Welcome to the beat, everyone. I'm Ari Melburgh, and right now we begin with a special report on presidential power.

Its limits as Donald Trump tests the executive branch's power going farther than his own controversial first term.

Indeed, he harkens back to presidents who had court clashes over bigger things like wartime powers or when the president may act alone.

What wartime leaders,

like Roosevelt and Truman, viewed as a last resort, though, carefully weighed with their experts, with their lawyers and the nonpartisan civil service that they respected, well, in

contrast to that, President Trump has just been rushing towards a first plan without any of those efforts to push these powers. Sometimes

even when flatly banned by the Constitution, sometimes in ways that his own officials have said

is reckless, and when warned by his own aides that he could still lose, and even when it invites

a string of losses that he's been facing in these first seven weeks, including new setbacks and losses in court

this week alone. We can show you that on our tracker, not a single win this week, and largely

a losing record over the past several weeks. This is all driven by a strategy that you might call Sharpie first. Sign it and see what

you can get away with. And that's actually partly different from Trump's first term when he pushed

some orders that were knocked down in the courts. You might remember that. But I want to be clear,

and I'm going to walk this through with you on our special report right now.

Many things that he did do also followed past norms. Simple example, exit a climate accord.

Presidents could do that, just as Biden, after his election, rejoined that same climate accord.

That's valid. But this term, President Trump has picked a different strategy. For starters,

there's the volume you might have noticed, doubling the orders from his first term. He's rushed out an unusually

high, 89 executive orders, signing more in the first 10 days than any recent president did in their first

hundred days.

President Trump has reshaped the government with a flurry of executive orders.

All we have to do is flood the zone.

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