The Courts Are Slowing Trump Down. Here Is the Scoreboard

Photo: Sebastian Schuster via Unsplash

Let us be honest about what the courts are doing to Donald Trump right now. They are slowing him down. They are not stopping him. If you only read the headlines on our side, you would think the law is winning every round. It is not. The scoreboard is mixed, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling you a story, not the truth. Here is where things stand.

Start with the wins, because there are real ones. On October 30, the Ninth Circuit sided with California Attorney General Rob Bonta and blocked the Trump administration from freezing federal funds. It was California's third legal victory in a single week. That matters because the funding freeze was a pressure weapon. Cut the money, choke the programs, and force states to obey without ever passing a law. The court said no, and the money kept flowing.

Then on November 10, the D.C. Circuit ruled that the Trump administration illegally fired Michael Abramowitz, the director of Voice of America, and backed his reinstatement. That is not a small ruling. Voice of America is one of the oldest independent news operations in the country, and the administration tried to gut it by firing the person who ran it. The court said no, and the director gets his job back.

Now the losses, and I am not going to hide them. On November 9, the Supreme Court voted eight to one to lift the injunction blocking construction of the border wall at Big Bend. That is a Trump win, full stop. Eight justices, including justices who were supposed to be a check on this president, cleared the way for more wall. The wall is a waste of money and a symbol of cruelty, and the highest court in the land just greenlit it.

The same week, a judge refused to throw out Trump's ten billion dollar defamation lawsuit against the BBC. The network asked for the case to be dismissed. The judge said no, and the case proceeds. A judge has also ordered Trump himself to sit for a deposition by December 11. That deposition is a real risk for him, because he will have to answer questions under oath about a lawsuit he filed himself. But do not mistake that for a win. A lawsuit against the press is still alive, and it is meant to scare every newsroom in the country.

So what does the scoreboard actually say. Two wins that protect the rule of law in real ways. Two losses that show how far the courts are willing to let this president go. The courts are a speed bump, not a wall. They buy time. They stop some of the worst abuses. They do not finish the job.

That is why the midterms mattered so much. Courts can slow a president down, but only voters and Congress can actually stop one. The judges did their part this month, and sometimes they did it well. The rest is on us. Keep showing up, keep paying attention, and stop pretending the courts will save us. They will help. They will not do it alone.

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