What does it mean to be in a “constitutional crisis”?

We’re less than two months into the second Trump administration, but one thing is clear: President Donald Trump would very much like to be unbound by the Constitution.

A whole range of Trump’s early actions, from his attempt to roll back birthright citizenship, to his attempt to freeze a whole range of federal spending, to his attempt to shut down the US Agency for International Development (USAID), are just blatantly unconstitutional. The Constitution explicitly states that people born in the US are citizens, with narrow exceptions that do not apply to Trump’s attempt to roll back birthright citizenship. Similarly, Congress, and not the president, gets to decide how the United States spends its money.

Thus far, the courts have not been particularly tolerant of Trump’s unconstitutional actions.