President Donald Trump loves to take a phrase and drain it of all meaning. In his first term, he transformed the term “fake news” from describing a specific problem with a type of misinformation into an attack on any journalist he didn’t like or a piece of journalism that made him look bad.
Now he’s doing the same to the word “lawfare,” and the stakes are even higher — including, potentially, the guardrails of our democracy.
Coined in 2001, “lawfare” refers to the use of courts and other legal systems to damage or delegitimize a political opponent. (It’s also now the name of a nonprofit news site.) After Trump left office four years ago, he began using lawfare incorrectly to describe the various criminal cases he was embroiled in due to paying hush money, allegedly trying to overturn an election and allegedly mishandling classified documents.
Coined in 2001, “lawfare” refers to the use of courts and other legal systems to damage or delegitimize a political opponent.
Lately he’s started applying it to efforts to fight his administration’s attempts to quickly remake the federal government.
As with the criminal cases, Trump is in court because of his own alleged actions, however. He attempted to unilaterally erase birthright citizenship from the 14th Amendment. He fired inspectors general from more than a dozen agencies without the required 30 days’ warning. He enlisted Elon Musk, the richest person on the planet, to cancel billions of dollars of congressionally allocated spending, then allowed his team unfettered access to sensitive financial and personnel records.
So far, Trump is not winning. His attempt to end birthright citizenship has been blocked by no fewer than four judges. Another judge ordered that the fired head of the agency protecting whistleblowers be reinstated. Another judge blocked Musk’s team from accessing key Treasury data. Another ordered the restoration of webpages on public health websites. Most of these rulings are temporary, a way for judges to hit the pause button while they determine whether the administration was acting lawfully.
Trump and his allies have responded to these setbacks with undisguised contempt.
On Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority.” Vice President JD Vance asserted that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” which could be read as a threat to disregard court orders. Musk even called for a wave of judicial impeachments by Congress.
Let’s be clear: courts can only consider the cases brought before them. Democratic attorneys general and nonprofits are not filing these lawsuits to hurt Trump, but because they believe his actions are unlawful. Judges (including Republican appointees) are not ruling against Trump out of personal animus, but because they want to slow things down while they take a closer look. It’s not lawfare, as Trump would have you believe. It’s the law, applied fairly. But what happens if Trump’s supporters believe his claims? After all, we watched with our own eyes as he convinced millions of our fellow Americans that the 2020 election was rigged without a shred of good evidence. If he can undermine the legitimacy of our elections, who’s to say that he can’t do the same with our courts? And therein lies the crisis we’ll soon be facing. The most powerful man in the world is attacking the system of laws he’s sworn to uphold. The real lawfare right now is the one that Trump is waging against the courts, and that should concern all of us. For more thought-provoking insights from Symone Sanders-Townsend, Michael Steele and Alicia Menendez, watch “The Weekend” every Saturday and Sunday at 8 a.m. ET on MSNBC.
Symone D. Sanders Townsend is an author and a co-host of "The Weeknight."
Evan Brechtel
Evan Brechtel is a segment producer on MSNBC's "The Weekend." 
