The Court held (6–3) that the President cannot use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as a blank check to impose broad tariffs—because tariffs are not just “regulation,” they are revenue power, and in our system that power lives in Congress, Article 1.
That matters for the obvious policy reasons (trade, prices, retaliation, chaos). But the deeper point is structural: constitutional government is friction. It is the deliberate insertion of delay, veto points, and shared authority—because concentration of power is not “efficiency,” it’s a moral hazard.
If you’ve read my recent posts, you know I keep coming back to the same systems diagnosis: when friction is removed, cost becomes easy to hide, responsibility becomes easy to displace, and legibility collapses. That’s the “dark apex” dynamic—authority curving inward while consequences curve outward. The Constitution is designed to prevent that curvature from becoming a permanent feature of American life. It does this not by assuming leaders will be good, but by assuming they will be tempted.
And here’s the line I can’t avoid as someone who grew up hearing “conservative” used to mean restraint: executive overreach is the exact opposite of conservatism as I learned it. Conservatism was supposed to distrust concentrated power. It was supposed to prefer process over impulse, limits over charisma, Congress over “one person who can fix it.”
“Constitutional restraint” isn’t a branding choice. Restraint is only real when it binds you when it’s inconvenient. It’s easy to praise limits on power when you aren’t holding the lever. The test is whether you accept constraints when you want speed, leverage, domination, and unilateral action.
So when people ask what it means to “believe in the Constitution,” I don’t think it means treating it as sacred parchment. It means a commitment to the idea that no political outcome is worth dissolving separation of powers to obtain it. It means accepting that there are ends you may desire—economic ends, security ends, diplomatic ends—that you still cannot pursue by smuggling legislative authority through emergency language.
And yes: this is also a mirror held up to the public. We keep rewarding executive maximalism because it feels satisfying in the short term. We like the fantasy that a single leader can fix things by force of will. But that fantasy is exactly how republics rot: not by one dramatic coup, but by citizens slowly learning to prefer power that “works” over power that is accountable. In biblical terms, that’s the whole point of restraint: not because people are uniquely evil, but because all of us are tempted—“the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”—by power that is innately corruptive.
The Constitution doesn’t promise government will be fast. It promises government will be bounded. If we still want that bargain, today is a good day to say it out loud: restraint isn’t weakness. It’s the price of legitimacy.
That matters for the obvious policy reasons (trade, prices, retaliation, chaos). But the deeper point is structural: constitutional government is friction. It is the deliberate insertion of delay, veto points, and shared authority—because concentration of power is not “efficiency,” it’s a moral hazard.
If you’ve read my recent posts, you know I keep coming back to the same systems diagnosis: when friction is removed, cost becomes easy to hide, responsibility becomes easy to displace, and legibility collapses. That’s the “dark apex” dynamic—authority curving inward while consequences curve outward. The Constitution is designed to prevent that curvature from becoming a permanent feature of American life. It does this not by assuming leaders will be good, but by assuming they will be tempted.
And here’s the line I can’t avoid as someone who grew up hearing “conservative” used to mean restraint: executive overreach is the exact opposite of conservatism as I learned it. Conservatism was supposed to distrust concentrated power. It was supposed to prefer process over impulse, limits over charisma, Congress over “one person who can fix it.”
“Constitutional restraint” isn’t a branding choice. Restraint is only real when it binds you when it’s inconvenient. It’s easy to praise limits on power when you aren’t holding the lever. The test is whether you accept constraints when you want speed, leverage, domination, and unilateral action.
So when people ask what it means to “believe in the Constitution,” I don’t think it means treating it as sacred parchment. It means a commitment to the idea that no political outcome is worth dissolving separation of powers to obtain it. It means accepting that there are ends you may desire—economic ends, security ends, diplomatic ends—that you still cannot pursue by smuggling legislative authority through emergency language.
And yes: this is also a mirror held up to the public. We keep rewarding executive maximalism because it feels satisfying in the short term. We like the fantasy that a single leader can fix things by force of will. But that fantasy is exactly how republics rot: not by one dramatic coup, but by citizens slowly learning to prefer power that “works” over power that is accountable. In biblical terms, that’s the whole point of restraint: not because people are uniquely evil, but because all of us are tempted—“the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”—by power that is innately corruptive.
The Constitution doesn’t promise government will be fast. It promises government will be bounded. If we still want that bargain, today is a good day to say it out loud: restraint isn’t weakness. It’s the price of legitimacy.
