The Constitution strikes back against Trump

The Hill

5 days ago

Early in President Trump's first term, humorist Andy Borowitz wrote a New Yorker piece that imagined Trump's frustration with court rulings blocking his executive orders on constitutional grounds. 'There's something going on,' Trump says about how 'very unfairly' the Framers of the Constitution have treated him. 'I don't have their names yet but that's something I'm looking into. These jokers are not going to get away with this.'
Those 'jokers' who wrote the Constitution are really getting under Trump's skin in his second term. By one count, 180 judicial rulings have partly or wholly blocked Trump's executive orders and initiatives — many on constitutional grounds — which led to his attacks on 'radical left' judges and calls for their impeachment.
Trump cannot grasp that his fundamental problem is with the Constitution, not the judges. His executive orders are too much for some of his own judicial appointees, one of whom, Judge Timothy Reif joined — 'Et tu, Brute?' — in the unanimous opinion of the U.S. Court of International Trade that Trump lacked constitutional authority for his global tariffs.
The judicial setbacks have apparently pushed Trump into the 'eat your young' phase of his second term. After the tariff ruling, Trump blamed the conservative Federalist Society, attacking Leonard Leo, its long-time leader, as a 'sleazebag' for giving him 'bad advice' in his first term on judicial nominations.
Talk about petulance — the Federalist Society helped Trump put three justices on the Supreme Court who provided the key votes for two of the conservative movement's greatest victories: the end of affirmative action and the overruling of Roe v. Wade.
The Framers designed the Constitution as a bulwark against monarchy, yet within hours of swearing an oath to support and defend the Constitution, Trump began governing as a monarch. He issued more executive orders in his first 100 days than any president in American history.
Trump's executive orders were not written on parchment and sealed with crimson wax, but in their scope and cruelty they have the feel of royal decrees. His orders launched a worldwide tariff war, punished individuals and organizations for exercising their right of free speech and, by halting foreign food aid and HIV-prevention programs, according to one calculation, may have already caused the deaths of thousands of children in the developing world.
As if to underscore his monarchical impulses, Trump, after issuing an order to cancel congestion pricing in New York City, proclaimed on Truth Social, 'LONG LIVE THE KING!'
Thanks to the Framers, presidential executive orders are subject to judicial review because our system of checks and balances was designed so that each branch of government restrains the other two. Trump has so neutered the GOP Congress that James Madison's famous phrase in Federalist No. 51 describing checks and balances — 'Ambition must be made to counteract ambition' — needs to be displayed in 10-foot letters in both chambers to remind Republicans why they are there. But the judicial branch, including Trump's own appointees, is still loyal to the Constitution, and this infuriates Trump.
In fact, Trump has won significant rulings from what he calls a 'judicial tyranny.' At least preliminarily, federal courts have upheld his right to fire the heads of independent agencies with apparently limited exceptions, stripped (for now) hundreds of thousands of immigrants of temporary legal protections and paused the Court of International Trade's tariff ruling. But since Trump claims the right to 'run the country and the world,' he finds any judicial setback intolerable.
Trump's rage against judicial rulings putting the Constitution, and not him, first is the best evidence that the system designed by the Framers endures — at least so far.
Gregory J. Wallance was a federal prosecutor in the Carter and Reagan administrations and a member of the ABSCAM prosecution team, which convicted a U.S. senator and six representatives of bribery. He is the author of 'Into Siberia: George Kennan's Epic Journey Through the Brutal, Frozen Heart of Russia.'