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It's not, when we can point to cases where the black-letter wording of the law absolutely did not matter. In some observable cases, passing laws was not sufficient, and in other observable cases, it was not necessary either.
Passing laws is expensive, and it is not obvious that doing so is worth the expense, given that they observably can be ignored. This calculation does not require perfect certainty that they will be ignored, only a suspicion that the likelyhood of them being ignored is high enough that they shouldn't be the current priority. Getting as much done as possible through the methods that do not require negotiation with allies of questionable loyalty, much less outright enemies, can improve one's position when those negotiations are subsequently conducted.
Our coalition is not hanging by a thread, it is in active civil war and has been since Trump arrived. My side currently appears to be winning that war, but we haven't won by any stretch of the imagination. The last generation of republican leadership actively campaigned for Harris in the last election.
And again, the advantage to passing laws is extremely marginal, and we know this from literally decades of observation from both sides of the culture war both here and in neighboring countries.
Further, and this is my own personal opinion, there is also the BATNA, which in this case is the forth portion of the back-and-forth wrenching we're doing on the fence-post of our current political system. By pushing the imperial presidency, we force a fight over the imperial presidency. To the extent that the positions again reverse upon the other side taking control, the legitimacy of those positions lessens dramatically. It is better for us to burn that legitimacy now attempting to secure our goals rather than leaving it for the other side to burn in pursuit of theirs.
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