LAWFARE, or legal warfare, is traditionally understood to mean the deployment of judicial power to persecute political opponents: candidates, parties, even entire organisations and social movements. It means using the legal system as a weapon or a tool to achieve political or military goals and as such is a blight on the very foundations of democracy. In the run-up to the US election it was the most dangerous and un-American tool of the left’s political arsenal against Donald Trump. Today it is directed against his policies as well. Whether you are on the right or left of the political spectrum, you must appreciate that it hampers the reforms which politicians are elected to implement and have a mandate for.
In the UK, we are regularly and rightly critical of political parties which are elected and fail to honour manifesto commitments. However, in the US, the reverse is the case. We are seeing a coordinated and vicious set of legal actions against the Trump administration which are slowing down or ultimately preventing meaningful progress when it comes to him doing the business of President.
When Trump was elected for a second term, he unveiled a swathe of executive orders aimed at enshrining the policy platform he had campaigned on and that reaffirmed his position as the President. Yet, since then he has faced a legal barrage from every angle; multiple lawsuits challenging them and preventing him from making meaningful strides forward in key reforming areas from immigration to deportation, to dismantling USAID, ‘ideological teacher training’ and Federal agency cuts. Most recently, the Court of International Trade in Manhattan has ruled that the implementation of wide-ranging tariffs exceeded presidential authority.
During his campaign for the 2024 Presidential Election, Trump was accused of racketeering and financial impropriety, while a judge in New York ordered him to pay a staggering $335million. In the run-up to the election he faced the threat of imprisonment. It was, to anyone that could see through the establishment noise, a blatant and obviously political move to ensure that Trump was not elected.
In this instance, lawfare arguably worked on the side of Trump. Not only did these targeted ‘attacks’ motivate him in a personal sense, dealing with each head-on and not just refusing to be cowed but reinforcing his determination to return as President. They also galvanized his MAGA base, as the movement spread across the country in the face of injustice.
The most recent lawfare, confounding the President’s agenda at every turn of what is only a four-year term to get things done, should be a warning to us all, not just in the US but in the UK too. When we ask ourselves if the judiciary is truly independent, whether it ever has been, we are likely to arrive at the conclusion that the answer is no on both counts.
It is only natural that individual members of the judiciary have their own private politics, beliefs, prejudices and possibly even agendas. But ideology not human psyche is what is playing a significant role in the barrage of legal attacks stopping Trump from implementing his agenda. The law itself has become the real challenge here; the fact that it is seemingly so open to interpretation means that the balance of power within the Supreme Court or any judicial body makes it a political tool for those who oppose certain changes.
We are now seeing the Supreme Court as the pinnacle of a judicial system weaponised by bad-faith actors, corrupted to a point where it can now be used as a blockade for essential reform, like deciding whether a handful of federal judges have the unrestrained power to issue nationwide blocks on the Presidential birthright citizenship executive order. Trump has taken this crucial case to the Supreme Court. Their decision hangs in the balance.
It is hard not to see this use of the law to stop a popularly elected President from implementing publicly mandated policies as politically motivated and therefore fundamentally wrong. Yet while the law and legal system remain the same, such lawfare is here to stay and will be used by Democrat Deep State along with its Soros funded attorneys, against Trump’s reform agenda. The President will have to battle every step of the way until January 2029 if he is to implement it.
