Introduction: The Temptation of a Shortcut

Donald Trump presents the United States with an accountability problem that the country has never confronted in quite this form.

He has been impeached twice. The Senate acquitted him twice. A New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. He returned to the White House after winning the 2024 election. Since beginning his second administration, his assertions of executive authority have produced repeated confrontations with federal judges, states, universities, law firms, immigrants, journalists, political opponents, and election officials.

Now comes an intriguing proposal: perhaps America has been looking for presidential accountability in the wrong place.

California civil and appellate lawyer Kevin K. Johnson argues that the presidential oath and Article II can be treated through principles drawn from contract and employment law. His premise is deceptively simple. The Constitution creates obligations. The president accepts those obligations when he takes the oath. If he repeatedly violates them, Johnson argues, he has breached the agreement governing his service and can potentially be declared unfit to continue serving.

I understand why that idea is attractive.

I am deeply concerned about Trump’s conduct, his conception of presidential authority, his attacks on institutions that constrain him, his financial conflicts, and his administration’s efforts to push executive authority into areas traditionally controlled by Congress or the states. Those concerns are not inventions of people suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.” Federal courts have repeatedly confronted actual disputes over the limits of his authority.

Yet opposing abuses of presidential authority requires something more difficult than finding a clever way around a Constitution that is proving politically frustrating.

It requires fidelity to that Constitution.

That is where Johnson’s proposal loses me.

The presidential oath is real. Trump’s constitutional obligations are real. Judicial review is real. Impeachment is real. Congressional oversight is real. Elections are real. Constitutional limits on executive authority are real.

A presidential employment contract that permits federal judges to fire an elected president is something else entirely.

No established constitutional doctrine gives a federal district judge authority to terminate a presidency for breach of contract. No ordinary employment relationship places the president beneath an employer capable of firing him. No provision of Article II says that violating the oath automatically vacates the office. No provision of Article III turns federal judges into a national personnel department.

That does not mean Trump is above the law.

It means accountability itself has to operate under law.

There is a dangerous irony in responding to a president accused of inventing executive authority by asking judges to invent judicial authority. If Trump’s critics believe presidents cannot manufacture governmental authority merely by declaring that an emergency requires it, we cannot adopt the opposite rule when an inventive legal theory promises an outcome we desperately want.

The Constitution cannot mean one thing when Donald Trump exercises governmental authority and something entirely different when we seek to restrain him.

That principle is bigger than Trump.

It is one of the principles that must survive him.

The Oath Is a Constitutional Command, Not Decorative Language

Johnson starts from something unquestionably serious: the presidential oath.

Article II requires every president to swear or affirm:

“I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

Congress’s Constitution Annotated explains that the requirement to “faithfully execute” the presidency is closely connected to the Take Care Clause, which commands the president to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed” (Congressional Research Service [CRS], n.d.-a). (Constitution.gov)

Those words have substance.

A president does not swear loyalty to himself, his party, his voters, his donors, his business empire, his political movement, or his interpretation of personal loyalty. The oath runs to the Constitution.

Trump’s second administration has already produced concrete disputes over those boundaries.

Consider elections.

The administration has pursued federal restrictions affecting mail ballots ahead of the November 2026 midterms. On August 11, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani blocked the Postal Service from implementing part of Trump’s election order. Reuters reported that the judge found the executive branch lacked constitutional authority for the challenged election regulation. The administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene the following day (Reuters, 2026a, 2026b). (Reuters)

This is not an academic disagreement over presidential temperament. It is a live separation-of-powers dispute occurring less than three months before a federal election.

The administration has faced setbacks in related efforts to obtain state voter data. Reuters reported on August 7 that the administration had lost 21 consecutive court battles concerning access to detailed state voter rolls, with judges appointed by presidents of both parties rejecting the government’s claims in those cases (Reuters, 2026c). (Reuters)

Those rulings illustrate how constitutional government is supposed to work.

The executive acts.

Someone with legal standing challenges the action.

A court determines whether the executive has lawful authority.

The court can stop unlawful conduct.

The administration can appeal.

The Supreme Court may resolve the dispute.

None of that requires pretending the presidency is an ordinary job.

Nor does an adverse judicial ruling automatically mean the president has forfeited his office.

That distinction may feel unsatisfying when allegations of presidential misconduct accumulate. It is still fundamental.

A constitutional violation and presidential removal are separate legal questions.

Harry Truman did not cease being president when the Supreme Court rejected his seizure of the nation’s steel mills in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer (1952). Richard Nixon did not automatically lose the presidency when the Supreme Court unanimously rejected his claim of an absolute presidential privilege against the judicial process in United States v. Nixon (1974). Bill Clinton did not lose his office when the Supreme Court held in Clinton v. Jones (1997) that presidential office did not provide temporary immunity from civil litigation involving unofficial conduct.

Courts determined the boundaries of presidential authority.

The constitutional system handled presidential tenure through separate mechanisms.

That division of responsibility is not a defect. It is part of the structure.

Trump Is Not an Ordinary Federal Employee

The weakest part of the proposed contract theory may be its most intuitively appealing component.

Johnson compares Trump to an employee.

An employee has duties. An employee violates those duties. The employer terminates the employee.

Anyone who has ever held a job understands the logic.

The analogy breaks down almost immediately when applied to the presidency.

The president is an elected constitutional officer serving a constitutionally prescribed term. He does not submit a résumé to the federal government, receive an offer of employment from Congress, negotiate the terms of Article II, and sign an employment agreement with the American public.

Federal personnel law itself illustrates the problem. The general definition of an “employee” in 5 U.S.C. § 2105 centers on appointment into the civil service. A president reaches office through election and the constitutional electoral process, not appointment into the civil service.

There is an even older problem for the contract theory.

American law has long distinguished public office from private contractual employment. In Taylor v. Beckham (1900), the Supreme Court described public offices as governmental agencies or trusts rather than private property interests. That doctrine developed in a different legal context, so it does not single-handedly answer Johnson’s argument. It does, however, make it very difficult to treat the presidency as though it were a conventional private employment contract containing an implied termination provision.

The Constitution itself points in another direction.

Article II establishes a four-year presidential term. It establishes qualifications for office. It establishes presidential compensation. It requires an oath. Article II, Section 4 expressly addresses removal through impeachment and conviction. Later generations added the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to resolve presidential vacancy and inability.

That is an elaborate constitutional architecture for something supposedly governed by ordinary employment principles.

If the president were merely an employee terminable for material breach, we would have to answer an elementary question:

Who is the employer?

Congress?

Congress cannot simply fire the president. It must use impeachment and Senate conviction.

The Supreme Court?

Article III grants judicial authority over cases and controversies. It does not designate federal judges as presidential supervisors.

The states?

They participate in selecting the president through the electoral system, but individual states cannot simply terminate a presidency.

The voters?

They exercise electoral authority at prescribed elections. There is no national presidential recall provision.

“The United States”?

That phrase merely moves the question around. Somebody must possess the legal authority to act for this supposed employer.

The Constitution identifies governmental institutions and assigns them defined roles. Calling the nation an employer does not create an employer’s termination authority where the constitutional text supplies none.

The Constitution Is Not a Corporate Employee Handbook

Johnson reportedly describes the Constitution as a contract between the states and the federal government for the benefit of the public.

There are philosophical traditions that speak of constitutions as social compacts. American political history is filled with contractual metaphors concerning government.

A metaphor is not automatically a cause of action.

The Constitution begins with “We the People.” The Supreme Court’s foundational federalism cases treated the Constitution as deriving authority from the people rather than functioning merely as an agreement between sovereign state governments.

More significant is the remedy problem.

Suppose we call the Constitution a contract.

What follows?

Contract law normally requires some legal basis for identifying the parties, obligations, breach, available remedies, jurisdiction, and the person entitled to enforce the agreement.

Who possesses the contractual claim against the president?

Every American?

Every voter?

Every state?

Congress?

Someone injured by a presidential policy?

Anyone who believes the oath has been breached?

That question runs directly into Article III.

Federal courts do not exist to resolve every serious dispute about government. A plaintiff ordinarily needs a concrete injury that can be traced to the challenged conduct and meaningfully addressed through judicial relief. Courts have repeatedly rejected lawsuits based upon generalized grievances shared by citizens broadly (CRS, n.d.-b). (Constitution.gov)

Being furious that a president is violating the Constitution is not, standing alone, an Article III injury.

Neither is believing that the country is being badly governed.

A person directly injured by an immigration policy may have standing to challenge that policy. A journalist excluded from government access may be able to challenge that exclusion. A law firm targeted through governmental action may challenge the order directed against it. A state suffering a cognizable injury from federal action may, under appropriate circumstances, sue.

Those plaintiffs seek remedies for identifiable injuries.

“Remove the president” is something radically different.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly stressed that judicial remedies must relate to the injury giving a plaintiff standing. Removing the elected president of the United States would be one of the broadest remedies imaginable.

A constitutional system does not acquire such a remedy simply through creative labeling.

Declaratory Judgment Does Not Solve the Problem

Tulane Law professor emeritus Oliver Houck offered a narrower variation in the article that deserves serious examination: seek a declaratory judgment.

That sounds much more conventional.

Federal courts issue declaratory judgments. Congress expressly authorized them through the Declaratory Judgment Act, 28 U.S.C. § 2201. In a proper case, a court can declare the legal rights of parties without immediately issuing the kind of coercive order associated with an injunction.

Yet “declaratory judgment” is not a magic phrase that eliminates Article III.

The statute requires an “actual controversy.” Federal courts cannot issue advisory opinions merely to settle political arguments or deliver symbolic condemnation.

That creates trouble for the suggestion that a declaration that Trump breached his oath could deliver a “tremendous symbolic blow.”

A federal court is not a national editorial board.

It cannot issue a constitutional denunciation simply for its symbolic value.

A plaintiff still needs standing. The court still needs jurisdiction. There must still be an actual legal controversy. The requested declaration must have a meaningful relationship to the parties’ rights.

Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade do not establish a free-floating judicial authority to declare presidents unfit for office. Those cases involved plaintiffs asserting concrete constitutional injuries arising from enforceable governmental policies.

The analogy misses the central issue.

A court declaring that a particular Trump administration action violates the First Amendment is one thing.

A court declaring that Trump has cumulatively behaved so badly that his oath should be considered breached is another.

A court declaring that such a breach automatically terminates his presidency takes another enormous step beyond either proposition.

Each step needs independent legal authority.

Presidential Fitness Has Its Own Constitutional Process

Johnson’s proposal becomes even more problematic when it moves into Trump’s physical and cognitive fitness.

Trump is 80. Questions concerning the health of any 80-year-old president are legitimate subjects of public interest. Presidents wield military authority, emergency authority, nuclear command responsibilities, diplomatic authority, and immense administrative responsibilities.

Medical speculation, however, is not a constitutional removal procedure.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment addresses presidential inability directly.

Under Section 4, the vice president and a majority of the principal officers of the executive departments can declare that the president is unable to discharge the powers and duties of office. If the president contests that determination and the vice president and cabinet majority renew it, Congress decides the dispute. Keeping the vice president in control as acting president ultimately requires a two-thirds vote of both houses (CRS, n.d.-c). (Constitution.gov)

Notice who is missing from that process.

A federal trial judge.

Section 4 does not tell a district court to order neurological testing.

It does not establish a judicial medical tribunal.

It does not authorize opposing lawyers to use civil discovery to determine presidential capacity.

Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 35 can permit physical or mental examinations when a party’s condition is genuinely in controversy and the required legal standards are met. That procedural discovery rule does not rewrite the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

Nor should public reporting confuse cognitive screening with an intelligence examination. The Montreal Cognitive Assessment is used to screen cognitive functioning; it is not an IQ examination establishing “extreme intelligence.”

If credible evidence ever established that a president could no longer discharge the duties of office, the Constitution supplies a mechanism.

The fact that the people empowered to invoke that mechanism may refuse to do so does not transfer their authority to a federal judge.

Political unwillingness is not the same thing as constitutional absence.

The Supreme Court Has Given Trump Significant Protection, but Not Unlimited Authority

Any discussion of Trump and legal accountability must address Trump v. United States (2024).

The Supreme Court recognized substantial criminal immunity for presidential conduct. The Court held that a former president has absolute immunity for actions within his exclusive constitutional authority, at least presumptive immunity for other official acts, and no presidential immunity for unofficial conduct.

I disagreed strongly with the breadth of that ruling and remain concerned about what it permits future presidents to attempt.

Still, the case does not say presidents are kings.

Courts continue adjudicating the legality of executive action. Trump’s administration continues losing cases. The administration continues appealing those losses.

That distinction is visible right now in election litigation.

On August 12, 2026, the Trump administration again asked the Supreme Court to intervene after Judge Talwani blocked implementation of mail-ballot restrictions nationwide. The administration argues that the litigation is premature; challengers argue that the executive branch is attempting to exercise authority the Constitution assigns elsewhere (Reuters, 2026b). (Reuters)

That case is precisely the kind of constitutional dispute courts exist to resolve.

A judge does not need authority to fire Trump to tell his administration:

No. The law does not permit this.

That word may be among the judiciary’s most significant constitutional functions.

Accountability Is Already Happening in Court

There is a danger in focusing so heavily on some dramatic method of removing Trump that we miss the legal accountability already occurring.

Courts have examined administration policies affecting elections.

Courts have reviewed executive actions directed at law firms.

Courts have considered immigration actions implicating due process.

Courts have examined presidential claims of authority over federal agencies.

The Supreme Court has considered the limits of executive economic authority.

These cases rarely produce the emotional satisfaction of a single courtroom scene ending with a judge declaring, “Donald Trump, you are fired.”

Constitutional government is rarely that theatrical.

It is incremental.

One order gets blocked.

One agency loses authority.

One person receives due process.

One executive order gets invalidated.

One subpoena must be obeyed.

One constitutional boundary gets restored.

Those decisions accumulate.

That is how judicial accountability usually works.

The judiciary addresses legal controversies. Congress investigates, legislates, controls appropriations, and possesses impeachment authority. Voters determine political control through elections. States exercise their constitutional authority. Journalists expose misconduct. Citizens petition, organize, protest, litigate when injured, and vote.

No single institution was intended to carry the entire burden of saving constitutional government.

Trump’s Financial Conflicts Deserve Serious Investigation

The financial questions surrounding Trump’s second presidency deserve far more scrutiny than they have received.

His latest disclosure forms reportedly show more than $2.2 billion in income during 2025, including more than $1.4 billion associated with cryptocurrency, digital tokens, and related ventures (Morse et al., 2026). (The Washington Post)

Reuters has reported that Trump’s family’s cryptocurrency ventures generated more than $1.4 billion last year. Current congressional negotiations over cryptocurrency regulation have included proposals addressing elected officials’ financial interests, including provisions that could force divestment (Reuters, 2026d). (Reuters)

Those numbers deserve investigation.

They do not automatically prove corruption.

Income is not synonymous with illegal profit. A financial disclosure does not, by itself, establish that presidential action caused particular earnings. Constitutional and statutory questions involving financial conflicts require evidence linking money, governmental action, foreign interests, official conduct, and applicable legal restrictions.

That distinction protects the credibility of criticism.

Trump’s critics do not need exaggeration.

If money influenced presidential decisions, establish the connection.

If foreign interests created constitutional problems, document them.

If executive decisions benefited businesses in which the president retained financial interests, trace the decisions and the benefits.

If legislation is inadequate, change it.

If conduct rises to an impeachable abuse of office, Congress should confront that evidence directly.

Calling all of it an employment-contract violation may actually weaken the argument by replacing identifiable constitutional and ethical questions with a theory courts have never recognized.

Watergate Shows What Constitutional Accountability Looks Like

Richard Nixon provides an instructive comparison.

The Supreme Court did not remove Nixon.

Congress did not ask the Supreme Court to remove Nixon.

In United States v. Nixon, the Court rejected Nixon’s assertion of an absolute privilege protecting White House recordings from a criminal subpoena.

The judiciary performed its function.

The House Judiciary Committee performed another. It advanced articles of impeachment.

The political support sustaining Nixon collapsed as evidence accumulated.

Nixon resigned.

The constitutional system operated through several institutions performing different jobs.

That separation is significant.

Suppose the Supreme Court in 1974 had announced that Nixon’s obstruction and abuse of authority constituted breach of his presidential employment agreement and that the Court was terminating his presidency.

Many Americans might have celebrated the immediate result.

The precedent would have been terrifying.

Every future president would govern knowing that five Supreme Court justices could potentially decide whether his cumulative conduct represented sufficient “breach” to cancel an election.

That is not a modest judicial authority.

It is an enormous political authority.

And it would still exist when the president being judged was someone we supported.

The Precedent Test

Here is the test I use whenever somebody proposes extraordinary governmental authority against Donald Trump:

Would I willingly give that same authority to my political opponents?

If the answer is no, I become extremely suspicious of the proposal.

Suppose a Democratic president aggressively expanded abortion access through executive action.

Republican attorneys general could claim she breached her oath by refusing to faithfully execute federal law.

Suppose another Democratic president adopted aggressive gun regulations.

Opponents could allege systematic Second Amendment violations and demand contractual termination.

Suppose a president adopted immigration policies conservative states considered unconstitutional.

They could file an oath-breach action in a favorable federal district.

Suppose an administration interpreted federal civil-rights protections to include transgender Americans.

Opponents could claim the president knowingly violated statutory and constitutional limits.

Now picture dozens of lawsuits demanding presidential termination.

Which district judge gets to decide?

What happens when one judge says the president remains president and another says the contract has been terminated?

Does the vice president immediately become president?

Does the judgment take effect during appeal?

Who controls the military during the appeal?

Who possesses nuclear command authority?

Who signs legislation?

Who nominates judges?

What happens if the Supreme Court takes three weeks to resolve the dispute?

The Constitution’s existing succession mechanisms exist partly to prevent exactly that kind of uncertainty.

A judicially invented removal process could create the constitutional emergency it was supposedly meant to cure.

The Hard Truth: The Constitution Cannot Manufacture Political Courage

There is a deeper frustration beneath Johnson’s proposal, and I share it.

What happens when constitutional safeguards exist on paper but political actors refuse to use them?

Impeachment requires political courage.

Congressional oversight requires political courage.

Cabinet officials invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment would require extraordinary political courage.

Legislators restraining a president from their own party must accept political consequences.

Voters must care about constitutional conduct enough to impose electoral consequences.

None of those things is guaranteed.

The Framers created institutions capable of checking one another. They could not create courage.

They could not guarantee honorable senators.

They could not guarantee independent members of Congress.

They could not guarantee cabinet officers willing to oppose a president.

They could not guarantee informed voters.

They could not guarantee presidents committed to restraint.

That vulnerability is frightening.

It does not give courts authority the Constitution withheld from them.

When Congress refuses to use impeachment, the answer cannot automatically become judicial impeachment under another name.

When cabinet members refuse to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment, civil discovery cannot become a substitute medical removal procedure.

When voters return a deeply controversial president to office, judges cannot acquire a national recall authority.

The failure of one constitutional institution does not automatically enlarge another.

That principle applies to Trump too.

There Are Lawful Ways to Fight Presidential Abuse

Rejecting Johnson’s contract theory does not mean surrender.

Quite the opposite.

Trump’s actions can be challenged one at a time, aggressively and repeatedly.

States can sue when they possess standing.

People whose rights are violated can seek judicial relief.

Organizations can challenge unlawful executive orders.

Congress can subpoena records, investigate conflicts, demand testimony, control appropriations, legislate, and impeach.

Inspectors general can document misconduct where statutory protections permit.

Journalists can investigate financial relationships and governmental decisions.

Whistleblowers can provide evidence through lawful channels.

Civil society organizations can litigate.

Voters can change congressional control.

Congress can reform presidential ethics laws.

Congress can strengthen protections against abuses of emergency authority.

Constitutional amendments remain available when Americans decide that the existing constitutional structure contains a serious defect.

The Twenty-Second Amendment changed presidential eligibility after Franklin Roosevelt’s four elections.

The Twenty-Fifth Amendment addressed succession and incapacity after decades of uncertainty.

America did not pretend those rules had secretly existed since 1789.

We amended the Constitution.

If Americans want a presidential recall mechanism, a judicial removal procedure, stronger incapacity provisions, or another method for addressing presidential misconduct when impeachment fails, then make the argument openly.

Propose the amendment.

Debate it.

Let Congress vote.

Let the states decide whether to ratify it.

That process is brutally difficult.

It is supposed to be.

Trump Must Be Accountable Under the Constitution, Not Outside It

I want Donald Trump held accountable for every unconstitutional action his administration takes.

Every one.

When his administration exceeds its authority over elections, challenge it.

When executive orders violate constitutional rights, challenge them.

When immigrants are denied legally required process, challenge it.

When governmental authority is used to punish protected speech, challenge it.

When presidential financial interests intersect with governmental decisions, investigate them.

When evidence supports congressional investigation, investigate.

When conduct satisfies the constitutional standard for impeachment, members of Congress should stop calculating the political inconvenience and do their jobs.

But I will not pretend the Constitution contains a presidential employment contract simply because existing accountability mechanisms have proved politically inadequate.

That is not defending constitutional government.

It is rewriting constitutional government to achieve an immediate objective.

Donald Trump has repeatedly tested whether American institutions will constrain presidential authority. The answer cannot be to remove constraints from another branch and hope judges use their new authority wisely.

There is a principle here that reaches far beyond one man.

If presidents must identify lawful authority before exercising governmental power, judges must do the same.

If Trump cannot declare himself the final judge of constitutional limits, neither can his opponents.

If emergency conditions do not permit presidents to manufacture powers, political desperation does not permit courts to manufacture them either.

The Constitution is frustrating precisely when it prevents us from doing something we desperately want done.

That is when commitment to constitutional limits actually means something.

Trump’s presidency may present some of the hardest tests those limits have faced in modern American history. His administration is currently fighting in court over election authority less than 90 days before the midterms. His business interests present extraordinary ethical questions. His understanding of executive authority continues generating constitutional litigation. His first presidency ended after two impeachments, and his second began after voters knowingly returned a convicted felon to the White House.

Those facts should produce relentless scrutiny.

They should produce litigation where legal injuries exist.

They should produce congressional investigation.

They should produce political accountability.

They may produce another impeachment if evidence and congressional votes support it.

What they cannot do is transform an appealing metaphor into constitutional law.

There is no judicial pink slip hidden inside Article II.

There is no federal judge sitting above the president as his human-resources director.

There is no Rule 35 neurological examination that substitutes for the Twenty-Fifth Amendment.

There is no declaratory-judgment exception allowing courts to condemn a president solely to inflict a symbolic political wound.

And there should not be.

Donald Trump is not above the law.

Neither are the people trying to stop him.

That is the point of constitutional government.

We do not defend it by deciding its rules apply only when those rules produce outcomes we like. We defend it by insisting that presidential authority, congressional authority, and judicial authority all remain bounded by law.

If Trump’s critics abandon that principle to defeat him, we will eventually discover that the precedent did not leave office when he did.

The next president will inherit it.

The next Congress will exploit it.

The next group of partisan lawyers will cite it.

And the next federal judge will be asked to use it against someone else.

Holding Trump accountable is necessary.

Giving judges a constitutional authority to fire presidents that the Constitution never gave them is not.

The difference between those propositions may prove far more significant to American democracy than the fate of any single president.

References

Congressional Research Service. (n.d.-a). Faithful execution of the office. Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated: Presidential Oath

Congressional Research Service. (n.d.-b). Generalized grievances. Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated: Generalized Grievances

Congressional Research Service. (n.d.-c). Twenty-Fifth Amendment, Section 4. Constitution Annotated, Congress.gov. Constitution Annotated: Twenty-Fifth Amendment

Clinton v. Jones, 520 U.S. 681 (1997).

Morse, C. E., Allison, N., & Tran, A. B. (2026, June 30). Trump’s income topped $2 billion in 2025, boosted by crypto, coin ventures. The Washington Post. Washington Post report

Reuters. (2026a, August 11). Judge blocks U.S. Postal Service from restricting mail-in voting. (Reuters)

Reuters. (2026b, August 12). Trump administration again urges U.S. Supreme Court intervention on mail ballots. (Reuters)

Reuters. (2026c, August 7). Trump loses 21 straight court battles for state voter rolls as midterms near. (Reuters)

Reuters. (2026d, August 8). U.S. Senate advances landmark crypto bill before heading on August recess. (Reuters)

Taylor v. Beckham, 178 U.S. 548 (1900).

Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024).

United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683 (1974).

U.S. Const. art. II, §§ 1, 3, 4.

U.S. Const. amend. XXV.

Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952).