GEOFF BENNETT: The first weeks of the Trump administration have brought dramatic changes to the shape, scope and function of the federal government.

Our new series On Democracy is taking a step back to look at big questions about the institutions, norms and laws that have shaped the country and the challenges they face today.

Ilya Shapiro is director of constitutional studies at the conservative-leaning Manhattan Institute and the author of "Lawless: The Miseducation of America's Elites."

Thanks for being here.

Appreciate it.

ILYA SHAPIRO, Manhattan Institute: Great to be with you.

GEOFF BENNETT: Well, as we sit here and speak, we have got another case that is raising questions about the rule of law in this new Trump era.

At least seven prosecutors and officials have stepped down over the DOJ order to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Danielle Sassoon, who was Manhattan's top federal prosecutor, she describes an explicit quid pro quo, whereby the Trump DOJ would dismiss the criminal charges against Adams in exchange for his support for President Trump's agenda.

What questions does all of this raise for you?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, I think it's a disagreement of political judgment between different prosecutors.

The U.S. attorney disagrees with what her superiors say.

The principals are denying that there's a quid pro quo, so we don't quite have evidence of that.

And Eric Adams, for the last year or so, has been moving in a direction to crack down on illegal immigration anyway.

So I don't know whether he'd be behaving differently in the first place.

But, ultimately, this is a judgment call.

And the U.S. attorneys, whether in the Southern District of New York, which sometimes thinks of itself as its own sovereign, Sovereign District, they sometimes call it, doesn't get to make that call at the end of the day.

And if the superiors decide that the underlying evidence is flimsy or the prosecution itself was politically motivated and doesn't serve the purposes of justice, that's their call to make.

And, ultimately, the voters will evaluate that.

GEOFF BENNETT: The deputy A.G. in his letter explaining why the case against Adams should be dropped, he cited the need for Adams to help with Donald Trump's immigration policy.

And then Adams and the immigration czar, Tom Homan, were on FOX News this morning.

And Homan said: "If he doesn't come through, I will be in his office up his butt saying, where the hell is the agreement we came to?"

I mean, hardly anything about this is subtle.

I mean, how is this not a breach of... ILYA SHAPIRO: I don't know if that agreement means the dropping of the prosecution.

It might be an agreement of, here's how we can help New York, because clearly there's a crisis, a law and order crisis in New York, and Adams wants to prolong his political career in some way.

The primary is coming up, what have you, and he wants to clean it up.

And so there's some agreement.

It may involve the quid pro quo that everyone's talking about, but it could just mean here's what I will do, open up Rikers, what have you, and we will send you federal funds or we will send you more law enforcement.

I don't know what the agreement might be.

But Adams wants to work with this administration on the illegal immigration problem.

GEOFF BENNETT: So, in your view, this is not, so far as we know, a fundamental breach of justice?

ILYA SHAPIRO: We don't have -- there's no evidence in the record, a prosecutor would say, to say that.

There are allegations, and you could make a case.

But on the face of what has come out, the dueling letters and what have you, this is just a disagreement on prosecutorial discretion.

GEOFF BENNETT: President Trump, the Trump administration, they have frozen domestic spending, frozen foreign aid without congressional approval.

They have dismantled USAID, threatened to dismantle the Education Department.

There are dispassionate observers who look at this and say that this is textbook executive overreach.

How do you see it?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, executive overreach is when you're creating new programs out of thin air, like Barack Obama with his pen and phone government with DACA or DAPA or all of these other things, or President Biden forgiving student loans that was blocked by the Supreme Court, said, I will do it another way, or vaccine mandates, all of these things that are creating new authorities that didn't exist.

Here, they're putting a pause on spending.

They're reorganizing the executive branch, which is within the executive's power.

GEOFF BENNETT: Why not go through Congress, as the framers intended?

He's got a pliant House Republican majority, a Senate majority as well.

And if you legislate this, the impact would be enduring.

Why not?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, it depends what the "this" is.

I do hope that the Trump administration goes to Congress and asks for restructuring of these various agencies and things like that, because if it's all done through executive action, then, as we see, you live by the executive action, you die by it, and the next Democratic president will just reverse it.

So it would take an act of Congress to eliminate the USAID or to eliminate the Department of Education, but reorganizing certain things, shifting funding priorities, auditing the accounting and the finances and things like that, that all is fully within the purvey of the government, including of DOGE.

GEOFF BENNETT: I want to ask you about Elon Musk, because President Trump, by all outward appearances, has given him a fairly broad mandate.

Any cause for concern about the lack of checks on Musk's actions and the fact that he is in many ways the arbiter of his own conflicts of interest, given his very lucrative government contracts?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, the conflict of interest is a political story.

I mean, if the administration takes political hits for having a lax conflict of interest policy for President Trump himself, for example, that's a judgment call for the voters to make, ultimately, in the midterms coming up and what have you.

Musk is a special government employee, which means he has authority to run this.

He has his tech gurus, these guys with spreadsheets and green eye shades and whatever else that are identifying money that looks like it's mismanaged, misspent.

Again, not saying Congress had spent that on this, but we're not going to do that.

That's not the case.

Whether it's discretion by the agency, they're looking at things that this administration might have different priorities.

GEOFF BENNETT: There have been arguments, as you well know, that we are either in or that we're approaching a constitutional crisis.

I'd imagine you would disagree with that.

But what to you would signal a constitutional crisis?

What to you would signal that this democratic experiment is in peril?

ILYA SHAPIRO: Well, it's interesting that you say democratic experiment, because when the executive branch, when the bureaucracy does not implement the directives of the political leadership that's responsible to the voters, that's a problem.

I mean, a constitutional crisis is something like one branch going and doing things that are not within its authority that courts are telling it to stop and to do, ignoring court orders.

Trump has said he's not going to ignore court orders.

He's going to appeal them and he's taking it to the Supreme Court.

And, almost certainly, most of these things won't get to the Supreme Court.

Certain things, he might win on.

Certain things, he might lose on, but that's the process.

The American people are not buying this language that is simply an indication from the left that they don't like this restructuring of government, the new priorities, all of these certain things.

Fair enough.

That's a political argument to be had, but this is not any sort of a constitutional crisis.

GEOFF BENNETT: Ilya Shapiro with the Manhattan Institute, thanks for coming in.

ILYA SHAPIRO: Thank you.