Within his first 100 days in office, President Donald Trump has accomplished what no other president has: He committed an act of war by bombing one country (Syria), dispatched an “armada” in preparation for possible war with another (North Korea, and threatened a superpower (Russia) with wartime sanctions for continuing to support an “enemy” country (Syria). The president has a taste for war, and it seems insatiable. It also seems he has free reign to customize his war menu.

Leid Stories has been discussing Trump’s recent military misadventures and their potentially cataclysmic consequences. Today we concentrate on the question: Whatever happened to so-called systems of checks and balances against despotic presidential power, especially the power to put the nation at risk of war?