Trump’s disdain for anyone checking him just gets worse and worse
In Shakespeare’s classic play “The Merchant of Venice,” Portia saves the life of her friend Antonio with a clever legal dodge. Even though the lender Shylock has the right to take a pound of flesh from the man because he defaulted on a loan, Portia convinces a court that their contract does not allow Shylock to take any blood:
“This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;/The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh:’/Take then thy bond, take thou thy pound of flesh;/But, in the cutting it, if thou dost shed/One drop of Christian blood, thy lands and goods/Are, by the laws of Venice, confiscate/Unto the state of Venice.”
Ah, such a wonderful loophole. No doubt, lawyers have exploited terms such as that for centuries, finding ways to wiggle out of a contract or sidestep a judge’s orders or stated law.
But is it seemly when a president tries this?
Donald J. Trump and his toadies on the board of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts are aiming to do just that with a move to add to that title the phrase “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” as well as by renaming the grounds “President Donald J. Trump Plaza” and by prominently etching the words “Endowed by the Trump Kennedy Center Fund.”
The idea is that Judge Christopher R. Cooper, in his May 29 order requiring Trump’s name to be stripped from the center’s facade, spoke only to the proper name of the building, not to phrases – or names — that might otherwise adorn it, even if they appear as prominently as the place’s name itself.
“The Court has concluded that the Board overstepped its statutory bounds by unilaterally renaming the Kennedy Center after President Trump. In 1964, Congress deliberately rechristened the ‘National Cultural Center’ the ‘John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts,’” the judge ruled. “[So] the Kennedy Center Board’s decision to rename the Center, along with its decision to affix President Trump’s name to the building’s façade, violate Congress’s unequivocal mandate. As stated at the outset, Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it.”
It’s likely that Judge Cooper will be asked to rule on the new proposed changes again. Ohio Democratic Rep. Joyce Beatty, an ex-officio member of the center’s board who was one of three nays on the “Renovated By” resolution, called the group’s action “a transparent effort to circumvent the Court’s ruling,” adding that it “flies in the face of the statutes that Congress passed.” She vowed to fight.
The move by the board, which Trump heads, not merely flies in the face of law, but spits in the eye of the judge, a Barack Obama appointee. Recall that Trump had accused Cooper of ruling against him “because his wife probably told him to do so,” arguing that Cooper’s wife, former federal prosecutor Amy Jeffress, was “a Radical Left Democrat” and that the judge should be brought up on charges because that amounted to a conflict of interest.
Good luck, Donald, with getting a charitable decision now from that judge.
This all amounts to an egomaniac’s childish temper tantrum, of course. One imagines him stamping his feet and saying: “So there.” But it represents something much bigger – Trump’s inability to recognize that no means no, at least when a court declares that.
At times, the consequences of Trump’s refusal to countenance any check on his power can be far more dire than just a few letters etched into marble on a Washington landmark. To cite some recent examples, the Supreme Court has ruled against him on three major fronts – on tariffs, on an appointee to the Federal Reserve Trump dislikes and on birthright citizenship – and on all three Trump and his minions are making efforts to sidestep the rulings.
The administration’s loophole-hunting efforts, detailed in a New York Times newsletter, amount to what an article in The Duke Law Journal called “legalistic noncompliance.” The article’s authors called the sidestepping “deploying the language of the law to shroud what are, in fact, bad faith efforts to evade judicial orders.” Trump’s acolytes insist they are following the letter of the law, as judges interpret that, but they seek to slip around its spirit in whatever ways they can.
Portia would have been proud.
But let’s look further. What does Trump say of the judges in some of those cases? He called his appointees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett “weak, stupid, and bad” and an embarrassment to their families.” Worse, the justices were “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats.”
Presidential language, for sure.
So, will Trump and his Justice Department bootlickers now accept another federal judge’s recent dismissal of an antisemitism case against Harvard? “We disagree with the ruling and are assessing next steps,” Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement.
In other words, no won’t mean no, if the Trumpies can come up with a legal dodge or loophole.
At times, the administration’s arrogance is so deep that it hasn’t bothered to even come up with some workaround. It has just defied the courts. Most infamously, Trump’s lackeys in the spring of 2025 defied an order by Judge James E. Boasberg to not deport 200 migrants without a hearing. Three planes shipped the people out to El Salvador anyway.
Recall that Trump called Boasberg “a Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” who should be impeached, earning a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. Boasberg was appointed to separate judicial posts by George W. Bush and Barack Obama and served on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
Perhaps someone who deserves a modicum of presidential respect?
But Trump’s disrespect for judges and defiance of their orders goes far further. Between February of 2025 and last spring, district court judges ruled that the administration violated orders in at least 31 lawsuits over a wide range of issues, including cuts in federal funding, mass layoffs, deportations, and immigration practices, as reported by The Associated Press. These violations followed more than 250 instances of noncompliance that judges highlighted in individual immigration petitions — from failing to return property to keeping immigrants locked up past court-ordered release dates. The AP called it “an extraordinary record of defiance.”
Let’s think about Shakespeare again. He often wrote about arrogance.
In “Measure for Measure,” another of his plays, a character bemoans another character’s hubris, saying: “… man, proud man,/Drest in a little brief authority,/Most ignorant of what he’s most assured,/His glassy essence, like an angry ape,/Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven/As make the angels weep.”
Donald J. Trump and his minions likely are making many weep now, but someday their “little brief authority” and their deceptions and legal sideslipping will fade away. Perhaps the midterm elections will mark the beginning of their end.
