Donald Trump launched his latest war with Iran from Air Force One in the middle of ongoing nuclear negotiations. He did so without any widespread public appetite for war and without congressional authorization.

It was the latest and most extreme act of unilateral executive action by the Trump administration, but it sits within a broader pattern. In the months prior, Trump unilaterally abducted a foreign head of state; attacked numerous vessels in the Caribbean; threatened the sovereignty of Canada, Greenland, and Panama; gutted congressionally created federal agencies; and implemented a brutal immigration crackdown. Each of these actions was taken without legislative approval, and each therefore constituted an exercise of unilateral executive authority. These aggressive actions were widely unpopular and have generated a nascent anti-authoritarian movement, reflected in the Minneapolis mass protests and No Kings marches.

As others have observed, the growing reliance on unilateral executive authority has been a bipartisan trend over the past several decades. Barack Obama used executive authority to implement immigration reform through Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) but also to sharply increase deportations and to conduct a bombing campaign in Libya. Joe Biden likewise attempted to use executive authority to implement stricter emissions standards and to forgive student loan debt, though he came up against judicial resistance in both attempts. Trump’s use of executive power must be situated within this broader trend.