It's ironic that it is down to the courts to rein in Trump's excesses

The USA is in the rather ridiculous and unfortunate position of relying on the unelected courts to guard against some of Donald Trump's more extreme decisions. A federal judge has just blocked Trump's use of billions in military funds to build a wall on the Mexican border.

But this is just the latest of many occasions where the courts have been the fall-back option, where the Democrat majority in the House of Representatives is just not able to have any say on the random decisions coming out of the White House (other recent examples are the court blocking of Trump's controversial citizenship question for the 2020 census, and the move by US asylum officers to use the courts to put an end to Trump's "Remain in Mexico" policy for asylum-seekers). This is mainly because the US political system gives the President so much power to hand down edicts that never get discussed or debated by the country's elected representatives. Some of those decisions are just so extreme as to be illegal or unconstitutional, though, and the legal system can step in and overrule them.

I suppose we should be grateful that such checks and balances exist. But it is ironic that the country has to rely on unelected court officers to rein in a President gone berserk with power.