There was a widespread belief that U.S. government has an elaborate system of checks and balances but it was not evidence-based. Kind of Flat Earth period of American political science.

The system relies on people acting in good faith. It is impossible to make a constitution that can deal with people at all levels of power not acting in good faith.

In this case, Congress has completely abdicated their duties.

Its because the president used to have a modicum of respect for the house and the Senate. So the president did have the sole right to send military anywhere on the planet and even launch nukes without any need for congressional permission. This is by design. But the other presidents were a bit less crazy so we never noticed.

The movie "vice" covers this nicely. The only thing stopping US presidents from acting like kings is precedent.

He’s the hate magnet for things they want anyway. Why not let him go crazy?

> Nobody in the cabinet can speak up and overrule his whimsy?

Who will be overruling that "someone in the cabinet", when things start going the wrong way again? There is always someone on top, and in the US it's the sitting President.

You sound like you’re from a country with a parliamentary system? In the US, the “cabinet” is simply the President’s handpicked subordinates, not MPs. The President is the head of the executive, the government, usually understood as the executive, answers to him. They are not in a position to legally stop him.

There are measures Congress could very easily take if they chose to, but modern Congresses are very much do-nothing and frankly regard the President taking unilateral actions as relieving them of accountability and the need to take action themselves on important matters.

Why would you think it’s not that way? Virtually all of the power of the executive branch of the US Goverment is in the Office of the President. There are mechanisms in the Constitution to remove the sitting president, but it requires the other branches to act in the best interests of the nation instead of their own personal interests.

Look at the history of every single war we’ve been involved in since WWII, no declaration of war. Korean War, Vietnam War, Grenada, Panama, Desert Storm, Somalia, Balkans, GWOT, Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Iran.

I’m not a fan of the president, but Trump only started two of those. Korea was Truman, Vietnam was LBJ, Grenada was Reagan, Panama was HW Bush, Somalia and the Balkans was Clinton, GWOT was Bush, Libya and Syria were Obama, and the last two were Trump. That’s 7 total presidents, add in Bay of Pigs and JFK for 8 and the only two presidents who didn’t start a war are Nixon, who fucked up negotiations with the NVA that may have prolonged the war to win an election, and Jimmy Carter, who tried to rescue hostages in Iran with military assets.

It's not really that insane. Don't overreact to Trump stuff - it leads you to make bad decisions and assumptions.

This archaic and formal "I do declare war upon theee" is not flexible enough for the modern world and so we have found, perhaps an unhappy middle ground where the President can indeed take military action, for a limited period of time (60 days) without congressional authorization. The President is the civilian commander of the military and regardless of whether it is a Democrat or Republican we, like in other cases, give the President the discretion to make these choices. You may not like their exercise of power, but it is legal, Constitutional, and intentional and even if it is Donald Trump (much to my displeasure) we as a society trust him and his office to use this power responsibly and for the good of the American people. Even in the case of Iran and Venezuela, frankly, I think he has used power responsibly (if less effective than it should be) and for the good of the American people. We can't have a nuclear Iran in the Middle East, nor can we or should we accept thugs like Maduro running a country into the ground and causing mass migration to the US and causing problems here and breaking our laws.

There are folks in the cabinet that can take action, or resign, &c., but as the Executive the president selects his cabinet and they serve at his pleasure, once they are confirmed by the Senate. This is true for all presidents and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future.

I think sometimes we forget, these are just people. We give them broad authority and they get to, by virtue of being elected, exercise that power as they see fit though ideally if or when a law is broken we deal with it through the judicial system.