My last tentative reason for nauseous optimism

Friends,

Today I’m feeling nauseously optimistic. (Nauseous optimism is when your heart aches and you’re sick to your stomach but believe you’ll live to see the dawn.)

Although every other constraint on Trump is gone — congressional Republicans are in the MAGA cult, Democrats are zombies, big business doesn’t dare oppose Trump, and high-tech has gone over to the dark side — one constraint remains: the federal courts.

And the federal courts seem to be holding firm, at least so far.

Consider what the courts did this week:

1. On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang rebuked Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency for their efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, declaring that Musk’s effort to erase the agency likely violated the Constitution in “multiple ways.”

Musk and DOGE “shall not take any action, or engage in any work, relating to the shutdown of USAID,” Chuang wrote in an injunction against the billionaire and his controversial cost-cutting initiative. Chuang also ordered Musk and DOGE to restore access to official computer systems for USAID employees, including those on administrative leave. The judge said Musk and DOGE can have no involvement in further staff reductions or contract cancellations.

The ruling is riling Trump-world.

2. On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes wrote in a 79-page opinion that the Pentagon cannot enforce Trump’s order banning transgender people from serving in the military. Judge Reyes said the Pentagon’s rule is “soaked in animus” and unconstitutionally discriminates on the basis of sex. “The cruel irony is that thousands of transgender service members have sacrificed — some risking their lives — to ensure for others the very equal protection rights the Military Ban seeks to deny them,” she wrote.

This ruling is causing Trump-world to go nuts.

3. Meanwhile, Trump is battling U.S. District Judge James Boasberg over the government’s deportation of around 250 Venezuelan migrants Saturday to an El Salvador super-max prison with no hearing or evidence why they should be sent there. Boasberg ordered they be returned to the United States, but the Trump regime says the order came after they had already landed in El Salvador.

Trump called for Boasberg to be impeached, prompting a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts saying Trump’s call is “inappropriate.”

By the way, Boasberg is hardly a left-winger. He was the judge who released Hilary Clinton’s emails and refused to release Trump’s tax records.

4. U.S. District Judge Jess Furman continues to prevent the Trump regime from deporting Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, while moving Khalil’s case from Louisiana to New Jersey.

Judge Furman noted that Khalil’s lawyers accused the government of punishing him for participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, and that his First and Fifth Amendment rights had been violated. “These are serious allegations and arguments that, no doubt, warrant careful review by a court of law,” he wrote. “The fundamental constitutional principle that all persons in the United States are entitled to due process of law demands no less.”

5. Finally, on the basis of two U.S. district court rulings last week that DOGE’s firing of probationary government workers was illegal, nearly 25,000 are now being reinstated across 18 departments and agencies.

All told, more than 120 Trump-Musk moves are now being reviewed by federal courts. So far, courts have ruled against the duo in the vast majority of these.

This is a constraint on Trump only if he feels bound by the rulings, of course — which raises the key question: Will Trump obey the rulings?

At least for now, the answer seems to be yes. Even as his war on the judiciary hits new heights, Trump vowed this week that he has never, and will never, defy the courts.

In a Tuesday interview with Laura Ingraham on Fox News, Trump bluntly told the MAGA faithful that “you can’t” ignore the rulings of the judicial branch.

Although Trump blustered and raged during the interview, he was clear about this. “I never did defy a court order,” he repeatedly said. Pressed by Ingraham to say if he might defy a court order in the future, he said: “No, you can’t do that.”

Despite calls from MAGA supporters for radical action against the judiciary, Trump seems to have concluded, at least for now, that he will not defy the courts.

He’s not giving up his dangerous stream of invective, of course. Trump described Judge Boasberg on social media as a “Radical Left Lunatic.”

With insults being hurled at federal judges by Trump and Musk, some federal judges are being threatened by Trump followers.

But Trump is not openly defying the federal courts. He is not choosing an (apocryphal) “Andrew Jackson Moment.”

Which leads to a further question: Why has Trump decided not to defy the courts, when the MAGA faithful want him to?

The answer, I think, is that although Trump doesn’t pay attention to opinion pieces in The New York Times or The Washington Post (and certainly not this Substack), he does pay attention to opinion pieces in the Rupert Murdoch-owned press — specifically in the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.

Their opinions have been uniformly against Trump defying the courts.

A sampling: “Sorry, Elon: Even deporting illegal gangbangers must heed the rule of law” (NY Post editorial board, 3/16) … “He campaigned on deporting gang members, but he can’t defy court orders” (WSJ editorial board, 3/17) … “Chief Justice Roberts Speaks Up for the Judiciary” (WSJ editorial board, 3/18) … “Trump, don’t heed the dangerous urge to attack the rule of law” (Isaac Schorr, NY Post, 3/18).

In other words, Murdoch is sending Trump a clear warning: If you take on the judiciary, you’re on your own.

This means the federal courts are constraining Trump, at least for now.

I don’t trust any Trump avowal, of course. Nor do I trust Murdoch. So the current status quo is hardly cause to break out the champagne.

At most, it’s a reason for a modest bit of nauseous optimism, at the end of another difficult week.