All posts tagged "Judicial Branch"

WASHINGTON — The Republican chair of the powerful Senate Judiciary Committee raised eyebrows by breaking with GOP orthodoxy when he told Raw Story federal courts are an essential check on the White House during this ongoing government shutdown.

While citing Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) and his sponsorship of a bill that would end the drama surrounding government shutdowns, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) exclusively told Raw Story the most important things for this divided Congress to fund are the courts — which have blunted, blocked, delayed and dismantled much of the MAGA momentum President Donald Trump has tried to rule with since January.

"I told Sen. Lankford that ... if he can't [pass] his entire bill to stop the shutdowns of government generally, he at least ought to get one for the judicial branch," Grassley told Raw Story Thursday — a day before the nation’s courts are expected to run out of funds....

A former legal counsel to President Ronald Reagan says watching Donald Trump in action has changed his perspective of just how much power presidents should be allowed to wield.

In an opinion piece for The Washington Post, Alan Charles Raul, now a lecturer at Harvard Law School, wrote that he once supported "the 'unitary executive' theory — a legal concept that would allow the president to disregard the contours and safeguards that Congress prescribes for the executive branch to follow."

But, Raul admitted, "Unchecked presidential power is not what the Framers had in mind."...

In a perfect world, Congress and the courts would keep President Donald Trump's executive branch in line by balancing out his portion of the country's power base. Absent their effectiveness, the financial markets may be the last line of defense to moderate Trump's behavior, according to new analysis in The Bulwark.

Writer Matt Johnson posited that even as these vital institutions cave in to Trump's demands, "one important check remains: There’s nothing Trump can do to bend global financial markets to his will."

As an example, Johnson wrote that Trump's tariffs and the resulting stock market chaos were somewhat quelled last week when Trump was "bullied into submission" by the bond market. Trump announced that he was backing off his trade war because people were "getting yippee," but a massive sell-off in U.S. bonds led a CNN analyst to call it a rare economic "red flag" that even Trump couldn't ignore....