This is In Conversation from Apple News.

I'm Shemita Dasu.

Today, how much power can a U.S. president have?

We are now one month into President Trump's second term, and he's signed at least 70 executive orders.

His first few weeks back in office have been marked by big moves made quickly, from pardoning 1,500 January 6th rioters to attempting to stop all foreign aid, to mass firings and buyouts to shrink the number of federal employees. Many of the administration's actions have been

challenged in court as illegal or unconstitutional, and judges have ordered some policies

paused while lawsuits work their way through the courts. The question at the heart of almost all

these cases is, does a president have the power to do this? Should they?

Executive power has been expanding over recent decades, but what Trump has really attempted

to do in the last few weeks is push things much further. That's Ancush Kadori, a senior writer with Politico

magazine, and a former federal prosecutor. Ancush says the ways in which Trump is testing the

boundaries of executive power could fundamentally reshape the office of the presidency and its

balance with Congress and the federal courts. Trump is really trying to take all of this to sort of a new level. And I think also what is

quite distinctive is he's moving on multiple constitutional fronts at the same time.

I sat down with Ancosh earlier this week to ask him how we have watched the power of the

executive branch expand over time and what makes Trump an outlier.

But I started by asking him to address a question that Trump's critics are asking, which is,

are we in a constitutional crisis?

I mean just level set by saying legal scholars generally define a constitutional crisis to refer to a conflict between the branches, two branches of government that cannot be resolved through normal legal processes.

Technically, we are not there yet if you hold that definition.

We would be reaching a constitutional crisis if Trump said he was going to defy court orders or even the Supreme Court order, orders down the line.

But he, in recent weeks, he and his administration officials have actually been seeming to go to pains to say that they will abide by the

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