from the union over slavery and states’ rights. That was a fight between state governments and the federal government, and President Abraham Lincoln had to launch (and win) a devastating civil war to end it.

Not all constitutional crises are so extreme, however. In 1832, for instance, President Andrew Jackson insisted he would ignore a Supreme Court decision stemming from a clash between Georgia and the Cherokee Nation — creating a crisis that pitted the executive branch against the judicial branch.

“[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision,” Jackson allegedly — and probably apocryphally — said. “Now let him enforce it.” Jackson eventually ordered the military to keep removing the Cherokee people from their land — a dark chapter in U.S. history that culminated in the Trail of Tears.

Aren’t constitutional crises a thing of the past?

Not necessarily. To be sure, the U.S. has more clarity about constitutional questions now that it has passed laws and ratified amendments to resolve previous flare-ups — like the one in 1841, when nobody was sure if Vice President John Tyler should formally succeed the deceased President William Henry Harrison as POTUS or just serve as a placeholder until the next election.

As a result, the risk of constitutional confusion causing a crisis is a lot lower today than it was in the 19th century.

But the risk of a power struggle between the various branches of government remains. In fact, the two biggest constitutional crises of the 20th century — the 1952 steel strike under President Harry Truman and the 1974 Watergate scandal under President Richard Nixon — both saw presidents defying laws and/or judicial rulings and exceeding their executive authority in the process. Experts say future constitutional crises will likely take a similar form.

So what does this have to do with Trump?

On Feb. 15, the president pinned a quote typically attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte atop his Truth Social feed:

“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

This presumption — that Trump’s plans to “Make America Great Again” cannot be illegal even if they violate laws passed by Congress or rulings issued by the courts — has pervaded the early days of his second term.

Here are three of Trump's recent moves that push the boundaries of presidential power, according to experts:

• Dismantling USAID, the government’s lead agency for international humanitarian aid and development assistance, by putting its staff on leave, shuttering its website and halting its overseas work. USAID was established as its own government agency by Congress in 1998 — meaning that only Congress has the authority to reorganize it or shut it down.

• Issuing an executive order that attempts to deny birthright citizenship to any child whose father was “not a United States citizen or lawful permanent resident” at the time of birth, and whose mother was either “unlawfully present in the United States” or present lawfully but temporarily — as in “visiting the United States under the auspices of the Visa Waiver Program or … on a student, work, or tourist visa.” The Supreme Court has long interpreted the 14th Amendment to mean that all U.S.-born children are citizens regardless of their parents’ status (unless they’re the children of foreign diplomats).

• Initially ordering, through the budget office, a total freeze on “all federal financial assistance” likely to be affected by Trump’s other executive actions — possibly amounting to trillions of dollars of congressionally authorized spending, from domestic infrastructure and energy projects to diversity-related programs and foreign aid. But the Constitution gives Congress the “power of the purse” — not the president — so the legislature can act as a check on the other two co-equal branches of government (executive and judicial).

But perhaps the clearest example is Trump's decision to deport accused Venezuelan gang members — many of whom have no criminal record and deny belonging to a gang.

Immediately after the president issued his directive, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocked him from using wartime powers to quickly remove migrants, ordering the administration to turn the planes around so the court could review the case. The administration did not comply with the judge's order.

Instead, Trump called the judge who blocked the deportations a "lunatic" and demanded that he be "impeached" by Congress. In response, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts put out a rare statement saying that "impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement" with a court's decision — signaling a possible clash in the coming days.

So wait — has Trump already triggered a constitutional crisis?

Some experts say yes. “I would argue that currently we are in a constitutional crisis in the sense that there is one branch of government, the executive, that is not obeying the Constitution,” Quinta Jurecic, a senior editor at Lawfare and a fellow at the Brookings Institution, recently told the New York Times. “And the question is: How do the other branches push back?”

But others say the decisive factor isn’t that Trump is pushing boundaries now — it’s how he responds to whatever pushback he ultimately gets.

Congress isn’t likely to reassert its authority for the simple reason that Trump’s own Republican Party controls both the House and the Senate. “[It’s] this idea of the separation of parties, rather than the separation of powers,” Jurecic told the Times. “Democrats are less likely to push back against executive overreach when a Democrat is in the White House. The same is true for Republicans.”

That leaves the courts. One federal judge has already halted Trump’s federal spending freeze; another has paused the unraveling of USAID; and four have blocked his birthright citizenship order. Meanwhile, the legal wrangling over Trump's recent deportations continues.

"If anyone is being detained or removed based on the administration’s assertion that it can do so without judicial review or due process, the president is asserting dictatorial power," Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia, told the New York Times. "'Constitutional crisis' doesn't capture the gravity of the situation."

Overall, more than 60 lawsuits have been filed against the second Trump administration.

If the Supreme Court weighs in — and rules in favor of Trump — any crisis will technically be resolved. But if the court decides against the administration, the president will either have to accept the authority of the judiciary — or refuse and trigger a full-blown constitutional crisis.

Can Trump just ignore the courts?

Not according to the Constitution. But that’s precisely why it would qualify as a crisis if he did.

It’s already clear that the administration has an expansive view of executive power. Russell Vought, the president’s budget director, told Congress in January during his confirmation hearings that he does not believe the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, which reasserted Congress’s power of the purse, is constitutional — suggesting that the Trump administration could seek to claw back funds it believes are being misspent.

“The president ran on that view,” said Vought, who was also one of the chief architects of Project 2025. “That’s his view, and I agree with it.”

When it comes to the courts, Vice President JD Vance has been particularly outspoken. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he recently wrote in a post on X.

But who decides what’s a legitimate (and illegitimate) use of executive power? Typically the courts. Many experts believe, according to the New York Times, that Trump’s strategy is to “flood the zone with extreme executive actions in hopes that the Supreme Court will find some of them to be legal” — expanding his “legitimate” power in the process. Others worry “the administration could decide that it, and not the courts, is the constitutionally designated arbiter of the limits on its own authorities.”

In his first term, Trump complained on Twitter about court orders that blocked his agenda — but he never flat-out ignored them. Will that change the second time around? In 2021, Vance suggested that Trump should “fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state” and “replace them with our people.”

“When the courts stop you,” Vance added, “stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, ‘The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.’”