The legal confrontation is coming as Trump proves the limits of presidential power

In the first weeks of his second term, President Donald Trump has not lost his time in the flexion of his political muscle. That is clear.

Since he assumed the position in January, he ordered the suspension of all new asylum claims, canceled the resettlement of refugees, the hiring and expenditure of the frozen government, the agencies destroyed the agencies established by the Congress, prohibited the transition care gender for adolescents and offered a purchase agreement for hundreds of thousands of federals of federals. workers.

The whirlwind of unilateral action in its campaign promises has exceeded the limits of presidential power, and caused legal challenges of Democrats, unions and legal groups. Until now, federal courts have been the only substantive obstacles of Trump’s agenda, since judges have temporarily suspended some of the most controversial proposals, including the end of automatic citizenship for any person born on American soil.

But Trump is pressing, and seems to be headed for a confrontation with the Judiciary that could eventually end in the highest court on Earth. This week, a Rhode Island judge said the Trump administration was Clearly and openly challenging his court order to defrost billions in federal funds. The White House responded by saying that “every action” that the president took was “completely legal.”

If Trump’s orders arrive at the United States Supreme Court, six of the nine judges there, including three designated by Trump in their first mandate, they are conservative. Just the last term, the court issued a decision retaining Trump and all future presidents, largely immune to the prosecution of official shares while they were in office.

At that time, it was a historical expansion of the presidential authority. But some observers have suggested that Trump’s last movements could be part of a strategy to expand their powers even more. If the higher courts agree to maintain some of their executive orders, they could strengthen their ability to promulgate policy changes without the help of Congress.

And even if the courts govern against the president, says Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional expert at the Manhattan Institute, those legal defeats could be politically advantageous.

“There could be political benefits to be challenged in court and even lose in court because then you can run against the judges and make political hay.”

However, there is another scenario. Trump could simply refuse to comply with any court that tries to stop his presidential power exercise without restrictions.

In the comments of Oval Office on Tuesday, the president hinted that this could be an option, in its typically oblique way.

“We want to eliminate corruption,” Trump said. “And it seems difficult to believe that a judge could say that we do not want you to do that.”

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

On Sunday, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, was even more forceful.

“The judges are not allowed to control the legitimate power of the Executive,” X Comply with any court order that prevented federal workers from saying goodbye.

However, directly challenging a judicial ruling would be reduced against centuries of the history of the United States and would be equivalent to opening skirmishes in a constitutional crisis that faces the president against the government’s branch designed to establish and interpret the law of the land.

“My reading is that President Trump is testing the outer limits of what could come out with his, doing many things that are blatantly against the law and perhaps some things that are closer to the line,” said Fred Smith, professor in the Law Faculty of Emory.

“They are breaking many norms,” ​​Smith added from the nascent Trump administration. “Why he’s doing that, only he knows completely. But he’s doing it.”

Until now, Trump and his allies have made aggressive comments on unfavorable judicial decisions in the public and in legal presentations, but they have not yet been sanctioned for disobeying a court. When Trump was the objective of multiple prosecutions in the last four years, he often questioned the legitimacy of the President Judges, but his lawyers of the Court adhered to the law and legal procedures.

The federal judge in Rhode Island, who had suspended another Trump order to freeze some federal expenses, warned in the presentation of the Court on Monday that the administration was violating its temporary restriction order, but did not find them in contempt.

The conservative legal scholar Ed Whelan wrote in X that it would be “extremely serious” for the Trump administration to challenge an order of the Federal Court.

“I am open to the argument that really extraordinary circumstances (the characteristics of a hypothetical wild) could justify the challenge,” Whelan wrote. “But in our constitutional system there must be an overwhelming presumption in favor of compliance with the Executive Branch with the orders of the Federal Court.”

If Trump disobeys and, therefore, delegates, the courts, the decision could bite him again when the time comes that the president sees his own forced legal agenda, some legal experts say. Democratic states such as California, for example, could be inclined to ignore the directives of the White House and federal laws that they do not like, and Trump would be difficult to use the courts to take them to Heel.

“If the executive decides that he will obey some judicial orders but not others, he will find that he will not receive any court order that he wishes to obey,” said Philip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar of the Law School of the University of Columbia. “I just don’t think they thought about it.”

When Donald Trump redecored the Oval office to his liking in January, he reinstated a portrait of President Andrew Jackson who had hung on the wall in front of the desk solved in his first mandate.

The seventh president of the United States is remembered for a critical moment of challenge against the Supreme Court of the United States. When the judges decided a dispute between the state of Georgia and the Indian governments Cherokee in 1832, Jackson did not seem interested in following his direction.

Jackson allegedly said about the decision of the president of Justice: “John Marshall has made his decision; now that he enforces him!”

Almost 200 years later, Trump himself has been found in his own collision course with the Judicial Power of the United States.