In his first weeks in office, President Donald Trump has actively worked to dismantle the institutional safeguards built into the modern presidency. He has restructured the National Security Council to sideline knowledgeable participants in policy debates who might challenge his impulses and those of his inner circle. He has ignored the interagency process in writing executive orders, leading to political firestorm and bureaucratic chaos. He has attacked the administrative independence of civil servants.

He has done all of this in the name of addressing a supposed condition of “American carnage” of rampant crime, illegal immigration, terrorism, and unemployment. As many have noted, these crises are almost entirely fabricated. In the real world, the crime rate has decreased in recent years; there are fewer undocumented immigrants now than a decade ago; the travel ban does not address an actual terrorist threat; and the nation’s unemployment rate is at historic lows.

As the current administration works feverishly to centralize power and mute dissent under the false pretense of crisis, it is worth recalling how the architects of the modern American state sought to sustain constitutional democracy in the face of a series of real emergencies: From the Great Depression to World War II and the early Cold War.

In the 1930s, the United States faced two of the most acute crises in the country’s history: A devastating economic depression at home and an increasingly menacing threat from fascist Europe. The progressive reformer Charles Merriam warned that “with the closing of every bank in the land, with thirteen millions of unemployed, and with the general prostration of industry and agriculture,” the nation faced “stern realities” that would require “[p]rompt and bold action to prevent complete collapse.”

Observers were uncertain whether the American system, with its checks and balances and its diffusion of sovereign power across multiple levels of government, was up to the task of addressing these crises. Looking across the Atlantic, the political scientist Pendleton Herring pointed to the rising tide of authoritarianism: “We face a world where discipline, organization, and the concentration of authority are placed before freedom for the individual and restraints on government.” In this context, he asked: “Can our government meet the challenge of totalitarianism and remain democratic? Is the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches compatible with the need for authority?”