Donald Trump is busy riding the presidential honeymoon period that wasn't. His approval ratings are taking on water faster than a dingy in the perfect storm. He's miffed that his cabinet picks are moving slower than a slug on hot pavement, calling it “a disgrace” Tuesday that his “full Cabinet” isn’t already in place. The next day he was reduced to reassuring a group of law enforcement officials that his precious border wall is "getting designed right now."
The only thing he's done to date that's had real impact—the Muslim ban—is on life support for now. The Ninth Circuit appeals panel not only upheld a restraining order on Trump's ban, it also determined that Trump was likely to lose on the merits of an appeal.
Trump's now infamous ALL CAPS tweet promising that he would see the judges "IN COURT!" surely just skims the surface of the hothead-in-chief’s frustration. Earlier in the week he even expressed dismay that the court case Washington v. Trump was "going on so long." (Someone might want to clue him in that the road to a Supreme Court ruling on the merits could feel g-l-a-c-i-a-l. And then he might lose again.)
Let's just pause now and appreciate the fact that Trump hasn't even begun to try to legislate—that is, get bills passed through Congress, including and especially his budget. And here's how good that's looking:
GOP lawmakers are fretting that Trump’s spending requests, due out in a month or so, will blow a gaping hole in the federal budget — ballooning the debt and undermining the party’s doctrine of fiscal discipline.
If Donald Trump is frustrated by the road blocks posed by the independent judiciary, just wait until he faces a Congress of 500-plus self-interested politicians who would kick Trump to the curb in a heartbeat if it benefited their re-election.
Trump’s executive orders have served as an undeniable galvanizing moment for progressive activists—perhaps his best accomplishment to date. But his biggest test won't be his ability to sign a few pieces of poorly conceived legal documents. His biggest test awaits in Congress.