Since taking office for a second time, President Donald Trump has fired officials at the FBI and Justice Department, empowered Elon Musk to take over the federal spending apparatus, dismantled the agency that administers foreign aid and offered federal employees a buyout if they want to leave.
Congress has largely been passive, with Democrats floundering and Republicans staying largely silent or supporting the president. As Politico reports, the role of challenging Trump may fall to the courts.
“President Donald Trump’s era of retribution has begun. A wave of legal resistance is next,” writes Politico’s Kyle Cheney.
Stan Brand, a former top House lawyer, is confident that courts will confront the president’s actions. “Nobody has challenged across the landscape the way this president has,” he told Politico.
“We’ve had fights over [spending authority]. We’ve had fights over inspectors general, even before Trump. We’ve had fights over foreign aid. But this one is deeper and seems more programmatic. All of these will get challenged in some manner,” he said.
For example, a federal judge, Loren L. AliKhan, temporarily blocked a spending freeze on Monday, following a similar move by Judge John J. McConnell Jr. last week.
“Together, the signals from federal judges amounted to a two-fisted rebuke of the move by the budget office as an overreach that likely lacked legitimate authority,” Charlie Savage writes at the New York Times.
READ MORE: 'Unchecked power': Trump himself ordered firings of prosecutors working criminal cases against him
Daniel Richman, a lawyer and former adviser to FBI leadership, told Politico that such litigation could have teeth. “Federal employees around the country are surely feeling Trump’s orders as body blows, as he likely intended,” he said. “But once the immediate shock at his extraordinary power claims wears off, I doubt they will all be cowed. Rather, they will be the source of litigation that all but the most die-hard Trumpist judges will take seriously.”
“All eyes are now on federal courts,” Cheney writes.