On Friday, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Donald Trump went too far when he declared national emergencies to justify tariffs on goods from nearly every country, the ruling upheld one back in the spring by a federal trade court in New York. That was strike one against the president.
Strike two came over Labor Day weekend, when a federal judge, through a temporary restraining order, stopped him from illegally deporting hundreds of Guatemalan children, many of whom had already been boarded onto planes.
Strike three came on Tuesday, when the U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco stated in a 52-page ruling that Trump and his administration had “willfully” broken federal law by sending National Guard troops into Los Angeles in June.
But only in baseball does a third strike mean you’re out.
In effect, Trump had acted illegally, but unless you just came out of a cave or from under a rock, practically everything Trump has done in this second administration has been illegal. And some of it is disgustingly immoral.
As for that third strike, to continue our baseball analogy, it is perhaps a foul ball, since Judge Breyer has not required the 300 remaining troops in Los Angeles to leave. It’s to be seen if this ruling precipitates action elsewhere, particularly in Washington, D.C., where troops are now present and armed.
How many rulings by federal judges and others will it take to have any meaning or strength to stop the Trump juggernaut, his determination to rule absolutely? Perhaps the most we can hope for is that a critical mass of them occur as next year’s midterm elections arrive.
Only when the populace has control of at least one of the houses of government can we bring about a difference. That’s a lot to hope for, and we certainly need the evidence of things we cannot see at the moment.