The Return of Pen-and-Phone Constitutionalism

President Trump’s executive actions for COVID relief offer little relief but are constitutionally dangerous.
On Saturday, President Trump put his name to four executive actions — three presidential memoranda and one executive order — intended to offer some relief to Americans dealing with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The premise of these actions, made explicit in the text of each, was that Congress had failed to act and now the chief executive has to step in. It is a premise fundamentally at odds with the logic of our constitutional order, and it points to a number of dangerous dysfunctions in the American system of government that are now thoroughly bipartisan.