In recent weeks, Donald Trump has claimed authorship of Project 2025, a comprehensive plan to transform the federal government into a stronghold of conservative power. While Project 2025 aligns closely with his vision, Trump is right to say that it’s not entirely his own creation.
Project 2025 is not an isolated phenomenon or the product of a single administration. It’s the most recent manifestation of a decades-long legal campaign to expand executive power. Trump is more of a conduit than a visionary, the current figurehead of a movement that began long before him and will likely continue long after he’s gone.
The origins of this ideological movement can be traced back to Richard Nixon’s presidency, when conservative thinkers and operatives started developing a legal framework that would concentrate power in the executive branch at the expense of Congress, the courts, and the public. Their vision stemmed from what historian Arthur Schlesinger called the “imperial presidency.” Beginning with Harry Truman, five consecutive presidential administrations expanded executive authority. This escalation reached its peak under Nixon, whom Schlesinger observed “became the first to profess the monarchical doctrine that the sovereign can do no wrong.”
Nixon wielded his monarchical power both secretly—most famously during Watergate—and openly, claiming that Article II of the Constitution empowered him to withhold funds already allocated by Congress and to conduct widespread, warrantless wiretaps.
Nixon’s assertions of executive authority faced resistance; Congress and the Supreme Court blocked the impoundment and wiretaps, respectively. However, his claims also influenced a generation of Republicans to embrace an unchecked executive. Among those who came of age politically during the height of the imperial presidency were future Vice President Dick Cheney and future Chief Justice William Rehnquist. Both, as young White House staffers, sought to institutionalize Nixon’s vision of virtually unlimited presidential power.
Rehnquist, appointed to the Supreme Court by Nixon in 1971, also emerged as a pivotal figure in the effort to reclaim expansive executive power. His thinking and advocacy shaped a generation of conservative lawyers, including future Chief Justice John Roberts. While clerking for Rehnquist in 1981, Roberts witnessed the Justice advocate for a broad interpretation of executive power in the case of .
Roberts would join the Reagan Administration after his clerkship, and it was in Reagan’s Department of Justice, under Attorney General Edwin Meese, where the quest for a more powerful presidency found renewed momentum.
As Attorney General, Meese also focused on appointing conservative judges with experience in Republican administrations. Consequently, in 1986, Reagan promoted Rehnquist to be chief justice and added Scalia, whose experiences had shaped his belief in expansive presidential authority, to the Court. Other young conservative lawyers in the Reagan administration—including future Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—absorbed Meese’s ideas about expansive executive power before later Republican presidents appointed them as federal judges.
It wasn’t until the George W. Bush Administration, during which Cheney served as Vice President, that the full restoration of the imperial presidency materialized. Through the aggressive use of military force, indefinite detentions, and invasive surveillance, the vision of an unrestrained presidency—first articulated in the Nixon era and refined during Reagan’s tenure—gained new force.
These ideas now shape the thinking of the federal courts, especially the Supreme Court. Its conservative supermajority includes Roberts, Thomas, and Alito, along with Brett Kavanaugh — who worked for Bush and has named Rehnquist as his “first judicial hero” — and Neil Gorsuch, who also worked for Bush.
The culmination of their decades-long push for greater executive power came in July when they — joined in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the Court’s remaining Republican appointee — ruled that presidents had broad immunity from criminal prosecution for “official acts.” This ruling solidified the imperial presidency.
Roberts’ opinion notably omitted any discussion of Nixon’s crimes, yet its underlying legal rationale echoed Nixon’s infamous claim that “when the President does it, that means it is not illegal.” This legal framework would have been inconceivable in 1974 to all but a handful of conservative ideologues disillusioned by Nixon’s resignation. But now it’s embedded in constitutional law.
The relentless rise of expansive notions of executive power has begun to erode the democratic principles that Nixon’s resignation was thought to uphold. Project 2025 represents the latest dark legacy of this ideological lineage — one that transcends any individual. It is the product of a patient, persistent movement that has outlasted presidencies and weathered political storms.
The next chapter of this concerning democratic decline will unfold this fall. Candidate Trump, entangled in legal trouble, seeks refuge in the imperial presidency. “Article II, where I have the right to do whatever I want as president,” he says. Project 2025 provides a blueprint for these aspirations; a Supreme Court that he reshaped is fully supportive. The decision rests with the voters.
Duncan Hosie is a legal scholar and the Steven Polan fellow in constitutional law & history at the Brennan Center of the NYU School of Law.
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