gotchanewsdaily.com 
CNN
—
The new Trump presidency has arrived where it was always destined to land — in the courts.
The White House suffered a pair of hitches Thursday in its drive to shred the US government using expansive and questionable executive power.
A federal judge in Massachusetts pushed a deadline for federal government employees to accept a deferred resignation offer until at least Monday. And two judges have now blocked, at least temporarily, Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship — a key tool in the new administration’s new hardline policy targeting undocumented migrants.
And late on Thursday, two labor groups representing the US Agency for International Development (USAID) employees sued President Donald Trump over his attempt to shutter an agency that has helped save millions of lives and been a vital arm of US soft power. This came after sources told CNN that fewer than 300 of the agency’s workforce of 10,000 are expected to keep their jobs.
These are far from the only cases filed to challenge Trump’s presidential authority since he took office less than three weeks ago. The legal system is about to be clogged with multiple battles over his second presidency. But they are among the most significant early tests of the judiciary’s capacity to constrain what many experts see as blatantly unconstitutional acts that have the capacity to fundamentally change the presidency and the political system. And they could also decide on the legality of the sweeping and opaque operation by Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency.
“The courts, if they interpret the Constitution correctly, are going to stop Musk, are going to stop Trump,” Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Ed Markey told CNN’s Erin Burnett on Thursday.
“Article One is the Congress. Article Two is the president, Article Three is the judiciary. There is not an Article 3.5 where Elon Musk gets to do whatever he wants to do,” Markey said. “They are trying to rewrite constitutional law in this country.”
Given Republican control of Congress, the confirmation of Trump ultra-loyalist Pamela Bondi as his attorney general and the president’s installation of members of his personal legal team at the top of the Justice Department, the independent court system may be the last bulwark against his instinct to wield expansive power.
Judge John Coughenour, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan, offered the most comprehensive summation of the stakes yet on Thursday in a hearing challenging Trump’s attempt to cancel birthright citizenship.
“It has become ever-more apparent that to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain,” Coughenour said in Seattle. “In this courtroom and under my watch, the rule of law is a bright beacon which I intend to follow.”
The courts cannot stop everything Trump wants to do
But the courts are unlikely to prove a fully satisfying answer to Trump’s critics.
Few of the cases that will arise may be as apparently unequivocal as the one on birthright citizenship. And while the administration would obviously prefer to prevail in as many cases as possible, even the act of waging legal battles will be seen by many Trump supporters as a show of strength. And administration officials also believe that, ultimately, large pieces of Trump’s executive power project will win approval from the conservative majority on the Supreme Court, which he built during his first term. After all, the court has already shown itself to be sympathetic to his view of expanded presidential power, not least in its ruling that granted him substantial immunity for official acts, which arose from his now-shelved criminal election interference matter.
Even if a substantial fraction of Trump’s power tests end up being approved by the high court, he will considerably reshape the scope of the presidency. And in his second term, many of his executive orders appear far more carefully drafted than some of the hurried and legally imprecise actions of his early first term.
Some Republicans dismiss early court blows to Trump’s agenda, arguing that the plaintiffs are mostly picking favorable jurisdictions to file challenges. This is true, and it was a tactic also used by conservative groups that challenged Biden administration policies, notably on abortion. But in a way, the Trump administration is making a similar bet in confidently relying on conservative Supreme Court justices to approve even more presidential power.
A delay in Trump’s bid to purge federal workers
The paused deadline on federal employee resignations slowed, for now, the White House’s attempt to obliterate large sections of the federal workforce and to dramatically trim the professional civil service.
Until the ruling, eligible federal workers had until 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday to decide whether to take the offer, which, the administration says, would generally allow them to leave their jobs but be paid through the end of September.
The lawsuit against Trump; Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has been put in charge of USAID; and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent asks the court to order the administration to reverse its decision to dissolve the agency.
“Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle USAID were taken pursuant to congressional authorization,” the lawsuit said. “And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency.”
The delay comes with huge questions over the resignation offer that are not just about its legality. Many workers are unsure whether the administration can be trusted with its promise to keep paying them if they leave their jobs. There is also uncertainty about whether the executive branch even has the legal authority to make the offer, since the workers’ wages are part of money authorized by Congress, which under the Constitution, has the power of the purse.
An administration official told CNN Thursday that at least 65,000 employees have already accepted the package. That’s a tiny percentage of the entire federal government workforce of at least 2 million people. The White House has said its target is for between 5% and 10% of employees to resign.
Doubts over the viability of Trump’s bid to end birthright citizenship
The legal showdown on birthright citizenship may be an exception among Trump cases in that it’s not even certain the Supreme Court would take it up.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Deborah Boardman ruled that the executive order on the issue “conflicts with the plain language of the 14th Amendment, contradicts 125-year old binding Supreme Court precedent and runs counter to our nation’s 250-year history of citizenship by birth.”
In the other case on birthright citizenship, Coughenour issued a nationwide preliminary injunction against Trump’s order that expands the short-term block he previously imposed.
“The Constitution is not something with which the government can play policy games,” the judge said, accusing the administration of overstepping its authority. “If the government wants to change the exceptional American grant of birthright citizenship, it needs to amend the Constitution itself.”
Such a process would be hugely unlikely to succeed since it requires two-thirds of both chambers of Congress to propose such a move or two-thirds of state legislatures to call a constitutional convention. A drafted amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the states — an unlikely scenario in a country that remains closely divided despite Trump’s instinct to rule as if he has huge majorities.
The administration has suffered several other temporary court setbacks so far. On Tuesday, a federal judge blocked the transfer of three transgender women currently housed in women’s federal prisons. And last week, a judge put a hold on the White House’s sudden temporary freeze on federal grants and loans, which the Office of Management and Budget eventually rescinded.
In another case, FBI agents who took part in investigations of Trump are suing over the new Justice Department’s efforts to make a list of such employees amid fears that they could be being lined up for dismissal.
Chris Mattei, an attorney representing some of the agents, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Wednesday that his clients had simply been doing their duty and that it was chilling that they might now face retribution and could also be at risk of reprisals from January 6, 2021, rioters whom Trump pardoned and freed from jail. “Federal agents are used to being in danger. They are not used to being in danger from the actions of their own government,” Mattei said.
‘The doomsday scenario’
Three weeks in, the growing storm of lawsuits means some of this young administration’s most extraordinary applications of unilateral presidential power could be reined in. But the litigation also conjures a scenario that no one wants to think about: what would happen if the administration refused to recognize court rulings — even one handed down by the Supreme Court?
This is a particularly acute matter because it’s the Justice Department, which is now operating under Trump’s firm hand, that’s responsible for enforcing the law. The constitutional remedy for a president who breaks the law is impeachment, but Republicans have twice shown that they will not hold Trump to account in such trials, making moot this key check on power envisioned by the founders.
“That is the doomsday scenario,” Ryan Goodman, a former Defense Department special counsel and NYU law professor, told CNN’s Burnett. “So far, they are complying with all the court orders, but what happens come the day that they do lose at the Supreme Court?” Goodman asked.
“If they really want to push it, we are in a real constitutional crisis.”
