“We are quickly approaching the ultimate inversion phase, a stage where the government can do it freely.” – Ain Rand
130 presidential orders within 100 days.
Sweeping power claimed under the names “security” and “efficiency.”
The president serves as a lawmaker, executor and judge.
There is no debate. No monitoring. No restrictions.
This is how the Constitution dies – not a coup, but a pen.
A single theory of enforcement is no longer a theory. It is the architecture of the dictatorship of movement.
If past presidents use executive orders, decrees, memorandums, declarations, national security orders, legislative signature statements to avoid Congress or avoid the rule of law, President Trump is the thinly covered excuse of the government by FIAT, using the government's “unified enforcement theory.”
In other words, these executive orders are the mechanisms in which we ultimately arrive at full-scale dictatorship.
The American founder established a system of checks and balance to prevent electricity concentration in a single branch. To this end, the Constitution establishes three separate equal branches of government. The legislative department that enacts laws. Administrative agencies that enforce the law. and the judicial division that interprets the law.
Yet despite this carefully balanced structure, we found ourselves in the place the founder warned us.
Despite Fiat's attempts to govern Trump, the president has no unilateral authority to operate outside of constitutional checks and balance.
This is what the government by Fiat looks like.
If Congress was once a national legal body, its role is now digging into by the flood of enforcement directives.
These executive orders are more than just administrative housekeeping. They represent fundamental changes in how power is exercised in America, bypassing democratic institutions in favour of unilateral orders. From trade and immigration to surveillance, speech regulation and police, the president has traditionally argued for the broader powers that exist in the legislative and judicial sectors.
Some orders invoke national security to disrupt the global market. Others attempt to override Congress' control over changing long-standing public protections through tariffs, fast truck arms exports, or regulatory rollbacks. Going further, we flirt with ideological loyalty tests for citizenship, chilling opposition from financial coercion, and expanding surveillance in ways that undermine legitimate processes and privacy.
But here these actions come to constitutional dangers. They redefine administrative authorities in ways that bypass the checks and balances engraved in the constitution. They centralize decision-making in the White House, stand by the legislative process, and give justice back to an afterthought, if not a complete obstacle.
Each of these directives were individually photographed and may appear technocratic or temporary. But together, they reveal the architecture of parallel legal orders. The president acts as a lawmaker, an enforcer, or a judge. It's not how the Constitutional Republic operates. That was the beginning of the dictatorship.
Each of these orders presents another violation of the constitutional levees, eroding the rule of law and centralizing unconfirmed powers of enforcement.
This is not simply a policy by aliases. It is the construction of a parallel legal order in which the President acts as a lawmaker, an enforcer and a judge, and the state of tyranny that our founders have sought to prevent.
This legal theory – the so-called unified executive – is not new. But under this administration it has moved to something much more dangerous: the president's unreliable fall doctrine.
What began as a constitutional interpretation of the president controlling the administration has transformed into an ideological justification for unidentified power.
Under this theory, all enforcement agencies, decisions, and even enforcement priorities erase the idea of ​​independent bureaucracy or impartial governance.
result? The Imperial presidency suffers from legalism.
Historically, all creeping dictatorships have followed this pattern. First, it undermines the legislative process. Next, we will centralize our enforcement power. Finally, conquer the judiciary or make it irrelevant. America follows its roadmap, one executive order at a time.
But the real danger of a single theory of enforcement is that it does not focus the power in the hands of the president, but by ignoring the rest of the constitution.
This is how tyranny arrives. It is not a constitutional amendment, but a series of administrative orders. There are legal memos, not military coups. It is not martial law, but bureaucratic obedience and public indifference.
Outside of constitutional checks and balance, the government controlled by Fiat is not a republic. It is a dictatorship of everything except the name.
If freedom is to survive this constitutional crisis, we must regain our role as the ultimate check on government power.
That means putting all departments of government accountable for the rule of law. That means that Congress requires that they do the job – not just as rubber stamps or partisan enablers, but as an equal branch with the courage to curb enforcement abuse.
That means that the courts insist on serving justice rather than politics.
And that means that no matter who sits in an oval office, they refuse to normalize the rules under the statute.
There is no freedom without limits on power.
There is no constitution if it can be ignored by those who swear to support it.
The presidency was never intended to be the throne. The Constitution was never intended to be an option. And people were never going to be silent.
As I reveal in my book Battlefield America: The War war in the American People , it's time to speak up in its fictional counterpart, Erik Blair Diaries.
Just as our innovative ancestors have learned the difficult methods, when freedom is lost, they rarely recover without a fight.
About John & Neesha Whitehead:
Constitutional lawyer and author John W. Whitehead is the founder and chairman of the Rutherford Institute. His latest book, The Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield America: The War on the American People, is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted via email protection. Nisha Whitehead is the executive director of the Rutherford Institute. Information about the Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
