It turns out Trump doesn’t actually have the power to do what he’s doing. It looks as if nobody’s going to stop him all the same. I have to wonder why there are no enforcement mechanisms built in to all these rules and limits.

President Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday that seeks greater authority over regulatory agencies that Congress established as independent from direct White House control, part of a broader bid to centralize a president’s power over the government.

If Congress established the regulatory agencies as independent from direct White House control then Trump should be unable to get greater authority over them. Why are there no guardrails?

The order requires independent agencies to submit their proposed regulations to the White House for review, asserts a power to block such agencies from spending funds on projects or efforts that conflict with presidential priorities, and declares that they must accept the president’s and the Justice Department’s interpretation of the law as binding.

“This is a power move over independent agencies, a structure of administration that Congress has used for various functions going back to the 1880s,” said Peter M. Shane, who is a legal scholar in residence at New York University and the author of a casebook on separation-of-powers law.

It’s as if everyone has been bribed to stand back and let him do whatever he wants all the time.

The order follows Mr. Trump’s summary firings of leaders of independent agencies in defiance of statutes that bar their removal without cause before their terms are up. Collectively, the moves constitute a major front in the president’s assault on the basic shape of the American government and his effort to seize some of Congress’s constitutional power over it.

Or to put it another way, the moves constitute a coup. Not a metaphorical coup or a rhetorical coup but a real one.