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David Caudill

Dr. David Caudill is an independent scholar based in the United States. He was awarded his PhD in Politics from the University of Leicester in 2021 with his thesis “War, the War Power, and the War Powers Resolution of 1973: A Study in American Political Development”. He also holds a law degree from the University of Cincinnati and a Master of Public Administration from Northern Kentucky University. His research interests include war powers reform efforts in the U.S. Congress and the emergence of the Supreme Court as a constitutional tribunal.

Book Review: Phantoms of a Beleaguered Republic: The Deep State and the Unitary Executive by Stephen Skowronek, John A. Dearborn, and Desmond King

The Trump presidency was a period of unrelenting drama. Trump was often joined at centre stage by members of his own administration, cast as his adversaries. He described these previously anonymous bureaucrats as members of a hidden ‘Deep State’ within the government scheming to undermine his control over the executive branch.[1] Trump viewed the Article II vesting clause, which states that ‘[t]he executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States’ as having lodged all executive power in the presidency and, under that unitary executive theory, considered any resistance to his will to be a constitutional offence. He moved to stamp out all opposition within the government; frequently, as if to confirm Trump’s allegations of a rogue bureaucracy, the bureaucracy fought back.