I want to take a moment to reiterate and explain an idea I’ve discussed many times here but which is particularly relevant in this moment: all power is unitary. What does this mean? Basically it means that a political actor’s relative power is the same everywhere. It’s not divided up into different buckets. You’re not losing power on one front and maintaining or increasing it everywhere else. That’s not how it works. Losses and gains in one place show up everywhere else. So Trump taking hits on the economy weakens him in the courts and with DOGE, Congress and everywhere else. It applies the same on the upside. If Trump is winning big battles in the courts that empowers him everywhere else, even in areas that have nothing to do with the courts or the particular legal issue in question.
