Legal strategies are named to provide a bit of shorthand in an otherwise impenetrable jungle of words. For example, the Affirmative Defense admits to prosecution charges, but offers a justification for them. Alternative Dispute Resolution is a fancy way of saying, “Let’s settle this outside of court so we can avoid a public trial.”
But in today’s world, internet memes may be more illuminating than any tutorials from the Bar Association. During Trump’s second term, his administration and hand-picked Department of Justice, have successfully employed a new strategy: “F*** you! Try to stop me.”
We are fond of saying that we are a country of laws, not men, but relying on those laws requires a basic agreement that everyone in our society, from unknowns at the bottom of our pecking order to the highest elected officials, will accept and follow court orders. Supposedly, no one is above the law, and throughout our history, we’ve accepted courts as the final arbiter in disputes.
Accepting court rulings hinges on the “”or else” clause which parents use repeatedly. We need our children to generally acquiesce when we say “No skipping school, or getting home late, or visiting forbidden web sites” or the million other proscriptions we issue, because the final clause in the sentence, “or else… ” is just too cumbersome to carry out every time.
At the societal level, if most people ignored laws and court orders, our justice system would spend all its time proving that the realities of “or else” were harsh enough to deter future crimes. Our general agreement to honor the courts without forcing them to follow-up with police action every time allows them to proceed with more valuable activities and gives us a degree of confidence when we’re legally wronged.
The Trump administration has successfully thrown sand into the gears of our system by appointing politically tilted judges, drowning federal courts in frivolous suits and clearly illegal acts, and overtly ignoring a variety of court and congressional orders. They are daring the justice system to stop them.
Several cases stick out from a multitude of others. One is the refusal to release all unclassified files related to cases against Jeffrey Epstein. Congress passed the Transparency Act Nov. 19, 2025 (on combined votes of 527-1), with Trump’s approval. But the DOJ only released about half of the available files, and apparently aren’t working to comply with a rare unanimous demand by Congress. Trump (before he started his war of distraction), reversed course again and now often calls pressure related to the files “the Epstein hoax.”
ICE and military actions have often ignored judicial rulings and congressional acts as well. There are multiple cases in which a judge issued an immigration order which was blatantly ignored. Author of a war of choice in Iran, the administration has never sought congressional approval as required by law, claiming that a ceasefire reset the 60-day window for approval.
Previous presidents, by custom, didn’t want questions about conflicts of interest and removed themselves from stock trading decisions. But insider trading has exploded under Trump. A recent AP report says that Trump engaged in 3,600 transactions in January through March of 2026, about 50 per business day, and more than all 535 members of Congress combined! After the administration gutted the agencies responsible for policing the trading markets, Trump has indulged in trades involving somewhere between $220 and $750 million. It’s tough to combat the “Try to stop me” strategy when all the watchdogs have been replaced by silent chickens.
Our national history until recently has been based on some level of trust between the government and the people, even though it has been frequently abused. But Trump’s larger strategy of overwhelming people with an avalanche of conflicting information and illegal actions has worked so far. Our customary expectation for government officials to abide by the rule of law has been punctured and deflated, most noticeably when convicted lawbreakers who support Trump are pardoned, and when violent rioters of January 6th await a Trump-sponsored payment for their services. The “or else” option is now reserved for political enemies rather than all felons.
We were a nation of laws, not men, but Trump and MAGA have done their best to ignore inconvenient laws with their bully-boy, “try to stop me” approach. It will take a Democratic majority in Congress and a few brave Republicans to show them they are not above the law, and that the “or else” clause applies to them as well.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column appears regularly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.