Last week, a federal judge in Washington, DC, issued a temporary restraining order to stop Donald Trump’s firing of thousands of employees at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The judge was appointed by . . . Trump. I’ve already written about the very real possibility that Trump’s judges may rule against Trump; they did this, after all, repeatedly during his first term. And they’re doing it again, in his second term.

But I want to address here a different, more troubling issue.

In their lawsuit against Trump’s gutting of USAID, the unions that brought suit claimed that Trump had exceeded his legal and constitutional authority by firing thousands of employees. “Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle U.S.A.I.D. were taken pursuant to congressional authorization,” the unions claimed. “And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency.”