In Trump v. Congress, no one wins

[BloombergOpinion]( [Early Returns]( [Jonathan Bernstein]( We seem to be moving toward a series of showdowns between President Donald Trump and Congress. The problem is that Trump is stonewalling fairly normal congressional oversight. Among other things, his administration is refusing to comply with requests for his tax returns, business records and other documents. His attorney general has declined to testify before the House Judiciary Committee and defied a subpoena seeking evidence gathered by the special counsel’s office. His [business is suing]( the chairman of another committee to block the release of Trump’s financial information. Added up, what the president is doing is unprecedented: It’s an attempt to radically rewrite the relationship between the branches of government. For better or worse, House Democrats have chosen to fight this battle mainly in the courts. There’s a [good case]( that they should instead do so through legislation – say, by placing riders on appropriations bills that could constrain the president’s actions. They may still try, but they’ll run smack into Senate Republicans, who for now seem to be aligning with Trump and party against the institution they serve in. So the courts it probably will be. I see people talking, as they tend to at times like this, about a constitutional crisis. This situation is unusual in several respects, but remember that fights between the branches are common throughout U.S. history. In fact, they’re pretty much deliberately built into the system. Even if a crisis never materializes, though, this dispute could still do real damage. One possibility is that the courts will systematically rule in favor of the White House. That might create a set of precedents that would represent a major shift in power away from Congress and toward the presidency. Although the Constitution changes all the time, this could be a very unfortunate development. It would represent yet another step toward a court-empowered imperial presidency. A second, more disturbing possibility is that the courts will basically do a Bush v. Gore: That is, they’ll issue a partisan decision to support Trump, but attempt to avoid setting a precedent. That, too, would reshape the constitutional order – toward strict partisanship in the judicial system. It would weaken the rule of law by encouraging short-term constitutional hardball and trapping both parties in a cycle of escalating attempts to exploit their electoral victories. Trump could also lose outright. Although the relevant law states that the [House can ask for and receive the president’s tax returns](, for instance, Trump’s administration has simply refused to comply. The courts could rebuke the Treasury Department and rule that Congress is well within its rights. The same with House subpoenas for documents and testimony. And what then? Trump could just accept the ruling. During Watergate, President Richard Nixon repeatedly challenged the rights of Congress and federal prosecutors, but he always backed down when he lost in court. If Trump does the same, a crisis might be averted, but the effect might be to weaken the presidency to some degree over the longer term. Then there’s the most dangerous possibility: The courts rule against Trump and the administration refuses to comply. That’s a real constitutional crisis, made worse if Senate Republicans side with the president and against the courts. It’s worth noting that there are several different attempts to avoid congressional oversight, and they each could wind up resolved in different ways. That could make the eventual result murkier – and thus could be the least-bad scenario. 1. Mark Spindel and Sarah Binder at the Monkey Cage on [Trump’s continuing attempts to fill the Federal Reserve Board vacancies](. 2. Vaidya Gullapali and Daniel Nichanian on [prison gerrymandering]( and other ways to use the census for political advantage. 3. A whole lot of former federal prosecutors think the special counsel’s [evidence would call for an indictment of the president]( – if he wasn’t the president. 4. My Bloomberg Opinion colleague Justin Fox on [what college students are focused on]( these days. 5. And Jamelle Bouie on [Joe Biden and electability](. Pretty close to how I view it, which is roughly that we have very limited ways of knowing which candidates are more electable; that it’s unlikely to make much difference for the out-party anyway; and that there’s some (not very strong) evidence that candidates who are perceived as ideological outliers have a small disadvantage in presidential general elections. 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