Maxwell School News and Commentary

"It’s possible for Congress to enact—over a veto—funding restrictions on this or new funds that the president wants or needs. There’s lots of horse trading to come," says Professor Emeritus William Banks.

"The President, like every actor in our national government, is bound by the Constitution. Article II of the Constitution allows the President to take certain actions, but the list is quite short, especially compared to the long list of Congress's Article I powers," says William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, says that Governor Cuomo's signing of new legislation that allows Congressional committees to acquire President Trump's New York tax filings "represents a new escalation in the level of political polarization that we're seeing."

According to Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, it can be difficult to measure how much a lawmaker worked behind the scenes to advance legislation, because the paper trail isn’t always clear.

Donna Shalala took a look at Washington and decided that the Capitol needed someone like her. Meet the new Congresswoman from Florida.

On presidential candidate John Delaney's suggestion that if elected, he would debate Congress four times a year, Professor Grant Reeher opines: "I can see that this is an effort to change the political culture by requiring direct engagement, but the participants have to agree to take the exercise at face value, in front of TV cameras, and the political disincentives against doing that right now are strong."

"The size of the court is not specified in the constitution and it's changed multiple times…in the first 100 years it was a regular occurrence for Congress to change the size of the Supreme Court," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

 According to Tina Nabatchi, Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration, the ratio between workforce and number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests appears difficult to manage.