Trump's Judicial Defiance Is New to the Autocrat Playbook, Experts Say
The president's escalating conflict with federal courts goes beyond
what has happened in countries like Hungary and Turkey, where leaders
spent years remaking the judiciary.
President Trump's intensifying conflict with the federal courts is
unusually aggressive compared with similar disputes in other
countries, according to scholars. Unlike leaders who subverted or
restructured the courts, Mr. Trump is acting as if judges were already
too weak to constrain his power.
"We look at these comparative cases in the 21st century, like Hungary
and Poland and Turkey. And in a lot of respects, this is worse," he
said. "These first two months have been much more aggressively
authoritarian than almost any other comparable case I know of
democratic backsliding."
There are many examples of autocratic leaders constraining the power
of the judiciary by packing courts with compliant judges, or by
changing the laws that give them authority, he said. But it is
extremely rare for leaders to simply claim the power to disregard or
override court orders directly, especially so immediately after taking
office.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/20/world/europe/trump-courts-defiance-autocrats-playbook.html
"Honest to god, I've never seen anything like it," said Steven
Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist and coauthor of "How
Democracies Die" and "Competitive Authoritarianism."
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