When Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the Constitutional Convention adjourned from Independence Hall on Sep. 17, 1787, they walked out having created the document that, once ratified, would govern the nation for centuries to come. The summer had been a long one, and it was not always certain that the delegates’ better angels would prevail. Among the many prescient provisions that emerged, one of the key features of the new Constitution, as outlined by James Madison in Federalist 51, was a robust system of checks and balances between three distinct branches of government.
The foundational concept of checks and balances has been debated time and again throughout American history, especially as the executive branch and the powerful personalities that have occupied its highest office have worked to expand the unilateral authority of the office. Today, young Americans are wrestling with the same age-old question: Is the American president too powerful?
What exactly does a doctrine of “energy in the executive” allow a president to do without approval from Congress or an expressed interpretation of the law from the Supreme Court? When approached through a historical lens, data on young Americans’ perception of executive power from the Spring 2026 Harvard Youth Poll highlights a growing need for renewed discourse surrounding the powers, responsibilities, and, most importantly, constraints we the people place on our highest elected official.
Executive Action in Historical Perspective
Until the turn of the twentieth century, most expansions of presidential power were owed to uniquely powerful figures or unusual circumstances. Andrew Jackson, for example, declined to enforce a judgment handed down from the Supreme Court, and Abraham Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus — protection from unlawful detentions — during the Civil War.
Theodore Roosevelt believed it was the executive’s responsibility, as a “steward of the people,” to expand the powers of the office, primarily by using the bully pulpit to do anything necessary to meet the needs of the nation. Anything necessary, that is, so long as those actions were not expressly outlawed by the Constitution or through an act of Congress.
Since Roosevelt took office, the executive branch has become the focal point of American politics, with presidential powers increasing drastically since the early 1900s. Almost every President since then, from Taft to Biden, has set his own agenda and pushed the boundaries of the roles and responsibilities the executive branch can and should fill.
Despite this storied history, no recent president has made as much use of emergency powers, especially during peacetime, as Trump in his second administration. At the same time, Trump’s brand and penchant for attacking political opponents and minority groups alike have been correlated with increased hate speech and violence towards those groups.
These two facts are aberrations in American politics, with Trump himself being a dark horse candidate in 2016 and wielding not unprecedented power over the Republican Party, but unwieldy power. Unlike past presidents, Trump appears to hold no one deeply held set of beliefs, according to an interview in NPR with one GOP strategist who worked for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and former House Speaker John Boehner. The second Trump administration has largely been characterized by its tendency to push the boundaries of unilateral executive action, especially through emergency channels often reserved for exceptional crises. Young Americans are taking notice and adapting, although not in the ways one might expect.
Executive Action Today: Young Americans Weigh In
In the Harvard Youth Poll this spring, a majority of young Americans were opposed to four executive actions that the current administration could take: taking action without approval from Congress (53%), ignoring or defying court orders (62%), overriding decisions made by state and local authorities (51%), and revoking a person’s citizenship or legal status (56%). When broken down by gender, party, and other demographics, these numbers remained largely consistent with what someone familiar with recent polling surrounding the 2024 election might expect. For example, a larger share of those who identified with the Republican Party or voted for Trump found these measures acceptable. Moreover, young men were more likely to support Trump in 2024 than young women, and that trend follows here with levels of support for executive measures.
With the breakdown of responses to these executive actions by age subgroup, however, a concerning pattern comes to light.
Compared to the slightly older group of Americans ages 25-29, adults aged 24 or younger were ten percentage points less likely to find taking action without Congressional approval unacceptable (49%), nine percentage points less likely to find ignoring or defying court orders unacceptable (58%), seven percentage points less likely to find overriding decisions made by state and local authorities unacceptable (48%), and nine percentage points less likely to find revoking a person’s citizenship or legal status unacceptable (52%). These results suggest that younger Americans are more likely to find authoritarian tendencies in the presidency palatable, a concerning trend given the history of executive power expansion in the past century and the current administration’s aggressive approach to executive function.
One possible explanation for this change is the shift in expectations of government roles, given that President Trump has dominated American politics during a majority of the younger generation’s formative years. Looking no further than the extreme example of modern-day Russia, we can see the dangers of a rising generation for whom an unprecedentedly powerful executive is the norm. In a recent youth survey conducted in Russia, researchers found that the majority of young Russians were apolitical, and that less than half saw a democratic system as the preferred form of governance, with an equal number viewing an authoritarian regime as acceptable or simply not thinking it mattered.
These voters have never known anything but Putin’s dominance of Russian politics, and it has likely informed their feelings toward politics and their ability to effect change, as well as their understanding of how a political system can — and more importantly, should — operate. Looking back at the U.S., this latter sentiment is especially pronounced among the youngest Americans surveyed in the Spring 2026 youth poll, who appear more accepting of the authoritarian tendencies often associated with Trump and his supporters. When Trump first ran for office in 2016, the oldest in this age group, 24-year-olds, would have been in their first year of high school. The youngest were elementary schoolers.
Additionally, this softer stance on authoritarian policies comes alongside a minimal difference in trust in the office of the president across age groups. Across the two age groups in the polling data, the difference in the number of respondents who trust the president all or most of the time was only two percentage points. This further implies that the decrease in rejection of unilateral executive action, especially as it defies the Constitution and acts of Congress, does not stem from an increased trust in the office of the president. Instead, it originates from a new understanding of what the accepted and actual capabilities of the executive branch are.
That young Americans are becoming less wary of authoritarian policies and executive overreach is even more concerning, given that it is accompanied by disengagement from politics and the participatory democratic system. According to the same recent Harvard Youth Poll, 22% of young Americans believe politics is not relevant to their lives at the moment, and nearly one in four (24%) young Americans “strongly agree” that “people like me” do not have any say in government.
These trends come alongside troubling actions from the current administration, including meddling in the operation of independent news stations and companies, taking over respected cultural institutions like the formerly named John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and attacking private universities and pillars of education like Harvard. Each of these actions has the potential to help normalize authoritarian policies in the United States as autonomous institutions are stripped of crucial rights and coerced into lock-step with this or future administrations.
America’s Youth and the Future of the Executive
Previous eras of unilateral executive power increases have lasted in some cases for more than a decade, with President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s tenure during the Great Depression and Second World War serving as a prime example, but these periods have historically been followed by a reassertion of power by Congress and the Supreme Court. Trump and his administration have thus far been given a wide degree of autonomy, with the most recent example being the refusal of Republicans in Congress to pass an act limiting the administration’s capacity to direct further action against Iran.
As Benjamin Franklin was leaving Independence Hall those many summers ago, a prominent Philadelphia socialite, Elizabeth Willing Powell, stopped him to ask a question: “Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” Franklin famously replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Maintaining a republic driven by the will of the people requires vigilance, active engagement, and a belief in the power of a nation of people to faithfully elect those who represent their interests and care about their well-being.
This nation has reached a critical juncture, and refusal by Congress and other government institutions to take clearer action against an administration working to “dismantl[e] democracy at unprecedented speed,” may lead to more than just economic and democratic decline in the short term. It may also push a generation of Americans to either believe that authoritarian tendencies are compatible with representative democracy or think that their voices don’t matter.
As they come of age, young Americans have access to the necessary tools — such as the right to vote and access to more information than ever before — to keep the great American experiment alive for another 250 years, but have they been taught how to use them? In the years to come, educators, policymakers, and all Americans alike must recognize that the democratic values of a balanced and limited government must be thoughtfully and proactively passed down through each generation. Governance of this nation is not set in stone, and a deeper understanding of our civic history and the responsibilities — not just rights — of every coming-of-age American is vital to keeping the American experiment alive and well for another 250 years. America’s youth are being handed the keys to a republic, but only time will tell if they can keep it.
