The US Congress
Congress is split and, many would say, poisoned by partisanship. The Republican leadership in the Senate has largely aligned itself with the agenda Trump’ set on judges and “law and order,” and is confirming conservative judicial nominees who are explicitly sceptical of federal regulation, reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ protections.
Historically budget power was Congress’s big stick, but it is also less effective when a president is willing to dare a shutdown (or to declare emergencies). Trump did this in his first term to fund his border wall and did it again in his second term. He’s signalling again that he’ll use emergency powers, and he now has a Supreme Court that is far more willing to let him.
When the same party controls the presidency and at least one chamber of Congress, impeachment is basically off the table. (Trump was impeached twice in his first term, but Senate Republicans refused to convict) The House can haul cabinet officials in for testimony and try to expose wrongdoing – and Democratic-led committees will absolutely attempt that – but this sort of oversight without the numbers to pass binding legislation can be dramatic and headline grabbing, but ultimately it is just theatre.
Congress can still raise the political price on Trump: On 10 December 2025, the House passed a sweeping defence policy bill with unusually sharp transparency hooks, threatening to dock the Defence Secretary’s travel budget unless the Pentagon releases orders and unedited footage from controversial maritime strikes. Whatever one thinks of the underlying policy, this does at least show a cross‑party appetite for oversight tools that force disclosures and constrain executive room for manoeuvre.
The Lower Courts and SCOTUS
Usually, when a president overreaches, civil society groups sue, a lower court blocks the policy nationwide, and everything slows down. Trump and the current Supreme Court majority have been busy sawing and hacking through that particular safety net.
In June 2025, in Trump v. CASA, the Court’s large conservative bloc sharply cut back the lower courts’ ability to issue “nationwide injunctions” against federal policies. The ruling says that district judges shouldn’t block a presidential order for everyone in the country; they should only shield the specific plaintiffs who sued. That sounds technical but the impact is hugely significant, it now makes it far harder for, say, an immigrant rights group in California to halt a deportation policy coast to coast. Instead, Trump can keep enforcing a policy almost everywhere while individual cases now need to crawl through the lower courts on a state-by-state basis.
At the same time, the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority – six out of nine justices are right leaning, with three appointed by Trump himself: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – has repeatedly backed him on its “shadow docket,” the emergency channel the Court uses for fast, unsigned rulings. For example, in August 2025 the docket was used to allow the National Institutes of Health to terminate research grants (these primarily focused on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiative) and in September 2025 it was used to allow racial profiling of stop and search in California.
The use of the shadow docket refers to the U.S. Supreme Court’s emergency rulings and orders (like stays and injunctions) issued without full oral arguments or extensive written explanations, outside of the court’s usual merits docket (full scrutiny, if you will). It can be easily argued that the shadow docket lacks transparency, confuses lower courts, and risks damaging the Supreme Court’s public legitimacy due to perceived political influence. Often issued late at night, they have controversially shaped major policies on abortion, voting rights, and immigration.
The shadow docket has fast become one of Trump’s blunt but highly effective weapons in his judicial armoury. According to reporting on the 2024–25 term, the Court sided with Trump in 20 out of 25 emergency requests, often letting him carry out contested policies immediately, before normal judicial review. For comparison: imagine if the UK government could ask the UK Courts to green-light controversial policy before Parliament debates it and usually gets a yes. To put this in perspective: the Biden Government made 19 emergency requests in four years.
Justice Elena Kagan, one of the Court’s liberals, has warned that this habit of late-night, unexplained orders risks turning the Court into a rubber stamp for Trump’s most aggressive uses of executive power. Even when the Court occasionally restrains him – for example Justice Amy Barrett, has sometimes sided with Chief Justice Roberts and the other liberals, and even drew fury from pro-Trump commentators “she is evil” for declining to block certain foreign aid payments on his say-so – the overall direction is clear. The Supreme Court is structurally tilted toward hard right conservative politics and, crucially, toward a very expansive view of presidential power.
The current state of SCOTUS is a dream scenario for Trump, with critics arguing that this has given him near unfettered power.
The Supreme Court as Trump’s Insurance Policy (this is not the brake you’re looking for)
So, it would appear that SCOTUS is now Trump’s ultimate insurance policy, in three ways:
Firstly, it’s ideologically conservative with a 6–3 majority. SCOTUS has already gutted abortion rights nationwide, limited federal regulators’ ability to act on climate change, public health, signalled its hostility to LGBTQ+ rights and trans healthcare, and the removal of protections for Venezuelan nationals (And now the Trump regime effectively used the 2025 SCOTUS rulings to “clear the brush” of domestic protections for Venezuelan nationals, while the administration simultaneously dismantled the legal recognition of Maduro’s government, creating the specific legal environment in which Maduro’s 2026 arrest and trial could take place.) This is broadly aligned with Trump’s political brand and his base. Even when individual justices wobble, the SCOTUS baseline is structurally to the right.
Second, procedurally: by using the shadow docket it lets Trump press ahead while cases are still being argued. It has even allowed him to hold back billions in foreign aid despite lower courts saying no, and to implement controversial immigration crackdowns while appeals play out. This is enormous. It means Trump doesn’t necessarily need to win in the traditional legal sense. He just needs to get far enough to ask the SCOTUS for an emergency stay – and most of the time, given the conservative majority, he gets one.
Finally, and perhaps the most significant ruling as it plays directly to Trump’s ego, SCOTUS has ruled that a president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts taken, within their constitutional powers, i.e. when issuing executive orders as president. This immunity is to ensure a President’s official acts, versus those considered private, are not distorted by fear of future litigation, safeguarding the independence of the Executive Branch. This power, in Trump’s hands, has become a loaded weapon, renaming landmarks such as The Kennedy Centre, shutting down the Department of Education, threatening Greenland, arresting Madro and pardoning Jan 6th Rioters to list but a few…
To an old-school Tory or consensus based conservative rule, where their instinct is that power should be bound by duty, custom, and restraint – this should be terrifying. The American right spent half a century arguing for limited government, with checks on executive overreach, and the rule of law. The modern Trump project is the very opposite: he’s created a justice system repurposed as a weapon turning the law on those who oppose him, and creating a Supreme Court willing to approve first and ask constitutional questions later.
In part 3 we’ll look at what powers exist at a local level as possible blockers
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