Can the courts -- can anyone -- stop Trump? - Marcus WaPo
Can President Donald Trump be stopped?
More precisely, since the Republican-controlled Congress seems more willing to enable than to restrain, to what extent will the legal system be capable of halting his barrage of executive orders and other questionable actions? Can blue states and private plaintiffs fight back with lawsuits — or is the gusher of Trumpian excesses too overwhelming to mount an effective counterattack? And, most critically, are the courts — ultimately the Supreme Court — more inclined to accede to Trump’s inflated conception of presidential authority or to limit his overreach? If they dare to frustrate his will, will Trump comply, or will he precipitate a constitutional crisis?
There are reasons for tempered optimism here. Look at the dismal legal track record of the first Trump administration and in the similar initial court response to his second-term efforts. Significantly, as much as the resistance to Trump is more muted than eight years ago, the legal resistance is well-funded and organized, with state attorneys general coordinating litigation strategies and outside groups poised to bring cases, as well.
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So, too, with the start of Trump’s second term. Two federal judges — one appointed by Ronald Reagan, the other by Joe Biden — have blocked his effort to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Two other judges — one appointed by Reagan, the other by Bill Clinton — refused to allow transgender women prisoners to be transferred to male facilities, as required under a Trump executive order. Two more judges — one appointed by Barack Obama, the other by Biden — ordered Trump not to implement his federal funding freeze. Another one, a Clinton appointee, oversaw an agreement to limit U.S. DOGE Service, or the Department of Government Efficiency, officials’ access to a sensitive Treasury Department payment system. And on Thursday, a Clinton-appointed judge in Massachusetts temporarily paused a deadline, set to expire by that evening at midnight, by which federal workers could accept or reject a sudden and controversial job buyout offer.
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Harvard Law School professor Jack Goldsmith, a veteran of the George W. Bush Justice Department, expects significant setbacks for Trump in court. “Trump cannot just snap his fingers and change Biden’s environmental regulations, or impound federal funds, or expel millions of unlawful immigrants, or fire ‘deep state’ officials,” Goldsmith wrote on his Substack, Executive Functions. “Congressional statutes and the Constitution constrain these and many other elements of presidential power. Trump administration lawyers can try to interpret away these constraints, but in the end it will be for the Supreme Court to decide,” Goldsmith added. “The Court blocked Trump’s excesses quite a lot in his first term. I believe it will do so in his second as well, in cases where it has jurisdiction to do so — especially if Trump and his administration project disrespect for the law.”
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Third, and most ominously, we need to take seriously the prospect that Trump will provoke a constitutional showdown and ignore a court order, as his own vice president has advised. The justices, wary of provoking such a crisis, might tread carefully as a result. But what happens then — whether that might, finally, rouse congressional Republicans, is anyone’s guess. Litigation is essential, but litigation will be less effective without evident support from an enraged populace or aggrieved Congress.
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