When Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential election, he said that the election results were fraudulent, that the Democrats had cheated nationwide. His response was to bring, or cause to be brought, over 60 law suits challenging the results. He lost every single one of those law suits, either at trial or on appeal, whether or not the judges involved were appointed by Democratic or Republican presidents.

He won the 2024 election, so no allegations of fraud were brought and no challenges were filed. Instead, he has taken his fairly narrow victory as a rout, and is attempting to recast the country in his image. His actions have resulted in a large number of opposing law suits, and – according this morning to Lawrence Tribe – the results so far are Trump 0 – Democrats 12.

The opinions of the District Court judges so far, although based on different fact patterns, all have found that Trump has overstated his authority in one or another (or perhaps, in every) way. And at least several of these opinions have concluded that Trump’s actions are not only against the law, but are unconstitutional. Some, like the attempt to end birthright citizenship by fiat, seem blatantly unconstitutional, while others, like attempts to simply erase Congressionally established agencies, such as USAID, are less directly unconstitutional but go to the constitutional relationship between the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

As both houses of Congress are now narrowly controlled by the Republicans, and as no Republican seems to have the courage to vote against the President on any matters (this itself being a serious governmental problem), it is left to the third branch of Congress, the judiciary, to weigh in and attempt to keep the Constitution from disintegrating.

To my knowledge, throughout American history, no president has challenged the authority of the courts. If the courts find a presidential or Congressional act to be unconstitutional, so be it. It is unconstitutional. But is the Trump administration paying any attention to the decisions being rendered by the courts so far? It is harder to answer this question than you might think it should be.

For example, Trump put out a very early Executive Order freezing all government spending (with limited exceptions), and the court determined that the Executive Order was improper. The White Houses then withdrew the Order. But…… But it is not clear that they haven’t frozen the spending anyway. In fact, at one point, the president’s young press secretary (if I remember correctly) said that the court required the order to be rescinded, but not the substance of the order.

We now have a number of decisions requiring certain actions to be undone, and there will be more. Keep DOGE away from certain government data and files and require them to destroy any such material they may have already in their control. Reverse certain personnel decisions. And, probably, there will be injunctive relief regarding Trump’s ability to by himself terminate USAID or the Department of Education. And who knows what the courts will do when OMB director Russell Vought starts impounding funds in violation of anti-impounding laws and maybe the constitution.

The big question is whether or not Trump will abide by the decisions of the courts. If he doesn’t, it will be a first, and it will create a constitutional crisis of mammoth proportions. For, as you know, the courts do not have their own enforcement mechanisms. So if, for example, the courts say that Trump cannot abolish USAID, and he says “I am going to do it anyway”, what happens next? None of us know.

There are so many other things going on that it becomes almost impossible to follow them all, and some of them may get lost, as Trump undoubtedly hopes they will.

For example, and I don’t understand the details, he has ordered all federal agencies to stop referring not only to DEI, but to words such as “gender”, and all federal agencies seem to be conforming. I read a post from Cong. Jamie Raskin yesterday referring to what is happening at schools on military bases. He cited an incident at one school, where photos of Martin Luther King and Susan B. Anthony were taken down from a classroom wall, but a picture of Leonardo da Vinci left hanging.

Another example is this young Musk-ateer who resigned when it became known that he had X’d (or something) that he was a “racist before it was cool”, that he couldn’t be paid enough to marry someone outside his “ethnic group” and so on. Musk then announced that he was going to rehire him, Vance said that “everyone deserves a second chance” (ha ha to Vance), and the Presidents said that if the “vice president approves, so do I”. So the racist will be rehired (we don’t even know who is paying him, by the way), as civil servants are being fired.

A third example would be the ego-chutzpadik (my word) action by Trump to make himself the chairman of the board of the Kennedy Center to usher in the Golden Age of American culture. Not only does this raise questions about the future of the Kennedy Center, but it got me thinking that about all of the arts community. I have a daughter who is the associate development director of a major DC theater. She tells me that the theater receives several hundred thousand dollars of funds either from federal institutions (like the NANational Endowment for the Arts) or from DC agencies who receive funds from the federal government. What strings will now be put on those federal funds? And this is not something that just affects her theater. It will affect almost every theater in the country.

I can’t help but thinking, for example, of the Roundhouse Theater in Bethesda, now playing What the Constitution Means to Me, a terrific play we saw years ago, but which has now been updated to reflect the Trump years.

And then there is the task force Trump is setting up to rid the country of (non-existent) anti-Christian bias. Project 2025, here we go.

And finally, for today, after putting the fate in jeopardy of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and others in this country through the Temporary Protected Status program, Trump has announced that white, South Africans with Dutch descent whose properties are being taken over by the South African government can come here under TPS. You noticed I used the word “white”, right? That’s because that is Trump is saying. As I understand it, the only property being taken is abandoned property and it is all being paid for, etc., etc., but that seems irrelevant. If Trump can get white immigrants and, as Boers, largely very right wing white immigrants, hooray? And among those white South Africans who have earlier come to this country, count one Elon M.

Until tomorrow.