from WNYC studios. I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast. It's Monday, February 17th.

For this president's day, we begin with the latest episode of our series, 100 Years of 100 Things.

If you're new to the show, we are observing WNYC's 100 years as a not-for-profit radio station

with a history series, exploring 100 years of 100 different things.

We're up to thing number 70 today, 100 years of presidential power.

Obviously, the news hook is the aggressive way that President Trump is wielding or trying to wield executive power since his inauguration last month,

and he's not shy about declaring it. On Saturday, for example, he posted a version of a line usually attributed to Napoleon, though

nobody seems to really know if that's where it originated, but Trump wrote, he who saves his country

does not violate any law. The Republican Congress seems to be fine with that. For some federal courts, however, it's a different story.

Reading from a list of court orders so far, as published by Forbes, we have these, for example.

District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled Trump plainly violated the law by firing the government ethics watchdog Hampton Delinger. A federal judge

ordered the Trump administration to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, noting that the

officials, quote, have not offered any explanation for why a blanket suspension of all

congressionalally appropriated foreign aid was a rational precursor to reviewing programs, unquote.

Baltimore-based judge Brendan Herson blocked Trump's directives restricting transgender health care

and gender affirming care for people under age 19,

with Judge Herson saying at a hearing that Trump's restrictions on the medical treatments,

quote, seems to deny that this population even exists. And Trump's executive order

rescinding birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S. to parents who aren't citizens

or permanent residence was blocked for a fourth time in court. Those examples from Forbes,

and there are others as well as you know. And as we've discussed on this show, Vice President Vance

and a tweet seemed to be sending out a trial balloon on the idea that Trump might even defy court

...