Although Congress and the press have failed to do their jobs and stop Trump\u2019s march to dictatorship, and the Supreme Court appears to be shaky, the lower courts have been doing a magnificent job.<\/p>\n
Statistics show that Trump and his administration suffered a 96 percent loss rate in federal courts in May, and politics had little or nothing to do with it. Some of Trump\u2019s appointees joined in as 72.2 percent of Republican-appointed judges and 80.4 percent of Democratic-appointed judges ruled against the administration.<\/p>\n
In addition, about 180 judicial rulings have at least temporarily paused some of the administration\u2019s initiatives, and the administration is winless thus far in court cases concerning punishments the president has tried to inflict on law firms.<\/p>\n
The sub-supreme courts are clobbering him in major ways, and especially so last week. A quick recap lest we forget:<\/p>\n
Trump will not go down easily. His standard response to court rulings is to appeal everything, and he\u2019s doing that now. But now he\u2019s taking it much deeper. He\u2019s closely following what political scientist Adam Bonica describes the script that authoritarians around the world followed to success.<\/p>\n
Leading that list is attacks on judges. Hear these recent words from Trump and those in his administration after courts ruled against him:<\/p>\n
Ms. Leavitt also made the administration\u2019s legal strategy clear: Get as many contested cases as possible to the Supreme Court, which has a conservative majority including one Trump appointee, and \u201chope that the Supreme Court will weigh in and rein them in.\u201d (The high court has not collapsed to Trump yet, but it\u2019s given us reasons for concern. It gave him freedom to break the law at will, and it ruled late last week that Trump may temporarily (!) deport 500,000 legal immigrants whom President Biden had protected for humanitarian reasons.)<\/p>\n