U.S. Sen. Angus King invoked the late Maine Sen. Margaret Chase Smith’s famous address in a Tuesday speech condemning President Donald Trump for attempting to govern “like a monarch.”
The office of King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, took the rare step of promoting his 28-minute speech to the media by calling them an update to Smith’s 1950 “Declaration of Conscience” address that criticized “reckless” efforts by fellow Republican Sen. Joseph McCarthy to link many in the federal government to communism.
It came as the Republican president was on a victory lap celebrating the 100th day of his second term in the White House. He has imposed strict immigration policies, shepherded through government-slashing efforts led by billionaire adviser Elon Musk and imposed tariffs that have shaken a world economy that Trump is trying to reshape.
Almost all of that has come through unilateral action. The Trump administration has looked to bring Democratic-led states to heel on immigration and social issues, as evidenced by the president’s fight with Maine over its policies on transgender athletes. The federal government sued the state over that issue earlier this month.
“This president is attempting to govern as a monarch unbound by constitutional restraint or by law, not as a president subject to the constraints of the Constitution and the rule of law,” King said in his floor speech.
He argued Trump was pushing the limits of executive power to a degree that the legislative branch should step in to check him, calling it a “cop out” to leave it to the courts. Congress has long ceded key powers to the president as part of a decades-long trend of growing power in the executive branch.
King, a former two-term governor, framed his speech by saying it is “high time that we stopped thinking politically as Republicans and Democrats about elections and started thinking patriotically as Americans about national security based on individual freedom.”
Smith’s speech is one of the most famous ones in American political history, coming from an ardent anti-communist who thought McCarthy’s crusade was harming that movement. Speaking on behalf of a group of other Republican senators, she also criticized Democrats for helping to create the atmosphere with “complacency” against communism.
The late senator was beaten by Democrat Bill Hathaway in a 1972 campaign that King worked on before going to Washington as a staffer. She died in 1995 and is held up as a role model by Maine politicians including Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and King, who has a portrait of her in his Senate office.
Trump was in Michigan on Tuesday for his biggest political events since returning to the presidency. His steep tariffs on Canada and other countries have hit his approval rating. Roughly 4 in 10 Americans approve of how Trump is handling the presidency, and his ratings on the economy and trade are lower than that. But he has been defiant on trade.
“I run the country and the world,” Trump told The Atlantic magazine in an interview. He told Time of his first 100 days, “I think that what I’m doing is exactly what I’ve campaigned on.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.