Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

On Tuesday we will, exhaustedly, reach Day 100 of Donald Trump’s second term as president of the United States of America. In that time, Trump has issued almost 140 executive orders, sparking hundreds of lawsuits in courts across the country. Fifty-five of those legal challenges have been filed by Democracy Forward, often in conjunction with other lawyers and groups. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, about what we’ve learned in 100 days of lawlessness from Donald Trump and why winning in court signifies wins across the board. Their conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Dahlia Lithwick: There are too many legal challenges in too many courts to really keep track of: federal firings, illegal renditions, DOGE data scoops, scientists suing because vital research has been shuttered, First Amendment challenges—the list goes on and on, and my sense is that it’s just too much to track, even for people who are committed to tracking it all. I wonder if you have a useful rubric for those of us who aren’t in court every day doing what you’re doing, to help us think about what matters and what we ought to be following closely. Do you have a system for thinking about this massive litigation onslaught and how to keep track of what’s important?

Skye Perryman: I think there’s a few ways that we can look at these things. There is the category of cases in which the president is seeking to alter the American people’s constitutional rights. That’s birthright citizenship, that is the Alien Enemies Act cases—because those are about due process and the due process that is afforded to all people. Also in this category are the cases about the president’s power vis-à-vis Congress’ power, so you have the spending cases, the funding-freeze cases, and the cases about whether the president has the authority to fire certain officials and officers. All the cases in this category come down to: What is this president doing, and how are the courts responding to an attempt to alter and diminish the American people’s constitutional rights?

Then you have another category of cases that’s really about what this administration is doing and how they are deploying individuals who are not accountable or who wish to not be accountable to the American people. These cases concern Elon Musk and DOGE, but you can also put many of the civil service cases in this category. Because here you have attempts by this administration to remove people who have had a responsibility to the Constitution, to the American people—the nonpartisan, independent civil service. The administration is trying to remove those people and replace them with partisan loyalists. So this category of cases is about the way in which our government functions, how it’s functioning, and who is being able to influence it.

Then I would say that there are the cases about the services and needs of the American people—we might call these “the Project 2025 cases”—like Trump’s attempt to decimate the Department of Education, his attempt to decimate USAID, and what we are going to see soon from the heads of his agencies as they start implementing policies throughout the federal government that affect the way in which individuals operate in their daily lives.

So I think those are the three categories: 1) cases concerning constitutional rights and the limits of the president’s authority, as well as the constitutional rights of people, 2) cases around who gets to influence the government and how that’s functioning and what types of transparency the law requires, and 3) what I call “kitchen-table cases”—these Project 2025 cases where the president is seeking to do a range of things as a policy matter that he is not doing through Congress. He’s trying to do a range of things that are deeply harmful to the well-being of the American people, and in many instances are unlawful as a policy matter from the executive branch.

And of course there’s overlap, because some of the things that he is doing in those kitchen-table cases affect individuals’ constitutional rights. So it’s not that they’re completely independent rubrics, but I try to think of them in those three categories.

Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
Are Law Firms Breaking the Law by Caving to Trump?
Read More

That’s actually super helpful, because I think we get hyperfocused on the things that matter to us, and it’s easy to say the other things matter less, but I think you’re right and we have to think across silos. 

Even if we are assiduously following the firings cases or the Voice of America case, it all is interconnected and all part of the whole. Steve Bannon’s “Flood the zone with shit” theory is to atomize, isolate, cut off, and appeal to people’s parochial self-interest. It’s very useful to say, “Yes, there are buckets of cases, but also, at the same time, everything is interconnected.” It’s one of the reasons that, at 100 days, a win in any one case has knock-on effects all around the judicial branch. 

I don’t think I expected the judges to acquit themselves in such a robust fashion, and I think it’s contagious in a way. We’re starting to see judges come forward and say things like “Not in my courtroom” or “I don’t care, cancel your vacation” or “Did you just lie to me?” We’re seeing something again that is crossing silos, and also, I think, in many ways it’s challenging the notion that judges are always overcautious and too reactive and too slow. 

But all this brings us ever closer to this moment we’re entering, which is that the law runs out of road when a judge issues a ruling and the administration just ignores them. On Amicus, we keep saying that we need contempt findings, we need fines, we need state bars to start going after people. It’s not good enough to be angry from the bench; there need to be consequences. 

What is your theory of the case about how close we are to a judge somewhere imposing meaningful consequences for lawyers who seem to feel as if they’re bulletproof—as though they can walk into courtrooms and say things that aren’t true or misrepresent Supreme Court holdings? The level of audacity is really different in this first 100 days of Trump, from Trump’s previous first 100 days. What is in the toolbox for a judge who is running out of patience with this and who understands that Pam Bondi and the federal marshals are not going to be the source of discipline?

It’s really important we don’t bury the lede here. The reason we are having this conversation right now is because the lawyers, the people who are willing to go to court as clients, and the judges are all doing their jobs. We are having this conversation because a major power that the American people have—the ability to go into court and to initiate litigation and to defend their rights—is working. As a result, you have a president that doesn’t want to be accountable to the people, that doesn’t want to be accountable to the checks and balances that are in place, and who is now on a rampage against lawyers and the judiciary. Part of that rampage includes skirting court orders and thumbing his nose at the judiciary.

The reason I wanted to start there is that I think part of the strategy is to try to get people to give up. So if you go in and say, “Well, it doesn’t matter what you order, Judge, I’m not going to do it,” and there’s a whole national conversation about how, well, the courts may be doing well today, but we really don’t think they’re going to be able to check the president because he’s not going to follow their orders anyway, that just plays into their hands—they want to convince people that they have no power and that there is nothing that can be done. But so far we’re seeing lawyers, communities, and judges across the country reject that. They’re showing that there’s a lot of good fight in this and that there is a lot of impact that can be had through the courts.

So then we have to deal with what’s actually transpiring in many of the cases that we are litigating. We will go in and win a court order, and then immediately we get concerning calls from people across the country who are flagging that the government is not complying with that order. We are raising that with judges, as are lawyers in other cases. And the judges are being very clear, even in cases that aren’t making the headlines, that their orders need to be complied with. So the Department of Justice is having to come in with status report after status report, to report on their compliance.

In many of those cases, we’re seeing that that level of heavy oversight by the court is making a difference and ensuring that people are getting the relief that they are entitled to from the courts. It’s still not normal, by the way, that we have to spend resources, and the American people have to spend resources, while the DOJ is going into court and wasting people’s time by engaging in conduct that’s never going to fly.

Then you have the cases like Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s case, like our Alien Enemies Act case, where the administration appears to be taking a calculated position to push beyond legal limits and to suggest that somehow the executive doesn’t have to follow court orders or that there’s a question about whether these orders are binding. Those are the cases where you’re seeing the types of things that people have labeled as approaching a constitutional crisis. What you’re about to see over the coming weeks, as we get past the 100-day mark, is a range of courts starting to use the tools that the judiciary has to compel compliance—not just delivering a scornful conversation from the bench, but tools including the ability to impose criminal contempt and civil contempt. Both of them are highly significant, and I think that civil contempt is something not to be underestimated. It really can require the government to redress the harms that it has created by not following court orders.

It may be true that the courts don’t have an army, as people say, but the courts do have a lot of power to enforce their orders—including the precedent that the U.S. Marshals have to follow what the courts direct, not what the attorney general directs, if there is a conflict there. So we’re about to see a lot of those things play out if the administration continues on its current collision course with the judiciary.

They’re Donald Trump’s Most Loyal Voters. I Didn’t Understand Why. After a Weekend in the Woods With Them, That Changed.


This Content is Available for Slate Plus members only

The Huge Mistake Trump Keeps Making That Will Ultimately Doom His Presidency

The Sleeping Giant That Could Stop Trump’s Agenda in Its Tracks

The Courage to Be Decent

But beyond the courts’ literal powers, this is not something that the American people are tolerating—whether or not they agree with a court order. In this country, we follow court orders, and they are not optional. So I think you’re going to see that squeeze, too, as we continue to have record numbers of people in town halls across the country, the president’s allies having to cancel their town halls because they don’t have explanations for what’s going on. You’re going to see a real combination of the power of the courts and the power of people. Eventually, that could also motivate Congress at some point (we hope).

I don’t want to minimize the fact that people are getting hurt every single day. There’s not a single American in this country whose life has been made easier or better by what this administration has been doing, and the courts are a very powerful tool that the American people have. But they are not the silver bullet.

I think it’s also important to say that the fear this time is real for judges, for lawyers, for legal academics. This is a really scary time, and it’s useful to remind ourselves that courage is contagious, be it among judges or lawyers or advocacy groups or universities or government employees. Everyone is scared, but when we see people who show up in court and do what you do, day after day, week after week, it’s a reminder that none of us is alone in this fight.