(no subject)

[timelets]

Though Trump has been in office for more than three weeks, he has yet to send a substantive bill to Congress. Some observers have compared Trump’s flurry of action to Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days, or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society agenda. They are missing the point. FDR and LBJ sent big legislation to Congress. Trump is starting with a pipeline of executive orders. If the courts stymie those, they will be blocking his agenda. His strategy rests on a pliant judiciary.

He believes the US electorate gave him an unchecked mandate. It follows that any interference in his exercise of power — including an Alice-style belief that the US constitution means what he chooses it to mean — amounts to a block on democracy. Could he put 30,000 illegal immigrants beyond legal reach in a refitted Guantánamo Bay? Of course. The American people have spoken. Might he pick which of America’s creditors to repay and which to declare fraudulent? Quite possibly. Trump, not judges, will be the decider.

The Republican-controlled Congress has removed itself from Trump’s path. Unelected judges are the problem. Ultimate among those are the nine justices of the US Supreme Court. It is to their inboxes such dilemmas are heading. At stake is their reason for existing.

Turkeys are allegedly opposed to Thanksgiving. Yet the Supreme Court last July granted the US president sweeping immunity from almost any “official” acts. It takes little imagination to infer that this could be stretched to ignoring the courts. The six justices who put their names to that ruling may now regret their loose phrasing. They could have edited themselves into an advisory body. The problem the court faces is that Trump has a strong wind at his back. Constitutional lawyers warn that he could destroy America’s separation of powers.

https://www.ft.com/content/8e52b5ae-56b4-4571-ba09-103d5799ce9a