Trump's test of presidential power restrictions vaguely as legal showdown

During the first few weeks of his second term, President Donald Trump did not waste time bending his political muscles. This is very clear.

Since taking office in January, he has ordered a moratorium on all new asylum claims, canceled refugee resettlement, freeze government recruitment and spending, a brave agency established by Congress, banning gender transition care for teenagers, and providing thousands of federal Purchase agreement worker.

The whirlwind of unilateral action to his campaign commitments has pushed the limitations of presidential power and prompted legal challenges by Democrats, unions and legal groups. The federal court has been the only substantial obstacle to Trump’s agenda so far, as the judge temporarily suspended some of the most controversial suggestions, including the termination of automatic citizenship for anyone born on U.S. land.

But Trump has been urging – it seems that the showdown is being held with the judiciary and may end up in the country's Supreme Court. This week, a Rhode Island judge said the Trump administration is Clearly and publicly violates his court order to remove billions of dollars of federal funds. The White House responded that “every action” the president took was “completely legal.”

If Trump's order does reach the U.S. Supreme Court, six of the nine judges there – including three judges Trump appointed during his first term – are conservative. Just in the last term, the court issued a decision to rule that Trump and all future presidents are largely not subject to prosecution for official actions during office.

At that time, it was a landmark expansion for the presidential authorities. But some observers suggest that Trump's latest move could be part of a strategy to further expand his power. If the High Court agrees to uphold some of his executive orders, his ability to implement policy changes could be strengthened without the help of Congress.

Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional expert at the Manhattan Institute, said that even if the court's ruling against the president, these legal failures could be politically beneficial.

“Being challenged in court, or even failing in court can bring political benefits because then you can go against the judge and make political hay.”

But, there is another situation. Trump could simply refuse to comply with any court trying to stop exercising unrestricted presidential powers.

The president noted in Tuesday's Oval Office commentary that this could be a tilting way.

“We want to eliminate corruption,” Trump said. “And it seems hard to believe that the judge can say we don't want you to do that.”

“Maybe we have to look at the judge,” he continued. “I think it's a very serious violation.”

Trump's Vice President JD Vance was even more outspoken on Sunday.

He posted on social media site X: “Judges do not allow control of the legal power of executives. Any court order prevented him from firing federal workers.

However, direct violations of court rulings would violate hundreds of years of American history and constitute an opening conflict in the constitutional crisis, which put the president against branches of government aimed at establishing and interpreting land laws.

“My reading is that President Trump is testing outside boundaries he might be able to escape, doing a lot of things that are blatantly violating the law, and maybe some close to this one,” Fred Smith said. ' A professor at Emory Law School.

“They broke a lot of the norms,” ​​Smith added. “Why he did this, only he knew exactly. But he was doing it.”

So far, Trump and his allies have made positive comments on the unfavorable court rulings in public and legal files, but have not been approved for disobedience to the court. Trump has often questioned the legitimacy of the presiding judge when he has been the target of multiple prosecutions over the past four years, but his court lawyers comply with the law and legal process.

Rhode Island’s federal judge temporarily put some federal spending on another Trump order, warned in court documents Monday that the administration had violated his temporary restraining order but stopped despising them.

Conservative legal scholar Ed Whelan wrote on X that the Trump administration's violation of federal court orders would be “extremely serious.”

“I would like to say that the argument that the true extraordinary situation (the creation of the wild hypothetical) may prove contrary to the truth,” Mr. Whelan wrote. “But there should be an overwhelming presumption in our constitutional system to support administration,” he wrote. The department complies with federal court orders.”

Some legal experts say that if Trump doesn’t obey the court, so when it’s time for the president to see the president’s implementation of his own legitimate agenda, the decision may come back and bite him. For example, democracies like California may tend to ignore White House directives and federal laws they don’t like – and it’s hard for Trump to bring it to his heel with a court.

“If the executive decides to obey some court orders, but no other court orders, it will find that it won't get any court orders that you wish to obey,” said Philip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University School of Law. “I'm just Don't think they do that.”

When Donald Trump renovated his Oval Office in January to his preferences, he reinstalled the portrait of President Andrew Jackson, which hung during his first term On the wall on the decisive table.

The seventh US president is remembered at a critical moment in his pivotal court. When the Justice ruled in 1832 that a dispute arose between the Government of Georgia and Cherokee India, Jackson seemed uninterested in following his direction.

Jackson allegedly said of the Chief Justice’s ruling: “John Marshall made the decision; let him enforce it now!”

Nearly 200 years later, Trump himself collided with the US judiciary.