Perspective from the 19^th Hole is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

Donald Trump considers himself to be a king.

He isn’t.

Nor is a god or a dictator, though he fancies each of those titles.

He is supposed to be what he is – president of the United States, not something grander.

According to hill.com:

“The White House sees few, if any, limits on Trump’s executive powers in his second term, but the federal court system is much less sure. 

“Trump’s mass firings and dismantling of various independent agencies has run into hurdles in the judiciary, where the courts seem unamused with the ‘King’ Trump idea that some of the president’s allies have turned into social media memes. 

“A President who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution,” U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell wrote in one ruling rebuking Trump this week, pointing to an image the White House shared on X depicting the president as royalty.”

I have written about this before as Trump is setting out to get rid of the checks and balances system that has worked for years in U.S. government.

For Trump, here is no check.  For Trump, there is no balance.   

Hill.com continues:

“After Trump’s first term, he pushed the bounds of power for former presidents, taking his case over presidential immunity to the Supreme Court amid four criminal indictments.  

“Now back in the Oval Office, Trump’s barrage of executive actions has sparked roughly 100 lawsuits, many of which challenge his expansionist view of presidential power. 

“In one of the latest challenges, Democratic state attorneys general joined the fight over the administration’s mass terminations of federal employees still in their probationary period.

“’These mass firings are illegal and likely to cripple important federal initiatives throughout the country and in Michigan, and so we’re once again taking the White House to court,’ Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. 

“Also in recent days, national Democrats, including the Democrat National Committee, commenced its first lawsuit against the new administration, accusing Trump of trying to weaponize the Federal Election Commission.  And this week, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s chief financial officer challenged her termination over $80 million disbursed to New York City under a migrant housing grant.”

These cases are just the latest lawsuits challenging dimensions of the Trump administration’s promotion of giving the president total control over the executive branch.  

So, as I have posited before, both in this blog and in previous ones, Trump doesn’t recognize the checks and balance system.

He expects Congress to bow to him.

He expects the Judiciary to do the same.

He doesn’t recognize public opinion because his opinion is the only one that counts in this mind.

While it will take some time for lawsuits against Trump to work their way through the court system, I hope they eventually will stop Trump from some of his most egregious acts.

Time will tell.