What makes this even more puzzling is his use of constitutional challenges in his signing statements. What past research on the use of the constitutional signing statement (as opposed to the rhetorical signing statement) is the use of constitutional challenges normally go up when:
* Presidents face divided government, and in particular polarized divided government;
* Presidents lose support among the public;
*Presidents who are later in their terms--and in particular in the second term;
* Presidents who are facing an election--midterm or presidential
President Trump of course came into office with a united government that seemingly was in agreement on getting big things done: ending Obamacare, tax reform, immigration reform (if building a wall is reform), and so forth. Working against Trump of course is losing the popular vote after a very contentious election (even more so than the 2000 election) and staying stuck in neutral as a result of some spectacular fumbles in getting their agenda moving. Because of this, President Trump has blown his honeymoon, and now faces unusually low public approval numbers so soon in a new presidency and the loss of support among co-partisans in Congress.
This of course explains why President Trump has preferred unilateralism, which does not make him different from his predecessors. A presidency boxed in by a hostile public, Congress, and press will see unilateralism over the normal procedures of governing. On top of this is this president's thin experience with politics and his life as a CEO who is used to getting his way.
If we compare President Trump with President Bush--two presidents who came to office under comparable periods--we see that President Bush ended up issuing 24 bill signing statements in 2001, 11 that contained constitutional challenges with a total of 19 challenges. His first constitutional signing statement came in March 2001, with the rest coming as the rush of spending bills came to the White House in late summer/fall. President Trump has now issued three signing statements--all containing constitutional challenges. His first signing statement, issued in May, contained more than 89 separate and distinct challenges. His second signing statement, issued in June, contained one. And now this third statement, issued today, August 2, contains at least 12 challenges, though some are written using such vague language that it is not clear whether or not it is really a challenge. Given that the administration decided to dedicate a paragraph--vague or not--I decided to believe they are sincere in pushing back against congressional interference mostly in the foreign policy powers of the president.
A second bonus is the administration issued two signing statements to the same bill--something previous presidents have done--in order to obscure the constitutional challenges contained in the constitutional signing statement. In the signing statement picked up by many reporters, they refer to "Statement by President Donald J. Trump on Signing the 'Countering America's Adversaries through Sanctions Act.'" Their is a second signing statement that is simply titled: "Statement by President Donald J. Trump on the Signing of H.R. 3364." Thus if you are under deadline, or later on, doing research on the sanctions bill, your search is more likely to hit the first statement and not the second.
The two signing statements are also interesting in their style when compared to previous presidents. First, the public statement that leaves out the constitutional challenges. This particular signing statement reflects the president's personal style more than I have seen in any previous public statement. In all previous rhetorical statements, while the president would often use the word "I", reading the statement gave you the impression that a crew of staff wrote it. In President Trump's statement, he brings up a totally separate bill and political fight and mentions it in this statement. Referencing the failed Senate health care bill, Trump writes:
Still, the bill remains seriously flawed – particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate. Congress could not even negotiate a healthcare bill after seven years of talking...Wow!
It would not be typical for a president to mention a failed political fight unless it was a fight that led to the passage of the bill he is signing. Furthermore, the President also brings up a political fight that underscores the failure of his party to pass a bill, which does nothing to help his relationship with Senate Republicans.
And finally, at the end of the statement, it contains a paragraph that does nothing but fluff the ego of the president, another thing that you would not normally see in a signing statement. President Trump writes:
I built a truly great company worth many billions of dollars. That is a big part of the reason I was elected. As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.
To me, this either suggests that his staff are going overboard to flatter the president, or more likely, the president took an interest in reviewing, and possibly editorializing, this statement.
His constitutional signing statement--simply referred to the bill number--is boilerplate for the type of challenges you would normally see from the Office of Legal Counsel's review and remarks on the bill. The tipoff is the use of Supreme Court opinions to bolster the challenges. For instance, President Trump objects to sections 253 and 257 because it interferes with the president's ability to recognize foreign governments in line with the Supreme Court opinion Zivotofsky v Kerry (the case regarding the recognition of Jerusalem as part of Israel). In a separate challenge to the use of the legislative veto, the administration refers to the Supreme Court case INS v Chadha, which held that the legislative veto violated the Presentments Clause of the Constitution. Even though the case was decided early in the Reagan administration, the Congress continues to use the device and president's continue to object, and Trump is no different. In the statement, after explaining that section 216 contains an unconstitutional legislative veto, his statement reads: "I nevertheless expect to honor the bill's extended waiting periods to ensure that the Congress will have a full opportunity to avail itself of the bill's review procedures." Why accept something the Supreme Court has held is unconstitutional? Because back in the Reagan administration, when they tried to refuse recognition of the legislative veto, congressional committees began cutting appropriations to key departments and agencies until the administration complied, as has been the case with every administration that tried to test the legislative veto.
