There are many lawsuits challenging allegedly illegal actions by the Trump administration — 132 of them as of March 21, according to the legal news site Just Security. That’s a lot to keep track of.

Two issues raised by some of these suits stand out, however, as Trump’s most blatant violations of the Constitution, and therefore as matters to pay particular attention to.

One is the question of whether Trump can simply cancel federal spending that is mandated by an act of Congress, an issue known as “impoundment.” As future Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote in a 1969 Justice Department memo, “it is in our view extremely difficult to formulate a constitutional theory to justify a refusal by the President to comply with a congressional directive to spend.”

The other issue is birthright citizenship. The Constitution is absolutely clear that anyone born in the United States and subject to its laws is a citizen, regardless of the immigration status of their parents. As one Reagan-appointed judge said of Trump’s attempt to strip citizenship from some Americans born in this country, “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades, I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one is.”

The current Supreme Court is not just very far to the right, it is alarmingly partisan. The Court’s spent the last several years settling old grievances, overruling decades-old cases that the Republican Party has long found objectionable. It even ruled that Trump, the leader of the Republican Party, is allowed to use his official powers to commit crimes.

So it is reasonable to worry that a majority of the justices will simply do whatever a Republican administration wants them to do.

This is why the birthright citizenship and impoundment cases are such important bellwethers. No competent lawyer, and certainly no reasonable judge, could conclude that Trump’s actions in either case are lawful. There is no serious debate about what the Constitution says about either issue. If the Court rules in favor of Trump in either case, it’s hard to imagine the justices offering any meaningful pushback to anything Trump wants to do.

Fortunately, there are early signs that this won’t happen. On the impoundment issue, the Supreme Court recently rejected the

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