It must have been a confounding day for No Kings protesters. Their placards at rallies held around the country decry President Donald Trump’s “authoritarian regime” and the “fascism” under which Americans now live. They’ve blasted the ballroom Trump was building adjacent to the White House.
Two federal judges upended that notion by checking Trump’s powers in making recent decisions. That’s checks and balances in action.
As The Hill reported, U.S. District Judge Richard Leon halted construction of Trump’s ballroom project, saying no statute “comes close” to granting him the authority he claims he has to execute the $400 million project.
Judge Leon said construction can continue when Congress authorizes it.
Trump may have done an end-run around Congress when he started the ballroom project, but the judicial branch stopped him. That’s democracy.
People are also reading…
The same day, U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss permanently blocked Trump’s executive order to halt funding to National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast Service.
Trump signed this order last May, which stopped the Corporation for Public Broadcasting from paying out allocated federal funding to NPR and PBS.
“Because the First Amendment does not tolerate viewpoint discrimination and retaliation of this type, the court will issue judgment against the federal agency defendants declaring Section 3(a) of the Executive Order is unconstitutional and will issue an injunction barring those defendants from implementing it,” the judge, an appointee of former President Obama, wrote in his ruling.
Both NPR and PBS sued the Trump administration over this cut in funding, citing constitutional protections.
No matter how you feel about those decisions, the system works as designed. That’s the kind of democracy Democrats were certain would be crushed and set on fire leading up to the 2024 election, and every day since.
Dictators can’t be stopped by judicial ruling, Democrats warned. No congressional approval is required for their actions, and if they skip that step, no judge is telling them to go back to square one.
“No Kings, especially the kind that is under the restrictions of government checks and balances” wouldn’t fit on a poster, and is too long to coherently chant at protests.
People can dislike Trump. They certainly have the right to protest his actions. But judges halting or reversing his actions undermine the premise that we’re in a fascist state. Democratic institutions don’t hold sway in a dictatorship, and ours still work.
“The Supreme Court blocked it, but that didn’t stop me.”
Those are the words of then-President Joe Biden, who in February 2024 spoke in California of his student loan forgiveness plan. In 2023, the Supreme Court ruled his previous plan was illegal. Biden announced “alternative paths” to forgive student debt.
Did massive protests decry his Supreme Court snub? Did rallies slam this “authoritarian” behavior?
Of course not.
