In the past week, federal judges have blocked one Trump executive excess after another. It doesn’t bode well for Trump’s attempted dictatorship.
Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia temporarily enjoined Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund intended to compensate supposed victims of alleged lawfare, including those convicted of committing crimes in connection with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Brinkema’s court order prohibits the Justice Department from transferring any money into the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” or processing any claims.
Late Monday, in the face of a revolt by numerous Republican senators, Trump paused the fund. The Department of Justice issued a statement saying that it “disagrees strongly” with the judge’s decision but would abide by it.
Leaks by two White House officials to Axios suggested that Trump was giving up on the fund. However, the judge’s ruling merely ordered a temporary suspension. The Justice Department statement stops well short of saying that the fund is defunct, and one official quoted by Axios left open the possibility that Trump may yet try to revive it.
The court ruling was a convenient pretext for political backpedaling. The deeper reason for Trump’s apparent capitulation was the defection of key Republican senators opposed to the slush fund, who have blocked Trump’s requested $72 billion for immigration enforcement. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, who met with Trump at the White House Tuesday afternoon, reportedly urged him to scrap the fund.
Judge Brinkema has scheduled a hearing for June 12. She was responding to a suit brought by several plaintiffs, including a former prosecutor of cases from the January 6th attack. Others include a professor prosecuted after protesting an immigration raid, a city threatened with loss of federal funding in retaliation for limiting cooperation with ICE, and an association of abortion clinics. These plaintiffs and others argued that the fund was illegal and intended to benefit only Trump allies. Indeed, the only lawfare being systematically practiced is Trump’s.
The fund was created based on a settlement agreement between Trump and the Justice Department in response to a personal lawsuit that Trump filed in federal district court in Florida challenging his treatment by the IRS. But now that deal is also under fresh judicial scrutiny.
The presiding judge, Kathleen Williams, had closed the case after Trump’s personal lawyers moved to drop it. But last Wednesday, in an action without precedent, a group of 35 former federal judges urged her to reopen the case, pointing out that Trump was corruptly on both sides of the case, as private citizen and as president, negotiating with himself. On Friday, Williams reopened the case and ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond, also by June 12.
These two rulings interact with a long-deferred mutiny by dozens of Republican senators who were caught completely by surprise by the announcement of the slush fund. According to numerous press reports citing sources who were in the room, the anger from Republican senators directed against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at a May 21 meeting was blistering.
The Senate then went into recess without passing the administration’s $72 billion request for immigration enforcement. Senate leaders, who returned to session yesterday, have told Trump to forget about that funding until the slush fund is repealed. It’s not yet clear whether the ambiguous White House and Justice Department statements on the slush fund will be sufficient to persuade the Senate leadership to cut loose the immigration financing unless the elimination of the fund is locked into law.
At least seven GOP senators have demonstrated the capacity to defy Trump. The group includes moderates Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Kentucky’s two senators, former Republican leader Mitch McConnell and libertarian Rand Paul. In addition, senators forced into early retirement by Trump—John Cornyn of Texas, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—have nothing to lose by opposing him.
“I do think the best way to handle it is if the administration decides to shut it down themselves,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) told reporters Monday.
The judicial revolt against Trump doesn’t stop there. Judges and dissenting GOP senators have become emboldened in tandem.
On Friday, Judge Christopher Cooper of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to remove Trump’s name from the building, and from all official materials and signage, within 14 days. “Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name,” he wrote, “and only Congress can change it.” Judge Cooper also blocked the plan to close the center for two years.
Yet another judge has blocked funding for Trump’s ballroom. And Thune explicitly defied Trump’s request to add it to the aforementioned immigration legislation.
TRUMP’S PROPOSED SLUSH FUND is his most extreme case of executive overreach yet. While it is satisfying to watch other judges overrule his vanity projects, the interactions of the courts and the Senate is far more important.
In devising separation of powers, the constitutional founders created the legislative and judicial branches as restraints on executive power. After some hesitation, the two other branches are acting as the founders intended.
For a few days, Trump was energized by his successes in primaries. But rather than consolidating Trump’s dominance, the successes weakened Trump’s power where it counts: in Congress.
John Cornyn is very well liked by his Republican colleagues, and the Senate Republican leadership is justifiably worried that state Attorney General Ken Paxton, the winner of the Texas primary, will be far easier for Democrat James Talarico to defeat. Resentment that Trump used his influence to help Paxton take out Cornyn was perfectly timed to accelerate Senate outrage over the slush fund surprise.
The constitutional founders, mindful of executive overreach, also provided that only Congress can declare war. Both houses may well invoke the War Powers Act to cast votes against Trump’s stalemated Iran war, which will leave the U.S. weaker and Iran stronger than before the war began. A war powers vote is expected in the House this week. Trump will veto any such legislation. But politically, the vote of no confidence against a disastrous and needless war will be real.
The long-awaited inflection point will constrain Trump’s drive to be a dictator. This will make it less likely that the November 2026 election will be replaced by some kind of coup.
When the Duke of Wellington described his hard-fought victory over Napoleon at the decisive Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he characterized it in remarks often summarized as “a close-run thing.” As democracy’s guardrails have sometimes seemed too frail to contain Trump, I have consistently believed and written that our democracy will survive Trump. But future historians will write that it was a close-run thing.
