The one strategy that works against Trump

Atlantic reporter Michale Scherer says litigation is still the most effective tool against the most litigious president in U.S. history.

“The Democratic opposition is feeble and fumbling, the federal bureaucracy traumatized and neutered. Corporate leaders come bearing gifts, the Republican Party has been scrubbed of dissent, and the street protests are diminished in size,” said Scherer. “Even the news media, a major check on Trump’s power in his first term, have faded from their 2017 ferocity, hobbled by budget cuts, diminished ratings, and owners wary of crossing the president.”

But “one exception has stood out,” reports Scherer.

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“The only place we had any real traction was to start suing, because everything else was inert,” said neoconservative Trump critic Norm Eisen.

Scherer reports: “a legal resistance led by a patchwork coalition of lawyers, public-interest groups, Democratic state attorneys general, and unions has frustrated Trump’s ambitions … feeding [him] a steady assembly line of setbacks and judicial reprimands.”

Of the 384 cases filed through August 28 against the Trump administration, 130 have led to orders blocking at least part of the president’s efforts, and 148 cases are still awaiting a ruling, says the Atlantic. Scherer says the legal scorecard already has the administration crying “judicial tyranny” and “unelected rogue judges” by Trump and his advisers.

Executive orders “have been defanged or blocked, agency closures delayed, government-employee firings reversed,” Scherer said. “Deportation flights have been delayed, law firms have freed themselves from Trump’s retaliation, and foreign students have won the ability to continue studying at U.S. universities.”

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Courts have also forced the president to restore cut services and spending to AmeriCorps, the U.S. African Development Foundation, the CDC, and other agencies, among other victories. A federal appeals court ruled as recently as Friday that many of Trump’s tariffs were illegal, setting up a likely hearing by the Supreme Court.

But the suits serve another purpose, said Scherer. Without the court fights, the public would not have known about Elon Musk’s DOGE discrepancies in the early months of the administration. They would not have seen headlines of federal judges accusing the president’s team of perpetrating a ‘sham’ or taking ‘shocking’ actions. And Kilmar Abrego Garcia would not have become a household name.

Even cases that Trump ultimately won on appeal, including his ability to fire transgender soldiers, defund scientific research, and dismiss tens of thousands of government employees, stayed in the news courtesy of the judicial process, said Scherer.

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“The biggest victory, I think, has been in terms of highlighting the egregious nature of what Trump is doing,” said Rushab Sanghvi, the general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees. “It is getting the public to understand how terrible it is.”

Meanwhile, Scherer reports the administration keeps churning out “more fodder for more lawsuits.”

“The demand for lawyers that are willing to defend people from the government is exponentially greater today than it was on day one,” said Democracy Forward’s president Skye Perryman, adding that the next 200 days are going to be “more significant than the first 200 days.”

Read the Atlantic report at this link.