WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) shared his growing concerns over the Trump Administration’s largely unconstitutional and unprecedented overreach. In a speech on the Senate floor, King cited the Founding Fathers to add historical perspective to the decisions facing the Senate including the importance of keeping a separation of powers between the branches of government.

“The framers were so fearful of concentrated power that they designed a system that would be hard to operate. And the heart of it was the separation of power between various parts of the government. The whole idea, the whole idea was that no part of the government, no one person, no one institution had or could ever have a monopoly on power,” King said. “Why? Because it's dangerous. History and human nature tells us that. This division of power as annoying and inefficient as it can be, particularly to the executive, I know because I used to be a governor, is an essential feature of the system, not a bug. It's an essential, basic feature of the system, designed to protect our freedoms. Now, this contrasts with the normal structure of a private business, where authority is purposefully concentrated, allowing swift and sometimes arbitrary action. But a private business does not have the army, and the President of the United States is not the CEO of America.”

King then discussed the critical vulnerability of Congress relieving its duties to the administration in charge – an abdication that would be hard to reverse no matter what administration is next elected into office.

“But don't stand aside in the midst of these confirmations, ill-considered foreign policy pronouncements, flood of executive orders, none of which will do a thing about the price of eggs, cost of housing or availabilities of child care,” King continued. “Don't get caught up in all of that and ignore the steady and not-so-slow usurpation of congressional authority and fundamental alteration of the framers' scheme. My colleague who preceded me, speaking from the Republican side, bemoaned Congress' lack of oversight and praised Elon Musk for doing what congress should have done. Maybe she's right and Congress should have done it, and we should do it, but not give away that power, which will never come back. Once this door is open, it's going to be very difficult to close it again, no matter who the president is. No matter who's in charge. To my colleagues, are there no red lines? Are there no limits?”

Lastly, he emphasized the ‘profound responsibility’ each member of the Senate has to respect the Oath they swore to the Constitution.

“In short, Mr. President, we're experiencing in real time exactly what the framers most feared. When you clear away the smoke, clear away the DOGE, the executive orders, foreign pronouncements, more fundamentally what's happening is the shredding of the constitutional structure itself,” King concluded. “And we have a profound responsibility it seems to be based on that pesky oath that we all took, to stop it, to stop it. […] But stop what's going on in terms of altering how our government is supposed to fundamentally function to protect our people.”

Senator King has been continuously sounding the alarm on President Donald Trump’s existential threat to the Constitution: he declared that the proposal to halt all federal grant and loan disbursement was illegal and a direct assault on the Constitution. More recently, he joined 36 Senators in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sharing the detrimental effects of  the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He also joined fellow Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) colleagues in writing a letter to the White House about the risks to national security by allowing unvetted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff and representatives to access classified and sensitive government materials.

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