When did everything become foreign policy?
Getting to the root of Trump's attempted constitutional workaround
Welcome back to the This Day newsletter. Each week, a member of our team gathers together bits of America’s past and attempts to find a throughline that might add a little understanding to our current moment.
Here’s what happened over the week ahead in American political history…
April 18
1906: The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire destroys much of the city
1918: Republican Leonidas C. Dyer of Missouri introduces a federal anti-lynching law. A similar bill would pass more than 100 years later
1942: The Doolittle Raid, the first air raid on the Japanese home islands during World War II, kills roughly 50 people
1983: A suicide bomber attacks the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon, killing 63 people, including 17 Americans
1996: Israel Defense Forces launch Operation Grapes of Wrath against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
April 19
1775: The Battles of Lexington and Concord mark the beginning of the American Revolutionary War
1897: The first Boston Marathon is held, with fifteen runners starting the race
1993: The Waco siege ends in a deadly fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Texas
1995: A truck bomb explodes outside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people
April 20
1775: The Siege of Boston begins during the American Revolutionary War
1861: Robert E. Lee resigns from the United States Army and assumes command of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia
1999: The Columbine High School massacre takes place in Colorado, resulting in the deaths of 15 people, including the two perpetrators
2010: An explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico leads to one of the largest environmental disasters in U.S. history
April 21
1789: John Adams is sworn in as the first Vice President of the United States
1836: The Battle of San Jacinto takes place, leading to the capture of Mexican General Antonio López de Santa Anna and Texas winning its independence from Mexico
1918: Manfred von Richthofen, the German World War I flying ace known as the "Red Baron," is shot down and killed in action
1927: The Mississippi River is beginning to breach levies, flowing over banks throughout the Mississippi delta
2016: Music legend Prince dies at the age of 57
April 22
1864: The U.S. Congress passes the Coinage Act of 1864, mandating that the inscription "In God We Trust" be placed on all coins minted as United States currency
1970: The first Earth Day is celebrated, marking the beginning of the modern environmental movement
1993: The Holocaust Memorial Museum is dedicated in Washington, D.C.
1994: Richard Nixon dies at the age of 81 after suffering a stroke
2000: In a controversial raid by U.S. immigration agents, six-year-old Elián González is seized from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida, to be returned to Cuba
April 23
1635: The first public school in the United States, Boston Latin School, is founded in Boston, Massachusetts
1789: President-elect George Washington moves into the first executive mansion, the Franklin House, in New York City.
1940: The Rhythm Club fire in Natchez, Mississippi, kills 198 people in one of the deadliest nightclub fires in U.S. history
1968: Students at Columbia University begin a week-long protest against the university's ties to the Vietnam War military draft and its plans to build a gymnasium in Morningside Park
2005: “Me at the zoo” is the first video uploaded to YouTube by co-founder Jawed Karim
In which we take the above collection of events and find themes, throughlines, rabbit holes and more.
Over and over again, President Donald Trump has used the same rationale while expanding his power and altering the country’s trajectory: POTUS’ supposedly exclusive control over matters of foreign affairs. Resetting America’s relationship with Ukraine clearly fell into that category. But a disruptive tariff regime was similarly defended as national security policy. And now, legally challenged deportations are being justified as the commander-in-chief’s prerogative.
“The federal courts have no authority to direct the executive branch to conduct foreign relations in a particular way,” Trump’s DOJ wrote in a recent legal filing. “That is the ‘exclusive power of the president as the sole organ of the federal government in the field of international relations.’”
Taking that argument to its extreme is to say that whenever another country is involved, the President has ultimate decision-making power.
It wasn’t always this way.
That “sole organ” reference comes from a 1936 Supreme Court case, which cited a Congressman’s speech in 1800, the intended meaning of which is still debated.
As recently as 2000, America’s role in the complex, nations-spanning legal saga of six-year-old Elián González was overseen by Attorney General Janet Reno rather than President Bill Clinton. Cuban expats argued that González ought not be reconnected with his father in Cuba, but U.S. courts decided that Juan Miguel González should have custody of his son. It was then the President’s role to carry out necessary actions.
“There was no alternative but to enforce the decision of the INS and a federal court,” Clinton said following the raid that might have cost Al Gore Florida—and the Presidency—months later. “The most important thing was to treat this in a lawful manner according to the established process.”
The contours of Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case clearly differ in significant and meaningful ways, but the White House’s new stance is still striking, to say the least.
The debate over where Presidents’ foreign policy powers end and domestic rights begin stretches all the way back to POTUS No. 1. Alexander Hamilton believed Presidents needed wide latitude in their peace-keeping role. James Madison, however, saw foreign deal-making as a clearly legislative rather than executive responsibility. He wrote about the possibility of Presidents having such power in 1793.
“In theory, this is an absurdity,” Madison argued, “in practice a tyranny.”
That unsettled debate is all the more important now, as the executive branch continues citing “international relations” in action after action altering American lives.
By invoking an 18th century wartime law, Trump made himself judge. By fighting a court order, his administration has asserted its authority as jury, too. All that’s left is executioner.
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