Since returning to the White House a year ago, President Trump has stretched taut the boundaries of executive power in ways both petty and consequential. Tacking his name onto the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., is only one of many small actions that he has taken to assert his authority, even though only Congress can legally change the name of the center. But Trump has also bypassed the body in so many other, far more significant ways: unilaterally imposing tariffs, seizing the president of Venezuela, and removing various independent officials from their congressionally approved posts.

These actions have largely gone unchallenged—and at times are even encouraged—by the Republican majority in Congress. That’s partly due to the GOP’s mostly lockstep fealty to Trump. But this is also hardly the first time a president in the modern era has pushed to expand his power, in the process straining constitutional limits and flouting the role of Congress. Indeed, Trump himself did so during his first term, joining his fellow twenty-first-century presidents in straining the bounds of executive action. But he has become bolder in his second term, going much further than his predecessors with his unprecedented and aggressive assertion of executive power. And Congress is allowing it.

The relative impotence of the 119th Congress could be seen as the continuation of a decades-long trend, one defined by the strengthening of the modern presidency and heightened partisanship. These dynamics have enabled a weak legislature—one that may struggle to re assert its constitutional mandate as a coequal branch of the government. Generally, when Congress cedes ground to the executive branch, it rarely gains it back.

“It’s not just a weak Congress. We’ve had lots of weak Congresses,” said Joanne Freeman, a history professor at Yale University. “It’s a stagnant Congress. It’s a Congress that has willingly given up its power to an executive that wants to get as much power as it could get.”

Political polarization since the 1990s has made it increasingly difficult for Congress to govern. When one party controls both the White House and Congress, lawmakers are less inclined to push back against any seizure of power by the president. In the past decade in particular, Congress has been characterized by exceedingly narrow majorities, making it difficult for the party in power to pass major legislation without employing arcane procedural maneuvers. The more lawmakers accept a president’s seizure of power for actions that merit their approval, the harder it will be to challenge him when he does something they don’t like.

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