We now turn to our series on democracy, where we hear a range of perspectives on how government should function, what's led to this moment in American history, and where the country goes next.

Tonight we'll focus on President Trump's expansive view of presidential authority and efforts to claim sweeping powers over the executive branch, including independent federal agencies.

I recently sat down with Joelle Alisaille,

Professor of Law and Director of the Center for the Constitution

and the Catholic intellectual tradition at the Catholic University

for his take on this moment.

Professor Alisaia, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for having me. So in the first two and a half months of this Trump presidency,

the president has signed more than 100 executive orders, right? More than any president in modern

history, in American history at this point in their presidency. Those executive orders have

abolished federal agencies. They've tried to freeze

billions in aid. They fired masses of federal workers. As you know, some legal experts say

they're alarmed, that this is testing the bounds of presidential powers. How do you look at this?

I think that President Trump has aggressively used executive power, but I don't think that's actually

unusual in our history.

So if you think about Franklin Roosevelt, for example, a very aggressive use of executive power

and a federal power in general, and he's now considered one of our greatest presidents.

So I think that we have to keep in historical context that the executive has enormous power under the Constitution.

And to the extent that the president uses that power to try to achieve policy outcomes,

that doesn't make him very different from a lot of his predecessors.

I do think that one thing that is notable about President Trump is his attempt to use executive power

to reshape

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