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Your guide on what the US elections of 2024 mean for Washington and Le Monde
The rocks can collapse and Gibraltar can tumble. But if Donald Trump obeys the courts, the American Republic will be held. The American system is designed to accommodate almost everything, except a return to the de facto monarchy. The question of whether the American president wants to make the judiciary out of course is the key to the fate of the Republic. Is Trump about to conduct this little experience?
To a certain extent, it is already. Last month, an US court arrested Trump’s trump on federal expenses. Trump only partially respects. On the first day, he almost torn a decision of the Supreme Court of the previous week, confirming the ban on the congress in Tiktok. His vice-president JD Vance and his director of the Elon Musk exploitation publicly questioned the brief of the courts. Musk even called for the dismissal of the judge who refused his servants access to the federal payment system.
Such threats could be overlooked without their inevitability. They are necessarily stronger. Although Trump has been in office for more than three weeks, he has not yet sent a substantial bill to the congress. Some observers have compared Trump’s wave of action at the first 100 days of Franklin Roosevelt, or the agenda of the big company of Lyndon Johnson. They lack the point. FDR and LBJ sent large legislation to the congress. Trump starts with a pipeline of decrees. If the courts hinder them, they will block his agenda. Its strategy is based on a flexible judicial system.
There are two ways to execute what legal researchers Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith call his “radical constitutionalism”. The first is to frighten the courts in acquiescence. If the judges believe that Trump is ready to call the bluff of the judiciary, it would be in their interest to claim that he acts only because they allowed him to do so. Rather than Trump obeying the courts, they would politely withdraw from his way. In this way, they would at least keep the fiction of being an independent branch of the government. The other option is that Trump dared the courts to apply their contradictory decisions. Vance and Musk push to call time on judges. The same goes for Russell Vought, the new Trump chief of the management and budget office and chief author of the infamous 2025 project.
It is a fair bet that Trump would prefer the judiciary to disarmament. But he is also ready to play Russian roulette. He thinks that the US electorate has given him an uncontrolled mandate. It follows that any interference in its exercise of power – including an Alice style belief that the American Constitution means what it chooses to mean – is equivalent to a block on democracy. Could he put 30,000 illegal immigrants out of legal has a redeveloped Guantánamo bay? Of course. The American people spoke. Could he choose which American creditors reimbursed and who declare fraudulent? Most likely. Trump, not the judges, will be the decision maker.
Until recently, the Trumpians wanted to remind criticism that the United States was founded as a Republic not as a democracy. This line changed 180 degrees. The new one is that the old furniture of the Republic hinders Trump’s democratic mandate. The congress controlled by the Republicans withdrew from the Trump path. Undeelled judges are the problem. The nine judges of the United States Supreme Court are ultimate. It is in their reception boxes that these dilemmas are heading. The challenge is their reason for existing.
The turkeys would be opposed to Thanksgiving. However, the Supreme Court last July granted the US President to sweep the immunity from almost all “official” acts. It takes little imagination to deduce that it could be stretched to ignore the courts. The six judges who have put their names to this decision can now regret their loose phrasing. They could have written themselves in an advisory body. The problem that the court is faced with is that Trump has a strong wind on the back. Constitutional lawyers warn that it could destroy the separation of American powers. But Trump’s CBS-YouGOV approval note last week is his highest of all time.
In addition to their abysmal survey ratings, Democrats are slow to come together. For reasons that are better known to him, Joe Biden boasted last year to have continued to forgive students’ debt even after the Supreme Court ruled against this. Biden and Barack Obama used decrees to get around Gridlock. The difference is that Trump could push most of what he wants by Congress. That he does not yet bother to try is a characteristic of his rule, not a bug.
edward.luce@ft.com
