Courts grapple with 'King' Trump
The White House sees few, if any, limits on President Trump's executive powers in his second term, but the federal court system is much less sure.
Trump's mass firings and dismantling of various independent agencies has run into hurdles in the judiciary, where the courts seem unamused with the “King” Trump idea that some of the president's allies have turned into social media memes.
“A President who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in one ruling rebuking Trump this week, pointing to an image the White House shared on X depicting the president as royalty.
After Trump’s first term, he pushed the bounds of power for former presidents, taking his case over presidential immunity to the Supreme Court amid four criminal indictments.
Now back in the Oval Office, Trump’s barrage of executive actions has sparked roughly 100 lawsuits, many of which challenge his expansionist view of presidential power.
In one of the latest challenges, Democratic state attorneys general on Friday joined the fight over the administration’s mass terminations of federal employees still in their probationary period.
“These mass firings are illegal and likely to cripple important federal initiatives throughout the country and in Michigan, and so we’re once again taking the White House to court,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (D) said in a statement.
Also in recent days, national Democrats, including the Democratic National Committee, commenced their first lawsuit against the new administration, accusing Trump of trying to weaponize the Federal Election Commission. And this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s chief financial officer challenged her termination over $80 million disbursed to New York City under a migrant housing grant.
The cases are just some of the latest lawsuits challenging dimensions of the Trump administration’s promotion of the “unitary executive theory,” which provides the president total control over the executive branch.
Before he became president, Trump’s business mogul status allowed him to make executive decisions with little pushback. On his reality television show “The Apprentice,” he notoriously coined the refrain “you’re fired,” earning him national recognition that ultimately paved his path to the White House.
He’s plowed ahead with that same mindset as president – only this time, he must face the courts.
Some of the harshest repulsion has come from Howell, a federal judge appointed by former President Obama who oversees a challenge to Trump’s firing of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) Chair Gwynne Wilcox.
At a Wednesday hearing, Howell called the administration’s argument that it’s undemocratic for unelected bureaucrats to make executive branch decisions without any recourse by the president “persuasive.”
Deepak Gupta, Wilcox’s lawyer, pushed back that Congress is elected, too, and America’s system calls for the president to enforce the laws created by the legislative branch.
"We don’t have a system in which we have an elected king,” Gupta said.
The judge was ultimately convinced by his argument, writing in her ruling reinstating Wilcox that Trump seems “intent” on pushing the bounds of his executive power to test “how much the courts will accept the notion of a presidency that is supreme.”
“The courts are now again forced to determine how much encroachment on the legislature our Constitution can bear and face a slippery slope toward endorsing a presidency that is untouchable by the law,” Howell said.
The case is one of multiple challenges to Trump’s firings of Democratic appointees at independent agencies that tee up whether their removal protections are constitutional. Similar cases also are proceeding over Trump’s firings at the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board and the Federal Labor Relations Authority.
During a hearing Friday in the latter case, the government again received a frosty reception. This time from U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan, an appointee of former President Biden who said she was “troubled” by some of the government’s positions.
“There is no recourse for a violation of the law under your theory...even though that would essentially wipe out Congress’s role and the courts?” the judge asked.
She posited that a determination the president encroached on Congress’s authority would leave her with no recourse, if the government’s representations were to be accepted.
“That is the government’s position,” said DOJ lawyer Alexander Resar.
Despite the administration only eking out a few successes in the trial courts, several judges have indicated they are just pit stops on the road to the Supreme Court, acknowledging that the high-stakes battles are destined to be decided by the justices, three of whom Trump has appointed.
The administration has hoped the high court’s conservative supermajority will ultimately agree with Trump’s expansionist view of presidential power and place the lower judges in check.
It may take time. U.S. Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger, whose firing challenge was the closest to being decided by high court, abandoned his lawsuit Thursday after suffering an appeals court loss.
“I think my odds of ultimately prevailing before the Supreme Court are long,” Dellinger said in his announcement. “Meanwhile, the harm to the agency and those who rely on it caused by a Special Counsel who is not independent could be immediate, grievous, and, I fear, uncorrectable.”
Though most of the lawsuits remain in early stages, pressure is already building in the court of public opinion from Trump’s allies and MAGA base, who have stepped up their criticisms of judges who have ruled against the president.
When one of Trump’s appointees, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, this week sided with the court’s three liberals and the chief justice to reject an emergency motion from the Trump administration regarding foreign aid, she faced rage from Trump’s allies.
“She’s a rattled law professor with her head up her a--,” Mike Davis, a firebrand Trump ally who has helped advise him on judicial picks, said on Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast.
Lower judges who have ruled against the administration have felt the heat, too.
Republicans have brought impeachment resolutions against federal district judges that ordered the administration to resume foreign aid payments, restrict access to critical Treasury Department systems and restore online health data taken down under Trump’s “gender ideology” order.
In a rare public statement, the Federal Judges Association (FJA) criticized an increase in threats to judges. The group, which is the nation's largest association of U.S. federal judges, said there has “always been tension” between the government’s three “separate and equal” branches, but criticism is a far cry from threats.
“Any erosion in the independence of the judiciary is a threat to our Constitution and to democratic rule of law,” the FJA said.
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