Legal prohibitions are, but legal powers are different.
It's illegal for an insurrectionist to be President, and it's illegal for federal agents to shoot a subdued man ten times in the back, but that clearly doesn't stop it from happening.
On the other hand, consider an attempt to dictate to states how they should manage their voter rolls. Trump has tried this without success. The problem isn't that it's illegal to do this, although it obviously is. It didn't work because that power doesn't exist in the first place. He can declare that states must do this or that, but his words have no more effect than if I had said them.
Of course there are ways around this. He could cut off funding, send in goons to try to arrest officials, or send in the tanks. But this is much more difficult and makes it much more likely that he'll fail.
Imagine the situation if we didn't have a law that allowed the President to declare a national emergency and set tariffs at will. Right now, Trump can say "100% tariffs on Elbonia" and that automatically happens. Without that law, he could still say that, but it wouldn't do anything. The people who would actually enforce and collect those tariffs just wouldn't do it. We saw this happen with other tax changes like no taxes on tips. Trump couldn't just declare it and make it happen, he had to actually negotiate with Congress, and they could have blocked it if they wanted to.
Rules that say "You can't do X" are easily ignored. But structures that make it so that control is not granted in the first place are a lot harder to overcome. Not impossible, certainly, but much more difficult, and that's very much worthwhile.
I think Trump and his backers have enough financial and military muscle to get done what they want done. He'll surely have the occasional setback but the course seems pretty steady so far.
It's illegal for an insurrectionist to be President, and it's illegal for federal agents to shoot a subdued man ten times in the back, but that clearly doesn't stop it from happening.
On the other hand, consider an attempt to dictate to states how they should manage their voter rolls. Trump has tried this without success. The problem isn't that it's illegal to do this, although it obviously is. It didn't work because that power doesn't exist in the first place. He can declare that states must do this or that, but his words have no more effect than if I had said them.
Of course there are ways around this. He could cut off funding, send in goons to try to arrest officials, or send in the tanks. But this is much more difficult and makes it much more likely that he'll fail.
Imagine the situation if we didn't have a law that allowed the President to declare a national emergency and set tariffs at will. Right now, Trump can say "100% tariffs on Elbonia" and that automatically happens. Without that law, he could still say that, but it wouldn't do anything. The people who would actually enforce and collect those tariffs just wouldn't do it. We saw this happen with other tax changes like no taxes on tips. Trump couldn't just declare it and make it happen, he had to actually negotiate with Congress, and they could have blocked it if they wanted to.
Rules that say "You can't do X" are easily ignored. But structures that make it so that control is not granted in the first place are a lot harder to overcome. Not impossible, certainly, but much more difficult, and that's very much worthwhile.