How Trump skirts checks and balances unlike any modern-day US president

President Trump has been moving with lightning speed to carry out his agenda signing a blizzard of executive orders and empowering Elon Musk’s task force, the Department of Government Efficiency .

To Democrats and many scholars, the situation has all the markings of a constitutional crisis: The president is upending the United States ’ centuries-old balance of power.

“Never Trump” Republicans , including outspoken former Rep. Liz Cheney , are now in the political wilderness.

This scenario demonstrates why the Founding Fathers didn’t mention political parties in the Constitution .

Efforts to rein in the executive branch come and go Congress ceding power to the president, and the president aggressively taking it.

Or will Mr. Trump follow the example of an earlier disrupter in chief, President Andrew Jackson , whose portrait hangs in the Oval Office ? In 1832 , President Jackson famously ignored a Supreme Court ruling on Native American rights, and challenged the high court to enforce its decision. It could not. For now, Dr. Perry says, “We are still seeing checks in the district courts.” But soon, Mr. Trump could find himself in the same position as Jackson almost 200 years ago , facing a court order he has no intention of following..