Your anxiety is entirely justified. We are going through one of the most stressful times in American history. It is a national emergency.

Yet the resistance to this foul regime continues to mount. Here’s this week’s report on 10 reasons for modest optimism, in rough order of importance.

1. The courts are stepping up their fight against the regime.

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s emergency request to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid as part of his efforts to slash government spending. The vote was 5-4, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the three liberal members to form a majority.

It’s the second 5-4 Supreme Court ruling against Trump since he returned to power, and it shows that an unlikely majority does exist to rein in Trump’s excesses.

This probably accounts for Trump’s decision to back off from issuing an executive order dismantling the Education Department. The Supreme Court would almost certainly have held that only Congress can shut down a department. (Shutting the Education Department has also been​ unpopular ​among Republican​ leaders​ in rural areas that heavily rely on federal funding.)

Meanwhile, lower federal courts are now considering over 80 separate lawsuits against the Trump regime. So far, the vast majority of lower-court rulings have been against Trump.

In an opinion handed down Thursday morning, Federal District Court Judge John J. McConnell Jr. extended an order barring Trump from withholding billions in congressionally approved funds to 22 states and the District of Columbia, including Federal Emergency Management funding. The judge said:

“Here, the executive put itself above Congress. It imposed a categorical mandate on the spending of congressionally appropriated and obligated funds without regard to Congress’s authority to control spending … In an evident and acute harm, with floods and fires wreaking havoc across the country, federal funding for emergency management and preparedness would be impacted.”

Also on Thursday, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell ruled that Trump violated the National Labor Relations Act by firing National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, and that Wilcox remains in her position at the federal agency. Howell wrote: “The President’s interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power — or, more aptly, his aspiration — is flat wrong.”

On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley extended a freeze on the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding through the National Institutes of Health.

Also on Wednesday, the Merit Systems Protection Board, which decides federal worker disputes, temporarily allowed thousands of Department of Agriculture employees swept up in Musk’s government-gutting effort to get back to work.

2. Musk and Trump Republicans are seen to be targeting Social Security.

Elon Musk calls Social Security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.” That’s rich coming from the richest person in the world.

It’s also frightening coming from the person wielding a chainsaw to government programs — promising to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, when Social Security is one of the largest of all government programs.

Acting Social Security Administration (SSA) Commissioner Leland Dudek told a group this week that Musk’s DOGE is essentially in charge of the SSA.

“Things are currently operating in a way I have never seen in government before,” Dudek said, referring to Musk’s cost-cutting team as “outsiders who are unfamiliar with nuances of SSA programs.” He continued: “I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions.’”

The reason I include this as a reason for optimism is that Social Security is also the most popular of all government programs. By demeaning and threatening Social Security, Musk is........

© Eurasia Review