Courts are inherently reactive institutions. Trump always gets the first move.
www.vox.com
The Trump administration plans to essentially shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Shutting down USAID is almost certainly illegal — the agency is funded by Congress, and the president
cannot lawfully cut off congressional appropriations (including money set aside to run USAID) without legislative approval. Because of these facts, there’s also a lawsuit, known as
American Foreign Service Association v. Trump, seeking to block these efforts to shut down USAID. And that lawsuit may ultimately succeed — the most recent development in that suit is a
temporary court order blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to put USAID employees on leave.
By the time this lawsuit fully plays out, however, many of USAID’s employees may have already found new jobs. If the Supreme Court ultimately rules that the agency must continue to function, that decision could take months or years. And, by that point, the agency may have experienced such severe brain drain that it will be a shadow of its former self. (And that’s all assuming that Trump even complies with a court order reopening the agency.)
The Trump administration, in other words, will always be the first mover in a conflict between it and the courts. The federal judiciary can often stop someone who is already violating the law from continuing that behavior, but it can’t prevent the violation from happening in the first place.
Thus, even if we could trust these courts to apply the law fairly and impartially to a Republican administration — and, in a world with
Trump v. United States, the decision that said it’s okay for presidents to commit crimes, we simply cannot — Trump and his people can do extraordinary damage before any judge has a chance to even look at what they have done.