#separation of powers

In all, the legislative process helps ensure each of us has a stake in the laws that govern us and in the Nation's future. For some today, the weight of those virtues is apparent. For others, it may not seem so obvious. But if history is any guide, the tables will turn and the day will come when those disappointed by today's result will appreciate the legislative process for the bulwark of liberty it is."

-- Justice Neil Gorsuch, concurring opinion, Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, February 20, 2026.

NY Times Opinion | David French | March 1, 2026

This is a gift 🎁 link, so there is no paywall. Here are some excerpts:

Eight minutes.

That’s the length of President Trump’s social media video announcing his war with Iran. He didn’t go to Congress. He didn’t obtain a U.N. Security Council resolution. Instead, he did perhaps the most monarchical thing he’s done in a monarchical second term: He simply ordered America into war. [....] Here’s the bottom line: Trump should have gotten congressional approval for striking Iran, or he should not have struck at all. [....] The fundamental goal of the 1787 Constitution was to establish a republican form of government — and that meant disentangling the traditional powers of the monarch and placing them in different branches of government.

When it came to military affairs, the Constitution separated the power to declare war from the power to command the military. The short way of describing the structure is that America should go to war only at Congress’s direction, but when it does, its armies are commanded by the president. [....] In 1848, at the close of the Mexican-American War, a first-term congressman named Abraham Lincoln wrote:

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object. This, our convention understood to be the most oppressive of all kingly oppressions and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.

Those words were true then, and they’re true now. No matter what he thinks, Trump is not a king. But by taking America to war all on his own, he is acting like one.

Mr. Trump appears to have forgotten that Americans fought the Revolutionary War to secure their independence from the British monarchy and establish a government of laws, not of men, so that Americans would never again be subject to the whims of a tyrannical king. »

— Retired conservative Federal Judge J. Michael Luttig writing in the New York Times (archived).

Judge Luttig served in the federal judiciary from 1991 to 2006. He cannot be described as a "Radical Left Lunatic" which is how The Orange One refers to any judge who rules against Trump's unconstitutional measures. Judge Luttig was appointed by President George H.W. Bush in 1991.

Trump seems eager to provoke a constitutional crisis. He is depending on slim GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress to back him up. Craven Republicans on Capitol Hill worry themselves shitless about Trump unleashing primary challengers against them. But federal judges are appointed for life and are not subject to such pressure.

you aren't governed

you are ruled (and fooled).

Friends,

A 6-3 majority of the Supreme Court decided yesterday that Trump cannot take core powers that the Constitution gives Congress. Instead, Congress must delegate any such power clearly and unambiguously.

This is a big decision. It goes far beyond merely interpreting the 1997 International Emergency Economic Powers Act not to give Trump the power over tariffs that he claims to have. It reaffirms a basic constitutional principle about the division and separation of powers between Congress and the president.

On its face, this decision clarifies that Trump cannot decide on his own not to spend money Congress has authorized and appropriated — such as the funds for U.S.A.I.D. he refused to spend. And he cannot on his own decide to go to war.

“The Court has long expressed ‘reluctan[ce] to read into ambiguous statutory test’ extraordinary delegations of Congress’s powers,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for himself and five other justices in the opinion released yesterday in Learning Resources vs. Trump.

He continued: “In several cases involving ‘major questions,’ the Court has reasoned that ‘both separation of powers principles and a practical understanding of legislative intent’ suggest Congress would not have delegated ‘highly consequential power’ through ambiguous language.”

Exactly. Trump has no authority on his own to impose tariffs because the Constitution gives that authority to Congress.

But by the same Supreme Court logic, Trump has no authority to impound money Congress has appropriated because the Constitution has given Congress the “core congressional power of the purse,” as the Court stated yesterday.

Hence, the $410 to $425 billion billion in funding that Trump has blocked or delayed violates the Impoundment Control Act, which requires Congressional approval for spending pauses. This includes funding withheld for foreign aid, FEMA, Head Start, Harvard and Columbia universities, and public health.

Nor, by this same Supreme Court logic, does Trump have authority to go to war because Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution grants Congress the power to "declare War … and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water" — and Congress would not have delegated this highly consequential power to a president through ambiguous language.

Presumably this is why Congress enacted the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires a president to notify Congress within 48 hours of deploying troops and requires their withdrawal within 60 to 90 days unless Congress declares war or authorizes an extension. Iran, anyone?

The press has reported on yesterday’s Supreme Court decision as if it were only about tariffs. Wrong. It’s far bigger and even more important.

Note that the decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts — the same justice who wrote the Court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, another 6 to 3 decision in which the Court ruled that former presidents have absolute immunity for actions taken within their core constitutional powers and at least presumptive immunity for all other official acts.

I think Roberts intentionally wrote yesterday’s decision in Learning Resources v. Trump as a bookend to Trump v. United States.

Both are intended to clarify the powers of the president and of Congress. A president has immunity for actions taken within his core constitutional powers. But a president has no authority to take core powers that the Constitution gives to Congress.

In these two decisions, the Chief Justice and five of his colleagues on the Court have laid out a roadmap for what they see as the boundary separating the power of the president from the powers of Congress, and how they will decide future cases along that boundary.

Trump will pay no heed, of course. He accepts no limits to his power and has shown no respect for the Constitution, Congress, the Supreme Court, or the rule of law.