All These Defeats Are Ruining Trump’s Birthday

Why is the world conspiring to spoil America’s 250th birthday, and, more important, Donald Trump’s 80th? Like a Roman emperor, Trump has busied himself with self-aggrandizing public works, such as a massive triumphal arch, and is staging gladiatorial sports in his own honor, in the form of a UFC fight on the White House lawn on June 14. A string of recent setbacks reveals that Trump is no omnipotent emperor after all, but an American president who—more and more—is forced to fold.On Monday, Axios and The New York Times reported that the administration was dropping its plans for the Department of Justice to create an “anti-weaponization” fund, after other Republicans recoiled at its terms and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing its operation. This fund was set up as a settlement of Trump’s lawsuit against the IRS (an agency he controls) over the leaking of his tax returns. Trump was suing for $10 billion in damages, but withdrew his lawsuit against himself in exchange for the creation of a slush fund of $1.776 billion (get it?) for those who felt victimized by “lawfare.” Participants in the January 6 riot, already pardoned by the president, were eagerly awaiting the chance to apply for reparations. (Though the Justice Department had helpfully clarified that “There are no partisan requirements to file a claim.”)Trump’s apparent retreat marks the defeat not just of a harebrained scheme, but of one of his signature policy innovations: the idea that federal law ought to be applied unequally, to punish his foes and dole out benefits to his friends.Many of Trump’s other bold ideas have hit snags, too. The unilateral tariffs that he imposed on the rest of the world were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in February; in May, the Court of International Trade also invalidated his stand-in measure of 10 percent tariffs. At the start of this year, Trump caught the foreign-interventionism bug and captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the