March 6, 2025 - 7:30pm
Donald Trump’s flurry of activity since taking office has had major ripple effects, and some of those waves have now reached the bench of the Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the court blocked Trump’s attempts to pause disbursements of foreign aid. Some of the changes from the President’s first month back in the White House will ultimately survive but, for the time being, many of those waves are breaking against a hostile and rocky shore.
Is this simply Deep State resistance and bitter-end anti-Trumpism? Or is it the natural reaction of the judiciary to unprecedented changes in the laws of the country? Ultimately, it’s both.
Some of the President’s initiatives were initially designed to provoke court challenges. His Executive Order purporting to remove birthright citizenship from children born in America to illegal immigrant parents, for example, defies more than a century of case law and conventional wisdom. It’s a significant change that went over the head of Congress and the courts. That was always going to be challenged, and Trump’s goal may just have been to force the Supreme Court to weigh in. Resistance was anticipated and factored into the strategy.
Other policy decisions, though, seem more narrowly calculated to stay within the traditional powers of the American chief executive. Statutes and case law give the president wide — though not unlimited — power over the federal workforce. But every firing has been held up in court challenges that seek to impose the will of the unelected judiciary over that of the executive, even when it comes to managing executive branch employees. Likewise, every grant of federal money, no matter how ridiculous or absurd (such as research on transgender mice) is now championed by Democrats as essential to the integrity of the American republic.
Cuts to the federal workforce and to eccentric spending earmarks are far from unpopular with the public; and in the intense pushback in the courts, Democrats may be overplaying their hand. We might expect resistance to the changes in citizenship law, given that it will have real, permanent effects on millions of people. But when Democrats take to the barricades to protect, for example, “eight million dollars to promote LGBTQI+ in the African nation of Lesotho”, they appear completely out of touch with the American people.
Trump’s political opponents can’t help falling into this trap. They scream that he is maniacal, crazy, a would-be dictator with no respect for the rule of law or the norms of American politics. And then they immediately trash those laws and norms in an equally maniacal attempt to stop him.
“Democracy dies in darkness!” they cry, and then try to exclude Trump from the ballot. “He will go after his enemies in court!” they worry, after having done the same to him on flimsy charges. One Democrat held up a sign during Trump’s Tuesday speech saying “this is not normal”, and minutes later another Democratic congressman was ejected from the chamber for the decidedly not-normal offence of heckling the President of the United States during an address to Congress.
The courts are skewered on the horns of the same dilemma. Should they try to be normal and enforce executive decisions they oppose, or should they resort to abnormal twisting of the law to fight back? By choosing the latter, they will be undermining their own legitimacy and non-partisan credentials. When it comes to foreign aid, two of the court’s conservative justices joined the three liberals in opposing the administration’s halt. It may be that the Trump-friendly judges want the court to appear independent and thereby neutralise complaints that it is compromised. But this only delays the inevitable — the case will return to the Supreme Court and every justice will have to take a side.
Trump is not normal: that’s why he won. But his real talent is that in every action — normal or abnormal — he provokes the opposition to such paroxysms of rage that they look equally abnormal, if not even more so. Democrats think they have an advantage attracting people who seek a return to normalcy. Then they immediately throw it away by using cringeworthy tactics to back fringe policies. Is it any wonder that Trump won in November?
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SubscribeIt is obscene that one Biden elected local judge can force the American people to hand over $2 billion dollars for causes neither they nor their elected officials support.
The $2 billion is to pay for things that have already been delivered. To stop the US government from being a deadbeat that doesn’t honor its contract obligations.
If they’ve “already been delivered”, what further obligations are there?
To pay for them, dimwit
Is that right?
What do you mean by “them”?
Do you actually have the faintest clue what you’re talking about?
(PS: we already know the answer.)
Try reading your own comment where you refer to “they’ve” and work back from there.
LOL! Not too smart are you, our kid?
It does my heart good to see you and your ilk so angry that you cannot control yourselves any more. We are being treated to a look at what is really roiling around in your addled-pated skulls.
We have been saying for years now that the left is full of hate. Thank you for the practical demonstration.
It seems to be the fate of idealists to obtain what they have struggled for in a form which destroys their ideals….Bertrand Russell
Mainly payment. Although I should have said, is already in the process of being delivered.
Such as what exactly? Honest question. I have no idea.
I don’t know either. Apparently the parties met with the judge at a status conference today and they have agreed on a list. As I understand it, one example is that over half a billion dollars of food and medical supplies is sitting on ships at various stages of delivery that cannot be invoiced until delivery, but the freeze in funds has frozen the delivery process. The objective is to get that taken care of so the cargo doesn’t go to waste.
In gutting the government Elon Musk is taking as his template what he did at Twitter, but that was a special case. Twitter is a services company that runs on software and doesn’t need a lot of people. The real world of hard goods is quite different. (And Elon Musk ruined Twitter as a company. Its value cratered.)
What’s sad is that DOGE is doing a lot of damage but little good. What it has done so far will be a blib in the budget that will not make a bit of difference long term.
But we also have the EPA example where Biden threw $20 bill at a handful of NGOs. Some of these groups had existed for only a couple years with no track record of doing anything, and all had political connections to Biden and Obama. I’m wondering specifically about this $2 bill.
The Supreme Court was wondering about the details of the $2 billion too so they told the lower court to sort it all out and make sure the payments are legitimate and the payment deadlines are realistic. That was largely done yesterday at a status conference but I haven’t seen a good analysis of what was agreed to.
This $2 billion is not like Joe Biden’s ridiculous climate change and technology largess from the Inflation Reduction Act, money that was largely wasted. The electric car mandates and subsidies in particular did more to distort the market and reward the undeserving than they did to spur innovation and reduce carbon emissions.
I work in the electric car industry and I thought I would apply for some of that grant money a couple of years ago. I went to the website and in capital, bolded letters was a warning that the DEI portion of the grant application was its most important part. It seems that not only did we have to show our company was diverse, we had to show that our work would benefit underserved groups. I didn’t bother to even apply.
So while I don’t object to the spirit of what DOGE is doing, I am glad to see courts step in and say, not so fast. Firing all the federal government’s new hires is a stupid thing to do. Indiscriminately giving all employees money to leave is a stupid thing to do. And abruptly cutting off humanitarian aid (the majority of what USAID is) is a stupid thing to do.
Elon Musk is a genius, but he still does plenty of stupid things. I hope that between the courts and people like Marco Rubio pushing back on him he will get frustrated and leave Washington DC. We will all be better off if that happens, including Elon Musk.
I don’t think the fact that the courts are considering these moves is an unforeseen result. I believe that the entire object is to force the courts to, in a very public way, address the Constitutionality and legality of a huge swath of what has become a fetid stinking feeding trough for corrupt politicians.
Right now everyone is looking at this huge issue…Trump wins.
Delivered to contractors and ngos, not spent.
I’m not sure but I think Carlos is correct. This $2B is basically “accounts payable”; the work has been delivered and “the check is in the mail”, or at least it should be. Or, as in Carlos’ example, the final payment is required to deliver the goods.
The dissenters on the Court objected to having some minor court dictate policy to the new President. It was not really a judgment about hair transplants for transgender mice, or whatever.
I think it’s obscene that every single judge, or so it seems, can be identified by a political persuasion, which is then used to attack their judgements irrespective of merit. Why is it that the US legal system is so politicised? How can it properly do its job of being independent of both the legislature and the executive so as to uphold the law?
How do you suggest we find judges without political opinions? The problem isn’t that judges are human but that our laws are so complex and ambiguous they are open to partisan interpretation. It’s a basic problem of democracy: voters want action without compromise. The result is that Congress passes big laws that sound good, and leaves the tricky bits to be sorted out later. Cue the necessity of a partisan judiciary.
The Supreme Court’s decision not to stay the order requiring disbursements was actually made on narrow technical grounds and is much less a ‘win’ or ‘loss’ for Trump’s plans than ignorant commentators would have you believe. In these fraught times CJ Roberts is working hard to keep the Court as apolitical as he can… not an easy task.
In case it’s relevant, I would not have the faintest idea about the political opinion of any judge in the UK system (I have lived there for 6 decades and know quite a lot of lawyers, and even a handful of judges). Maybe have a look at that to work out how to do it?
Then I suggest you are not paying close attention. Let’s say Brexit is the most salient dividing line in today’s UK politics… and it seems to me that the judges in the UK appear to be uniformly against it, at least broadly conceived. Look at the various controversies over (for example) the Rwanda scheme, or the relationship between ECHR and Parliament more broadly. To describe these judicial decisions as non-partisan or politically-neutral is woefully naive, in my opinion.
Can you imagine it was possible when the UK joined the ECHR that the people who voted for it had any idea it would mean they had no option but to allow millions of immigrants to swamp the country?
“Should they [the courts] try to be normal and enforce executive decisions they oppose, or should they resort to abnormal twisting of the law to fight back?”
But this sentence itself is part of the problems. Courts do not exist to support or oppose executive decisions and policies. They exist to interpret and uphold the law.
Trump will likely lose many of the challenges he provokes. Even so, the challenges themselves serve to illuminate issues to the populace that the media would otherwise never expose. This is the greatest hazard for the Democratic Party that remains in denial as to what truly explains the election of Donald Trump. Democrats are squandering an opportunity to get in front of the cascade of revelations about abuse of taxpayer money and interests. If they were smart they would rebrand themselves as reformers of a broken system that should be leaner, more efficient, and responsive to the voters. Instead they are doubling down on obfuscation, arrogance, and ad hominum.
Trump is the most scrutinized president in history. Every crevice of his life has been excavated by political archeologists seeking to undo him. He is incapable of dissimulation; so every thought he has drops unfiltered onto his tongue. With Trump, what you see and hear is what you get, a paradigm unprecedented in the political universe. That the Democrats persist in the conviction that the public will be swayed against him by their shining more bright lights on his offensiveness is a study in self-delusion. Everyone knows Trump. Do Democrats think there is a well of recluses out there who have been mistakenly under the impression that Trump is a humble, self-effacing, paragon of virtue? Do they think there are minds left to be convinced about his nature?
What Democrats cannot bring themselves to see is an American public now quite curious about and suspicious of them and what they have been up to. An economic or geopolitical catastrophe could be Trump’s undoing but, so far, Democrats show no sign of correcting their slide.
The problem for the Dems with a “leaner, more efficient” system is that the Party is completely focused on money. From the bosses and captains, down to the soldiers, everyone must get their cut. Efficiency is not a good thing in a system like that.
Much of that money was contributions willingly given to the Party by the foolish faithful. Thanks to Mr. Trump we now know how much of it was really just graft.
To be clear: By absolute definition, Americans have deemed Trump more normal than his political opponents, when they elected him last November.
Hardly.
Trump may have won the election by a pretty fine margin – nothing like the thrashing he got from Biden in 2020 – but he is still a very weird guy.
The people who voted for him are just stupid.
Party of Civility has joined the chat.
Yup – Champagne Socialist did what the Democrat leadership does repeatedly to their own detriment- they disparage at least have of the electorate that might possibly vote for them but won’t. No one likes to be called ‘stupid’ – it’s just juvenile.
This is absolutely fantastic!
I rather prefer to think of it that they deemed this an appropriate time and place to place a disruptive agent of chaotic change in charge of the government out of general dissatisfaction with said government. The people have done this before. Lincoln, Jackson, and FDR were all opposed very strongly by elites of one sort or another for different reasons. They too faced widespread opposition and one ended up having to fight a war, but they all ended up getting most of what they wanted anyway.
Test
“The more I think about it old Billy was right let’s kill all the lawyers, let’s kill em tonight”
Starting with Starmer.
Assassinating the Prime Minister – that should help eh
The ‘transgender mice’ thing – it’s a LIE! The mice in question were not “transgender”; they were “transgenic,” which means they are genetically altered for use in scientific experiments to learn more about human health.
So many lies – $350bn for Ukraine – it’s a LIE! US aid c.$120bn, European aid c.$140bn, both with minority elements of loans. As pointed out several times to Trump but he keeps repeating the lie! Why? How can you support someone who just keeps lying to you? How do you know when it isn’t a lie?
Possibly because all of the others also lie so it’s really business as usual…but way more entertaining…
I don’t find supporting a brutal, expansionist dictator like Putin ‘entertaining’. Still, when POTUS’ take on his vicious bullying of VZ is that it was ‘great television’, then that is the end of statesmanship and it’s all just bread and circuses for the proles.
The thing that provokes the most support for Trump is the hollow moral grandstanding of his detractors.
It would be incredibly easy to find dozens of lies told by the Democrats during the Biden presidency that were far more insidious and damaging than the usual Trump bluster.
Trump’s funding Putin,is he? Well he funded the Ukrainian Nazis, neatly tucked into the regular army, to purify them, I suppose.
Maybe try being serious by dressing for the occasion.
Are you serious? VZ has not worn a suit since the Russians invaded and has sworn not to do so until they leave. How about some respect for that? Musk with cap on (!) t-shirt etc in the Oval Office – no disrespect? Arab leaders etc in their traditional dress and not a western suit – is that disrespect?
An alternative take on your three points is that;
Trump is explicitly recognising that Europe and the US are not, and never have been, willing to pay the price of actually driving Russia out of the whole of Ukraine’s territory (as distinct from maintaining the current conflict and sapping Russia’s power while devastating the Ukraine);
it was Zelensky who went off-script in the televised meeting, which he had wanted in that form, not Trump, in the hope of changing Trump’s mind;
”it was great television” is the wry comment of a man with a sense of humour about something that didn’t go as planned.
Did you find the spectacle of a doddering, delusional and incontinent old man pretending to be President while who knows who funneled billions of money into Democratic money laundries half of which went into corrupt pockets and the rest into brainwashing teenage boys into chopping off their penises, to be more to your taste?.
There are certainly studies on transgenic mice — but there have also been mouse studies on the effects of various hormone therapies on mice labelled things like “Microbiome mediated effects of gender affirming hormone therapy in mice”
https://reporter.nih.gov/search/-NkoAnjCB0uKdDs0r_5qxw/project-details/10944419
Reading this as being about “transgender mice” may not be accurate, but we read worse misrepresentations of scientific studies than this every day in supposedly good journalism.
For most of us the difference between $350bn and $120bn is the stuff of fantasy. The point is that it’s A LOT OF MONEY! And it would have been better spent at home.
I certainly hope that my fellow Trump fans aren’t relying on him for the truth.
You’re wrong about the transgender mice experiments. It wasn’t transgenic mice, it was mice given the same hormone treatments that are given to transgender humans. The experiment was to test the effects of the hormone treatments on mice. The mice were made transgender, and it had nothing to do with genes.
Now the title stated the Supreme court ….as an ignorant Brit I thought Trump had packed that already?
Transgenic mice, not transgender mice. There is a difference. Sigh.
No, it was transgender mice not transgenic mice. The mice were given the same hormone treatments given to transgender humans.
The first rule of the Gravy Train is: you do not talk about the Gravy Train. The second rule of the Gravy Train is: you DO NOT talk about the Gravy Train!
Did no one at UnHerd notice that whoever wrote this headline apparently didn’t read the piece, or else intentionally larded it with a false and misleading implication?
Well spotted – I wondered that as well.
So the proposition is that the Supreme Court, stuffed with Heritage Foundation appointees that gave presidents absolute immunity, immasculated federal regulation and neutralised progressive protection of women’s control over their bodies, is in fact an arm of the deep state waging war against Trump? Come off it!! A totally ridiculous unreadable article.
The conservative organization of legal scholars that vets potential Supreme Court nominees and provides mostly Republican administrations with that list is The Federalist Society. The Heritage Foundation is also conservative but is mostly oriented toward policy development and advocacy.
In paras 3 and 4 there’s speculation on Trump’s policies and the thinking behind them. He doesn’t have policies and is incapable of joined up thinking. I’m astounded at the number of journalists who flatter this man so; he once thought drinking bleach was a fine policy.
“Trump’s political opponents … scream that he is maniacal, crazy, a would-be dictator with no respect for the rule of law or the norms of American politics. And then they immediately trash those laws and norms in an equally maniacal attempt to stop him.”
Precisely!
And, as in the UK, the USA judiciary has evolved a tendency oppose conservative elected governments and develop law by precedent outside the scope of the law-making parliamentary bodies elected for that purpose. The time has come to re-programme unaccountable judiciaries back to their original purpose – to interpret and uphold the law.