The Administration’s defiance of Congress and the judiciary has both flouted and made use of the country’s legal system.
Source photograph by Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty
Since Donald Trump took office, on January 20th, his Administration has slow-walked or outright failed to comply with court orders related to a range of issues, most notably immigration and government funding. I recently spoke by phone with Samuel R. Bagenstos, a professor of law at the University of Michigan and a former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden Administration. The goal was to go through some of these cases to understand why legal experts are so concerned, and whether there is a larger strategy to the Administration’s behavior. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the problem with the phrase “constitutional crisis,” whether bureaucratic incompetence could really be the reason for some of Trump’s actions, and why the past two months have been so unprecedented in American history.
