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It’s hard to open the news these days and not get the sense that American democracy is on the fritz. And I’m not just talking about if you’re mainlining MSNBC. Within the past week, a headline at the Financial Times reads: “US sliding towards 1930s-style autocracy, warns Ray Dalio.”
The Wall Street Journal reads: “In Trump’s Second Term, a Bolder President Charges Ahead Unchecked. Trump is frequently riffing on authoritarianism and ignoring caution from advisers.” The New York Times reads: “Historians See Autocratic Playbook in Trump’s Attacks on Science.”
President Trump has tested and – according to the courts – exceeded the bounds of his power while in office.
He’s deployed the National Guard against governors' wishes, levied tariffs of all manner, frozen funding to universities, cut off law firms from federal contracts, fast tracked deportations using the Alien Enemies Act, fired a Fed governor and heads of independent agencies, installed allies at the Department of Justice… the list goes on.
Some of this may fall into the category of “things that Democrats don’t like,” and the remedy for that is to win elections. Some of it may be illegal. And in those instances, the remedy is the courts.
One of the most important tests of our system is whether the courts recognize breaches of the law when they happen and whether involved parties comply with court rulings once they’re made.
So on today’s podcast I want to get beyond what can sometimes feel like a nebulous freakout and talk about the cases asserting that Trump has exceeded his power and check in on where they stand.
According to Just Security, there are at least 390 legal challenges to the Trump administration's actions, so we don’t get to all of them, but we touch on some key ones. With me to do that is Professor of Law at Cardozo, Jessica Roth. She’s also the co-director of the Center for Ethics in the Practice of Law and a former federal prosecutor.