An Impending Constitutional Crisis

Between 1963 and 2001, 31 nationwide injunctions were issued against presidential administration policies. During the George W. Bush presidency, judges blocked six policies. Under Barack Obama, they blocked 12; and through 2023, they had blocked 14 under Joe Biden.

Under President Trump, it’s a different story. During his first term in office, judges issued 64 injunctions against his policies. Now, just six months into Trump’s second term, some estimates suggest that nearly 80 have already been issued.

Last month, the Supreme Court ruled that universal injunctions likely violate the Judiciary Act of 1789. But even if the Court does rein them in, Ilan Wurman writes in our summer issue, “lower courts may continue to exploit other tools—such as expansive class actions and permissive state-standing doctrines—to obstruct Trump policies.” And if they do issue improper injunctions, he argues, “the real constitutional crisis will have arrived.”

In 2021, Marathon Petroleum Corporation implemented a major change to its bonus program. It added a DEI metric to its bonus calculations, meaning that the awards would be lower if the company failed to meet diversity hiring goals. Meantime, it removed a safety metric from the calculations—“an eyebrow-raising decision,” Christopher F. Rufo and Ryan Thorpe write, “considering that the oil-and-gas sector sees consistently elevated rates of workplace injuries and deaths.” Read more about the decision here.

An assassination try against President Trump. A foiled attempt to bomb a restaurant in Washington, D.C. “Hit teams” operating in the U.S. A million-dollar bounty on former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. These are just a few examples from the Iranian regime’s playbook.

“When Iran seeks revenge against the United States, it doesn’t launch missiles—it sends assassins,” Santiago Vidal Calvo and Matias Ahrensdorf write. “President Trump needs to act before the Iranian regime succeeds in striking Americans on U.S. soil.” That means securing the border, fortifying likely targets, and exposing influence operations. Read their take here.

Charles Fain Lehman, Rafael Mangual, Tal Fortgang, and Carolyn Gorman discuss Columbia University’s deal with the Trump administration, the White House’s AI action plan, and the technology’s usefulness in tasks at work.

“This is why I have always thought no one should be awarded a BA without a real course of both micro and macro economics. You just never know who will go to law school or go into politics.”

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