President Donald Trump’s unprecedented power grabs within his first three weeks in office have provoked an opposite and equal reaction in the form of an avalanche of lawsuits.
Now, how far the president can plunge the United States into a constitutional crisis could depend on a handful of federal judges.
Americans should be prepared for the administration to ignore them, “unless and until there's real enforcement, either by law enforcement or by the Supreme Court,” says Ty Cobb, a former White House counsel during Trump’s first administration.
“The real question is, will Trump honor those orders?” Cobb tells The Independent.
“I think the real question is not whether the courts are going to do their job, but whether or not, once they do their job, it’ll have much effect on Trump, unless and until the Supreme Court intervenes, because that’s the only court he seems to listen to,” he says.
The president, convinced of his own supreme authority, has handed de facto control of the levels of government to the world’s wealthiest man, an unelected troll whose private business interests intersect with the government he is actively disemboweling.
While Elon Musk launches a national-scale hacking of government data, Trump has tried to unilaterally rewrite the Constitution, abolish federal agencies, nullify laws and block congressionally approved aid as he fires prosecutors and inspectors general.
The administration is now battling dozens of lawsuits — from civil rights groups, state officials, nonprofits, doctors, incarcerated Americans, pregnant immigrant women, transgender teens, FBI agents and active-duty service members — all hoping to put a stop to sweeping executive orders and legally dubious actions that have quickly thrown government agencies into chaos.
A bulk of those lawsuits were filed in Washington, D.C., where dockets are quickly filling up with litigation outnumbering the judges presiding over them. Democrats in Congress, who have had months to prepare for this moment, appear to be struggling to respond to the pace of the president’s actions.
But judges across the country are already derailing Trump’s plans, which have rapidly unfolded within less than a month of his second term, barely giving his opponents time to react before his administration reveals another series of dizzying actions.
Two judges have already blocked the White House from freezing federal funding. Another struck down parts of an executive order that would have forced incarcerated transgender women to move into men’s prisons without access to gender-affirming health care. And two judges in separate cases delivered damning rebukes of Trump’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment — cases that appear designed to force the Supreme Court to settle the question.
Enforcement of those court orders will be up to the federal agencies Trump and his allies are currently purging of insufficiently loyal personnel.
But at that point, Trump will have successfully flooded the zone with what his opponents see as unserious and illegal actions given serious weight by a press he demonizes, as part of a broader right-wing plan to shift the so-called Overton window — the range of politically acceptable ideas — to legitimize anti-democratic ones.
“He’s highly confident that the new watermark will be deeper inland than it was when he started. There's no doubt about that,” Cobb tells The Independent.
“Trump is 100 percent ruled by his narcissistic impulses,” he says. “Any slight gets an immediate reaction, any criticism creates an enemy and purpose for vengeance, any opportunity to enhance his power or popularity gets an immediate idiotic statement, like, ‘I'm going to take over Gaza.’ … Trump doesn't have a plan. He’s sort of enjoying the ride. The reality is there are no speed bumps. There are no there are no guardrails.”
It is hard to distinguish whether Trump’s actions are a “concerted attack on the rule of law or just a bunch of people running around saying ‘what happens if I push this button?’” writes Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“There is a bright thread running through, beyond bombast, ego, and a desire to smash government, any government,” he writes. ”Over and over, their actions violate the law — either the Constitution, or statutes, or both. Some moves may be designed to dare the courts to sanction these power grabs. More likely, it seems increasingly clear, they don’t care.”
This time, there are no figures within his administration telling Trump that something is a bad idea, or politically untenable, or illegal.
“At this stage, I don’t think they care,” Cobb says.
There was no question as to what exactly Trump envisioned in his second term. It was spelled out explicitly in hours of campaign rallies and press conferences and in Truth Social posts.
The president also had radically shaped the federal judiciary during his first term, appointing 234 judges, including three conservative justices on the Supreme Court, which last summer granted him a new constitutional “immunity” doctrine that he has wielded to try to throw out his criminal convictions and civil lawsuits.
Vice President JD Vance told Breitbart that the president can “just do things.”
The White House has resolutely defended Trump’s actions, though it is unclear whether the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel is even reviewing them.
“Every action taken by the Trump-Vance administration is fully legal and compliant with federal law,” special assistant to the president and principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said in a statement to The Independent.
“Any legal challenge against it is nothing more than an attempt to undermine the will of the American people, who overwhelmingly elected President Trump to secure the border, revitalize the economy, and restore common-sense policies,” he added.
Congressional Republicans aren’t worried, either.
Trump’s firing of 17 nonpartisan inspectors general drew only a strongly worded letter from Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, who noted that Trump is required by law to send a 30-day notice with an explanation for removing them. Grassley did not call on Trump to rescind the firings.
A coalition of more than 100 civil rights and pro-democracy groups warned members of Congress that “millions of Americans are likely to be harmed if Elon Musk and DOGE are allowed to continue to infiltrate and take over critical government systems.”
“What we have seen from Elon Musk and DOGE indicates an astounding disregard for the law,” they wrote. “We demand that Congress act immediately to investigate the full scope of activities undertaken by Elon Musk and his representatives.”
With a Republican-controlled Congress, federal courts are acting as the “first line of defense” against Trump’s agenda, according to Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen.
“If Trump refuses to comply with court orders, we will be facing a full blown Constitutional crisis,” he writes.
The Brennan Center’s Waldman says that Trump’s administration isn’t merely pushing “boundaries” of the rule of law, but committing an “anti-constitutional lawbreaking spree” — and Republicans in Congress have “utterly abdicated.”
“The courts are gonna be heavily burdened in the sense that they have to make really consequential decisions, and that, historically, if you look at Trump, there’s no president that has provoked greater consternation over the Constitution and tested the limits of the Constitution more than he has — both as an executive and as an individual criminal,” Cobb says.
“And people should not expect that to slow down,” he tells The Independent. “If anything, they should expect the next two years to be a frantic assault on the Constitution.”
Waldman argues that federal courts “have a duty to step up,” but “ultimately, public opinion will matter most.”
“The real-world consequences — swooning stock markets, shuttered health clinics, and more — have yet to take hold,” he writes. “Perhaps the new administration has made an indelible bad impression on those beyond its loyalists. We will find out how many people truly care about the rule of law.”
