During President Donald Trump’s first term, Democrats and members of the media sounded the alarm about a “constitutional crisis,” a term being used today to describe Trump’s disagreement with the legal challenges to some of his executive orders.
Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi both agreed in 2019 that the U.S. was in a constitutional crisis after the House voted to hold former Attorney General Bill Bar in contempt for defying a subpoena for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s unredacted Russia report and underlying documents.
“We’ve talked for a long time about approaching a constitutional crisis. We are now in it,” Nadler said at the time. “They are uniformly rejecting subpoenas from Congress. This means that they have decided to oppose the role of Congress as a coequal branch of government representing the American people.”
Pelosi said at the time, “This administration wants to have a constitutional crisis because they do not respect the oath of office that they take.”
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) speaks during a hearing on Capitol Hill on November 20, 2024 in Washington, DC. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra spoke on oversight at HHS’s Refugee Resettlement Office. (Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images))
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Former CNN host Don Lemon agreed, telling his viewers in 2019, “Ever wonder what a constitutional crisis looks like? Well, open your eyes.”
“The President of the United States is just blowing right through our system of checks and balances, the very thing that is supposed to keep our Congress, the judiciary, and the executive branch working, which means our country working,” he added.
Concerns of a constitutional crisis came again this week as Trump and members of his administration expressed disagreement with several legal challenges to his executive orders, as Democrats continue to push back against the administration’s efforts with the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said during an interview with NPR earlier this month that there was a constitutional crisis because of Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts with DOGE, specifically in scaling back USAID.
U.S. President Donald Trump signs a series of executive orders in the Oval Office at the White House on February 10, 2025 in Washington, DC. ((Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images))
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“So the president and his billionaire advisers are literally making things up out of thin air because they want to seize control of federal government spending so that they can reward their friends and Elon Musk’s friends and punish their enemies so as to suppress political dissent and destroy democracy in this country. That’s why this is a constitutional crisis,” he said.
The New York Times published a report on Monday, citing scholars, who said the president’s early actions have put the U.S. in a constitutional crisis.
NPR also cited scholars who said they saw warning signs of a constitutional crisis, pointing to Vice President JD Vance’s reaction to a judge’s orders that the administration had to unfreeze federal funding. Though, according to the report, the U.S. was not at a full blown crisis yet.
President Donald Trump sits down with Fox News anchor Bret Baier for an interview. (Fox News / Special Report)
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“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted to social media.
Several of the Trump administration’s actions, such as the federal funding freeze and the barring of DOGE’s access to personal data, have been challenged by Democratic attorneys general.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins said on Monday during her show, “We are three weeks into the second Trump presidency. Three weeks. And tonight, there are warnings that the U.S. is dangerously close to a constitutional crisis.”
Sen. Andy Kim, D-NJ., and Rep. Pramila Jayapal similarly warned of an impending crisis.
WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 31: U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) arrives for a House Democrat caucus meeting at the U.S. Capitol on May 31, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
“I’ve worked in government. I’ve worked through multiple government shutdowns. I would be the last person who would want to get to that stage, but we are at a point where we are basically on the cusp of a constitutional crisis,” Kim said during NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “Seeing this administration taking steps that are so clearly illegal.”
Jayapal pointed to Vance’s statement as well in her warning.
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Members of the media also sounded the alarm about a looming constitutional crisis in October 2019 with impeachment efforts against Donald Trump.
A CNN analysis determined that the Trump’s response to the inquiry was creating a constitutional crisis.
A column in Politico, written by Renato Mariotti, argued that while the term was thrown around often throughout Trump’s presidency, the impeachment example actually created a constitutional crisis.
“But if you look closer at Trump’s tweets and a subsequent letter from the White House to Congress, you’ll see why Tuesday will go down as the day Trump finally provoked an actual constitutional crisis,” he wrote at the time.
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