The Inflection Point Is Here: The revolt of the courts meets the mutiny of Senate Republicans.

[Celerity]

https://prospect.org/2026/06/02/inflection-point-is-here-courts-senate-trump/


Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD), with his Senate colleauges, conducts a news conference in the U.S. Capitol, May 19, 2026. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images

In the past week, federal judges have blocked one Trump executive excess after another. It doesn’t bode well for Trump’s attempted dictatorship. Last Friday, U.S. District Judge Leonie M. Brinkema in Virginia temporarily enjoined Trump’s $1.776 billion slush fund intended to compensate supposed victims of alleged lawfare, including those convicted of committing crimes in connection with the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. Brinkema’s court order prohibits the Justice Department from transferring any money into the “Anti-Weaponization Fund” or processing any claims. Late Monday, in the face of a revolt by numerous Republican senators, Trump paused the fund. The Department of Justice issued a statement saying that it “disagrees strongly” with the judge’s decision but would abide by it.

Leaks by two White House officials to Axios suggested that Trump was giving up on the fund. However, the judge’s ruling merely ordered a temporary suspension. The Justice Department statement stops well short of saying that the fund is defunct, and one official quoted by Axios left open the possibility that Trump may yet try to revive it. The court ruling was a convenient pretext for political backpedaling. The deeper reason for Trump’s apparent capitulation was the defection of key Republican senators opposed to the slush fund, who have blocked Trump’s requested $72 billion for immigration enforcement. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, who met with Trump at the White House Tuesday afternoon, reportedly urged him to scrap the fund.

Judge Brinkema has scheduled a hearing for June 12. She was responding to a suit brought by several plaintiffs, including a former prosecutor of cases from the January 6th attack. Others include a professor prosecuted after protesting an immigration raid, a city threatened with loss of federal funding in retaliation for limiting cooperation with ICE, and an association of abortion clinics. These plaintiffs and others argued that the fund was illegal and intended to benefit only Trump allies. Indeed, the only lawfare being systematically practiced is Trump’s. The fund was created based on a settlement agreement between Trump and the Justice Department in response to a personal lawsuit that Trump filed in federal district court in Florida challenging his treatment by the IRS. But now that deal is also under fresh judicial scrutiny.

The presiding judge, Kathleen Williams, had closed the case after Trump’s personal lawyers moved to drop it. But last Wednesday, in an action without precedent, a group of 35 former federal judges urged her to reopen the case, pointing out that Trump was corruptly on both sides of the case, as private citizen and as president, negotiating with himself. On Friday, Williams reopened the case and ordered Trump’s lawyers to respond, also by June 12. These two rulings interact with a long-deferred mutiny by dozens of Republican senators who were caught completely by surprise by the announcement of the slush fund. According to numerous press reports citing sources who were in the room, the anger from Republican senators directed against acting Attorney General Todd Blanche at a May 21 meeting was blistering.

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[msongs]

1. trump gang immunity clauses must go

[SheltieLover]

2. It would be good if these judges could get SCrOTUS to reverse slob's immunity!

🙏

[pat_k]

3. "politically, the vote of no confidence against a disastrous and needless war will be real."

IMO, there are three primary drivers of events over the next twelve months:

1. The felon is incapable of ending the war. He is incapable of sucking up the loss.

2. As the war/stalemate continues, domestic and international harms will escalate, ultimately becoming utterly unsustainable. (And it will continue. While a no confidence vote will be a rebuke the likes of which could send him into complete psychopathic/narcissistic decompensation, he will veto it.)

3. Sooner or later, a growing number of trumpublicans in the House and Senate will "get" 1 and 2, and recognize that the only "way out" is to push trump out.

If enough wake up to reality to vote to remove, the threat will be "Save face and resign for whatever reason you want, or you will be removed. There are enough of us now."

If that were to come to pass, I'd bet he would continue to delude himself that "they'd never do that" and force their hand.

And if I were a betting person, I would bet that after a rout in the mid-terms, as we come up on the one-year anniversary of his criminal war it will be clear the situation cannot be allowed to continue -- that he must go, one way or another.