Quinta Jurecic writes:

During his first term in office, Donald Trump loved to complain about judges on social media. Reliably, whenever his agenda was held up in court or his allies faced legal consequences, he would snipe online about “so-called judges” and a “broken and unfair” legal system. Now, in Trump’s second term, this genre of cranky presidential post has returned. A judge who blocked the administration’s mass freeze of federal-grant funding is “highly political” and an “activist,” according to the president.

Read alongside Elon Musk’s and Vice President J. D. Vance’s apparent willingness to defy the courts, Trump’s rhetoric is a concerning sign about where this administration might be headed. But there is significance to the fact that the administration already has a hefty stack of court orders it might want to defy. Despite Trump’s effort to present himself as an agent of overwhelming force, he is encountering persistent and growing opposition, both from courts and from other pockets of civic life.

Litigants have sued the administration over the seemingly unlawful freezing of federal funds, the deferred-resignation program for civil servants, the destruction of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the handling of sensitive government data by Musk’s aides, the removal of scientific data from government websites, the attempt to write birthright citizenship out of the Constitution, the barring of transgender people from military service, the transfer of undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo Bay, and more.

And now the court orders are coming, blocking the administration from pushing forward, or at the very least slowing its speed.

Courts have prevented Trump from dismissing a government watchdog without explanation and granted restraining orders barring the administration from slashing funds for crucial scientific research. They have prevented Musk’s team from meddling with Treasury Department systems and insisted that the government halt its transfer of an incarcerated transgender woman to a men’s prison. Four separate judges have issued orders requiring the government to stand down on its effort to dismantle birthright citizenship.

Litigation has also proved to be a valuable tool for prying loose key information from the administration, like the specifics of just what access Musk’s aides were given to the Treasury Department, and as a means of making legible to the public what Trump is trying to get away with. “It has become ever more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” Judge John Coughenour commented when issuing an injunction against the birthright-citizenship order. But, he went on, “in this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”

So far, there’s no indication that Trump has attempted to ignore Judge Coughenour’s injunction. In other cases, though, troubling signs have emerged of the administration’s laxity in following court orders, including multiple instances in which judges have found agencies to be in defiance of the court’s instructions and attempts by the government to find work-arounds. It’s not yet clear how much of this stems from chaos and incompetence and how much is a strategy by Trump and Musk, however clumsy, to force a confrontation with the judiciary. Either way, this approach endangers the health of the constitutional order—which may well be the point.

If the administration decides to launch an assault against the judiciary, it will be all the more important that a strong response comes not only from the courts themselves, but from Congress and the public. Trump is skilled at presenting himself as the indomitable voice of a true American majority, creating a facade of consensus aided by the startling quiescence of congressional Republicans. Dissent, both loud and quiet, can crack that facade and make an illegitimate power grab apparent for what it is. [Continue reading…]