National Security, Presidential Power, and the Law
By Francis P. Sempa
May 09, 2025
Best Defense
Liberal historians and scholars who praise Andrew Jackson’s, Abraham Lincoln’s, Theodore Roosevelt’s, and Franklin Roosevelt’s expansive approach to executive power under Article II of the Constitution, condemn that same approach when Donald Trump does it. Trump’s use of Executive Orders and his unilateral approach to national security issues, and the resistance to Trump by members of the federal judiciary have created, liberals claim, a “constitutional crisis” which is shaking the very foundation of the Republic. The liberal New Yorker calls Trump’s approach to presidential power an “attack on the rule of law.” It is, in reality, no such thing. Trump, like all strong presidents before him, is attempting to use his Article II powers to implement a policy agenda that voters approved in the 2024 election, and that he has determined is essential to the protection of the country and its citizens.
This is especially true in the area of national security policy, an area where the Constitution vests the president with his most awesome and, in some cases, almost unfettered, powers. That is what our Founders intended. Alexander Hamilton in The Federalist Papers wrote that “Energy in the Executive is a leading character in the definition of good government. It is essential to the protection of the community against foreign attacks; it is not less essential to the steady administration of the laws; to the protection of property against those irregular and high-handed combinations which sometimes interrupt the ordinary course of justice; to the security of liberty against the enterprises and assaults of ambition, of faction, and of anarchy.” He wrote further: “A feeble Executive implies a feeble execution of the government. A feeble execution is but another phrase for bad execution; and a government ill executed, whatever it may be in theory, must be in practice, a bad government.”
One of the dangers that an energetic executive was needed to counter, Hamilton wrote, was “invasions of external enemies.” An energetic president, Hamilton explained, must at times act with “[d]ecision, activity, secrecy, and despatch.” President Trump formally declared that the influx of illegal immigrants into our country is an “invasion” which endangers the citizens of the United States. In other words, it is a matter of national security, an area where presidential power is paramount under the Constitution. In Trump’s January 20, 2025, Executive Order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion,” he noted that many of the illegal aliens “present significant threats to national security and public safety,” including crimes against American citizens and espionage and terrorist activities.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/05/09/national_security_presidential_power_and_the_law_1109425.html
