Our System of Checks and Balances Might Not Survive Another Year

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court and its carefully manufactured conservative majority will hear the first in a chain of cases that may well determine for the foreseeable future the survival of the system of checks and balances, and which also may well determine whether the presidency is turned into everything the founders were afraid it might. In 1787, at the Philadelphia Convention, that magnificent curmudgeon, George Mason, explained why the proposed presidency scared him down to the buckles on his shoes.

The President of the United States has no Constitutional Council (a thing unknown in any safe and regular government), he will therefore be unsupported by proper information and advice; and will generally be directed by minions and favorites—or he will become a tool to the Senate—or a Council of State will grow out of the principal officers of the great departments; the worst and most dangerous of all ingredients for such a Council in a free country; for they may be induced to join in any dangerous or oppressive measures; to shelter themselves, and prevent an enquiry into their own misconduct in office.

On Wednesday, the court will hear arguments on the legitimacy of the president’s unilaterally imposing tariffs under what he maintains is a legitimate use of a 1977 emergency-powers law. The president’s “emergency” consists of a vague combination of his fantasies about an immigrant “invasion” and his interpretation of the drug war as an actual war. This case is so vital to the administration’s largely imaginary economic policy that the president himself contemplated showing up for oral arguments. However, TACO was served. From The New York Times:

Mr. Trump had mused about attending the court’s argument this week, and has spoken repeatedly of the case’s importance to him. On Sunday, he said he decided against going to court, but stressed that he considered the stakes to be monumental.

The case “is one of the most important in the history of the country,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “If a president was not able to quickly and nimbly use the power of tariffs, we would be defenseless, leading perhaps even to the ruination of our nation.”

“Nimbly”? “Ruination of our nation”? There is no way on God’s troubled earth that he wrote that post. Perhaps he has a well-educated autopen.

Observers of the court said the justices would be keenly aware that Mr. Trump would perceive a legal defeat as a personal blow. “You can’t help but think that that’s going to be hovering over the decision-making process in this case,” said Donald B. Verrilli Jr.

Oooh, scary.

This case, while undeniably important, is the first of a series in which the court will be asked to solidify the presidency’s superiority over the other two branches of the government.

Other such cases are on the horizon. Next month, the court will consider Mr. Trump’s efforts to seize control of independent agencies. And in January, the justices will weigh his attempt to remove a member of the Federal Reserve Board. The administration has also asked them to consider the legality of the president’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former top Justice Department lawyer under George W. Bush, said that because the legal issues were so closely contested in the tariffs matter, some justices could weigh broader implications across the set of presidential cases, concerned about either handing Mr. Trump too much power—or too many defeats. “At the end of this term, we’ll see wins and losses for Trump on presidential power,” he said. “This is the case I think is the closest, so I don’t know which way it will cut.”

Neither do many of the rest of us. George Mason knew, but he’s been dead since 1792. It’s our problem now.