Opinion: Donald Trump and the mystery of the disappearing checks and balances

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

80% : To which Trump whisperer Steve Bannon, fresh out of prison for contempt of Congress, responded on his podcast: "Fabulous!"Look for Trump to issue executive orders and seek legislation from Congress to do much that's in Project 2025: Blow up the civil service and reestablish a 19th-century-style spoils system.
62% : Dubbed MAGA Mike by approving right-wingers when he got the speakership last year, Johnson has since made repeated pilgrimages to Mar-a-Lago, campaigned with Trump and at every chance stood like a bespectacled bobblehead beside him.
46% : As Punchbowl News reported: "Now Trump gets a congressional leader who will back his agenda -- for better or worse."
46% : But this time Trump has a sprawling agenda beyond tax cuts: Project 2025, compiled by scores of his most far-right first-term advisors with his public blessing, but so unpopular that he disavowed it during the campaign.
41% : But it's Congress where Trump will have real pull -- at least for the two years until the 2026 midterm elections.
35% : Yet those checks by Congress and the Supreme Court will hardly be a check at all once Trump is back in power.
35% : Their tie to Trump is stronger than it was in 2017-18.
35% : The House will extend the Trump tax cuts at a cost of about $1 trillion annually in debt, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, and add to those breaks, including with the promises Trump made on the campaign trail: "Just plow it through," as a Republican lobbyist said.
32% : Here's a silver lining: Trump, a dictator wannabe with a pliant Congress, will all but certainly overreach.
27% : It remains to be seen whether Trump, as president, will exploit the license for wrongdoing that the court gave him.
25% : Each has had differences with Trump, but neither will likely defy him going forward, especially now that the Senate will include more Trump toadies.
16% : In Ryan's time, a novice President Trump didn't have much of an agenda or even "concepts of a plan" beyond talk of building a wall, banning Muslims and repealing Obamacare; he didn't fully realize any of those goals.
3% : Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, House speaker in 2017 and 2018, broke with Trump in 2016 over the "grab 'em by the pussy" tape, but became accommodating enough once Trump was president.

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