The Executive Branch is the most visible and most powerful arm of American government—and the one most capable of testing the limits of democracy. While Congress writes the laws and the courts interpret them, the executive is where those laws come to life. Presidents direct national policy, command the military, negotiate with foreign leaders, issue executive orders that reshape federal priorities, and oversee a vast civil service responsible for everything from food safety to disaster response. When executive power is exercised responsibly, it provides clarity, stability, and the ability to act decisively in times of crisis. When abused or left unchecked, it becomes a direct threat to democratic norms, individual rights, and the balance of power that keeps authoritarianism at bay.
Modern presidencies have grown increasingly powerful, often stretching the boundaries of constitutional authority. Partisan polarization has weakened traditional restraints, and Congress’s declining oversight has allowed the Executive Branch to amass influence far beyond what the Framers envisioned. This makes transparency, whistleblower protections, and robust legislative checks not just procedural necessities, but essential safeguards for democracy. A healthy republic requires an executive strong enough to govern effectively but constrained enough to remain accountable to the people—not insulated from scrutiny or empowered to rewrite the rules unilaterally.
In this collection of podcasts, scholars, journalists, technologists, policymakers, and oversight experts dissect the evolving nature of executive power. You’ll hear discussions about the history of presidential authority, the role of congressional investigations, and the ongoing struggle to maintain separation of powers. These episodes explore how executive orders can reshape government overnight, how Schedule F threatened the nonpartisan civil service, why protecting whistleblowers is vital to exposing wrongdoing, and how transparency tools like GovTrack aim to make executive actions easier for the public to follow. You’ll also hear urgent conversations about presidents who push against constitutional limits—and the institutions and advocates working to hold them in check.
Together, these episodes reveal a central truth: the strength of American democracy depends on keeping executive power accountable. A presidency grounded in ethics, transparency, and constitutional limits protects freedom. A presidency unrestrained endangers it. Understanding the Executive Branch—its reach, its vulnerabilities, and its impact on daily life—is essential for anyone who cares about preserving a government of laws and not of men.
In this week’s special live episode of Politics In Question, James and Lee talk with Soren Dayton about cycles of electoral reform. Dayton is the Director of Governance at the Foundation for American Innovation.
What are the boundaries of presidential power? How has power been centralized within the Executive Branch throughout history? What role does partisan politics play in the current conflicts over the separation of powers? These are some of the questions James and Lee explore in this week’s episode.
Listen to the full episode on Politics in Question: Who Has the Power?
From Watergate to Benghazi to Robert Mueller, U.S. history is full of congressional hearings. You’ve no doubt heard about them in the news, but do you know what those House and Senate committees actually do and what their role is in a democracy?
We address those questions and more with Doug Kriner, professor of Government at Cornell University and co-author of Investigating the President: Congressional Checks on Presidential Power. Doug studies the impact of congressional investigations as a check on the executive branch, and how committee activity differs when the government is united and divided.
Following the interview, Michael and Chris discuss how congressional investigations tie back to separation of powers and why the ability for one branch to check another is critical to democracy.
Listen to the full episode on Democracy Works: Checking the President’s power
Joshua Tauberer joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career in tech and founding GovTrack.us to follow Congress and his plan now to expand that to cover executive orders from the White House.
Listen to the full episode on The Great Battlefield: Improving Visibility into Our Government with Joshua Tauberer of GovTrack. us
Joe Spielberger is the policy counsel for the Effective and Accountable Government team at the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), where he advocates in Congress and the executive branch to strengthen whistleblower rights, protect a merit-based civil service, and promote government ethics and transparency. We discuss how government can be transparent and accountable to us, the People.
All Americans need to be confident that federal employees are hired based on their qualifications and not because of their partisan political ideology. In retaliation to the whistleblower on Trump’s phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Trump signed Schedule F, an executive order that could have allowed a complete purge of the civil service of nonpartisan career civil servants. Because whistleblower retaliation is rampant, protecting whistleblowers and civil servants is one of the best ways to protect the public from harm. The Supreme Court does not have a binding code of ethics because the Supreme Court refuses to adopt one. However, Congress has clear and direct mechanisms to hold the Supreme Court accountable and can pass legislation that would implement a binding code of ethics.
Listen to the full episode on Future Hindsight: Protect Whistleblowers: Joe Spielberger
Amid election deniers and political polarization, it's easy to overlook the times when democracy is actually working. We do that this week in a hopeful conversation about resident-centered government. Elected officials and administrative staff like city planners often have the best intentions when it comes to development and redevelopment, but political and professional incentives push them to pursue projects that lure in outsiders rather than serving people who live in their communities.
Our guest this week is Michelle Wilde Anderson, a professor of property, local government, and environmental justice at Stanford Law School and the author of The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America. The book tells the stories of revitalization efforts in Stockton, California, Josephine, Oregon, Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Detroit, Michigan. In each instance, residents organized to fix small problems that turned into large-scale change. It's a model that anyone can replicate and our democracy will be stronger for it.
Listen to the full episode on Bad Watchdog: The Real Threat
Donald Trump took office as president on January 20, 2025, having already served one term. Immediately, however, he made clear his second term would be even more unpredictable than his first. He put one of the world's richest men — and his biggest campaign donor — in charge of a shadowy new entity with seemingly unfettered access to government data. Trump also blitzed the system with a barrage of executive orders, which have seemingly upended the government. He has done everything from threatening judges and lawyers to attacking the very concept of birthright citizenship, while Congress has remained largely on the sidelines.
In short, Trump has moved aggressively against many of the checks and balances that American democracy has built in. As he works to consolidate power for the executive branch, other players have stepped up to challenge the president's moves — Campaign Legal Center among them. In this special episode of Democracy Decoded, our host Simone Leeper speaks with Trevor Potter, the president and founder of Campaign Legal Center, and Adav Noti, the executive director of Campaign Legal Center, to discuss what they’ve seen and what they’re doing during this unprecedented moment.
Listen to the full episode on Democracy Decoded: What Trump's First 100 Days Mean for American Democracy
Tom Cochran joins The Great Battlefield podcast to talk about his career in politics and tech, working in The White House and State Department and co-founding Civic Sunlight, which is using AI to create summaries of Town Hall meetings to make local government information more accessible.
Listen to the full episode on The Politics Guys: Tariff Rulings, Trump’s Pardons
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