Trump’s first year in his second term raises fears of an expanding presidency: political analyst

Toronto Metropolitan University's Rob Goodman speaks about capabilities U.S. President Donald Trump has in his second term that the founders didn't envision.

One year into U.S. President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the U.S. political system is facing mounting strain as the leader tests the limits of executive power, according to an political analyst.

New tariffs on Canadian goods, repeated threats to annex Canada as “51st state,” and an increasingly confrontational stance toward long-standing alliances like NATO have marked a dramatic departure from past norms.

As the Trump administration looks ahead to the next three years, a political analyst warns that significant changes may still be to come.

Rob Goodman, an associate professor of politics and public administration at Toronto Metropolitan University, told CTV’s Your Morning Tuesday that in his first presidency, Trump was constrained by establishment figures within his administration and military. That is no longer the case, Goodman explained.

“This time, he has purged the circle of people around him. He’s purged the military. He’s purged the bureaucracy,” he said. “He is surrounded by a much tighter circle of white nationalists, people like Stephen Miller, who are dictating the policy of this administration towards much more openly white nationalist ideological ends.”

Goodman argues the administration is now far more prepared to enact a sweeping ideological agenda, including proposals outlined in the controversial “Project 2025,” framework, aimed at combining executive power and reshaping federal institutions.

Goodman said that consolidation has raised alarms about the erosion of America’s traditional system of checks and balance - a system designed to prevent any one branch of government from holding unchecked authority.

“The U.S. political system is in crisis right now. We’ve seen the collapse of Congress as sort of an independent check on the executive, the consolidation of an executive that claims unlimited power over federal agencies and now under President Trump, even unlimited power to impose tariffs, to control spending unilaterally,” Goodman explained.

“All sorts of things that the founders identified as tyranny...that the Constitution is supposed to guard against,” he added.

In October, the U.S. Congress’ inability to agree on federal funding triggered one of the longest government shutdowns in recent history. The deadlock saw the Senate and House entrenched in partisan disputes over the healthcare funding and spending levels.

This left hundreds of thousands of federal workers furloughed and basic services were halted while lawmakers struggled to find common ground.

As outlined in Trump’s first fiscal 2026 budget proposal, the plan calls for steep cuts including about $163 billion in non-defence discretionary spending and a 7 per cent overall reduction from 2025 levels - while boosting funding for defence and homeland security and freezing pay for civilian federal workers.

At the same time, Goodman said the Supreme Court has played a key role in enabling this shift. With a conservative majority - including several justices appointed by Trump - the court has issued rulings that expand presidential authority, clearing the way for unilateral action.

“What we see is a system that is still by the letter of the law but in terms of actual practice it is much more like an authoritarian system, like one man, personalist rule. That’s very frightening,” he said.

A movement that may outlast Trump

Trump’s repeated use of the emergency declarations has become a hallmark of his presidency, allowing him to push through policies that might overwise face legal or political roadblocks, Goodman said.

According to an Associated Press analysis, 30 of Trump’s 150 executive orders have cited some kind of emergency power or authority, a rate that far outpaces his recent predecessors.

Trump has imposed executive orders under the emergency powers from punishing tariffs to deploying troops to the border to sidelining environmental regulations.

“That is consistently how fascism work,” he said. “This fascism works by putting society into a state of constant crisis, constant panic, constant emergency, in which it seems natural to want to consolidate under the leader, which it seems natural to want to purge your society of outsiders and band together against foreign enemies, whoever they might be.

Goodman said the situation unfolding in Minneapolis highlights the sharp disconnect between Trump’s administration’s emergency rhetoric and public response. He described federal actions there - including aggressive enforcement measures and the threat of military involvements - as part of what he called a “racialized campaign of terror,” targeting people of colour.

Goodman said Trump continues to benefit from a solid base of support for far-right policies noting that such movements have long existed in American history.

Still, he argues the broader pictures is less favourable for Trump, pointing to low overall approval ratings and unpopularity around immigration.

According to a January AP-NORC poll, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults approve of his performance on immigration, down from about half of Americans toward the beginning of his first term.

“He is less popular at this point in his term than Obama was than Bush was at similar points in their terms, and they were all wiped out in midterms,” Goodman pointed out.

Looking further ahead, Goodman draws parellels to personalist and charismatic regimes in Latin America and Europe, where those movements often survive their leaders through successors who attempt to “inherit the mantle.”

“I don’t think it’s going to expire with Trump. I think it’s going to be a structural feature of American politics, unless there are really serious constitutional reforms that attack the basis of far-right power and that attack the roots of this constitutional crisis,” Goodman said.

With files from The Associated Press