Today was a good day for those who believe in the rule of law. Three decisions halted–at least temporarily–Trump’s intention to make unilateral decisions, consulting no other authority, disregarding the law to impose his will.

In one court decision, a federal judge in D.C. ruled that Trump’s name must be removed from the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts and that the proposed renovation and closure of the center requires further study.

In the second, a federal judge in Virginia halted the creation of Trump’s slush fund for his allies, at least temporarily. Even Republicans were appalled by the idea that a president could unilaterally obtain control of nearly $2 billion to distribute to alleged victims of his choosing, without any oversight.

In the third, a federal judge in Florida reopened the case that led to the creation of Trump’s slush fund, questioning whether fraud was committed.

In the first decision, as reported by Julia Jacobs and Zach Montague of The New York Times, Federal Judge Christopher R. Cooper directed the Kennedy Center to remove Trump’s name from its title. He

determined that the board’s decision to add Mr. Trump’s name to the Kennedy Center violated a law passed by Congress in 1964 that made “crystal clear” the institution was to be named for former President John F. Kennedy.

“Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, and only Congress can change it,” the judge wrote in a 94-page opinion. He ordered that the 18 letters added to the center’s front portico be removed within two weeks.

The center’s board of trustees, a vast majority of whom are allies of Mr. Trump, voted in December to add the president’s name to the performing arts center. Less than a day later, new lettering was added to the building’s marble facade, which now reads: “The Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

Roma Daravi, a spokeswoman for the center, said that it would appeal the ruling, signing her statement as the “Trump Kennedy Center Vice President of Public Relations.”

“We are confident that on appeal the court will uphold the board’s will to recognize President Trump’s historic contributions to our nation’s cultural center,” she said.

The judge’s order came in response to a lawsuit by Representative Joyce Beatty, Democrat of Ohio, who is an ex officio member of the Kennedy Center’s board. She objected to both the renaming and the plans to close the institution, which her lawyers argued was in fact a decision “designed to hide their embarrassment about declining ticket sales.”

Judge Cooper found that the board had been “derelict” in considering the possible consequences to programming when shuttering the center, as well as its legal responsibility to maintain the center as a memorial to the slain president. His order did not make any specific directives for reinstating programming as the board reassesses its renovation plans.

Ms. Beatty said in a statement celebrating the ruling that “the Kennedy Center is an institution that belongs to the American people, not to Donald Trump.”

In a parallel ruling in a separate lawsuit on Friday, Judge Cooper, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, stopped short of blocking the center from beginning renovations after preservationist groups said they had been undertaken without the required permits.

While that coalition of groups had argued that the administration appeared intent on remaking the center in Mr. Trump’s image, and potentially demolishing the structure entirely, Judge Cooper found that possibility too remote for now. But he warned that he would re-evaluate if the facts on the ground changed, saying there was a “paucity of concrete details as to the project’s scope.”

“If the work is, say, more transformative than present testimony suggests or requires permits that the center has yet to acknowledge or secure, the court’s legal analysis might look substantially different,” the judge wrote.

After shunning the Kennedy Center in his first term, Mr. Trump has staged a wholesale takeover of the institution in his second. He stocked the center’s board with loyalists, who installed him as chairman, ushering in a period of upheaval as many artists boycotted the increasingly politicized institution.

In Mr. Trump’s social media post on Friday, he indicated that he was now interested in giving up responsibility for the Kennedy Center, writing that he had instructed the Commerce Department to “transfer this failing Institution” to Congress. It was not immediately clear what he meant; the programming is run through a nonprofit, but Congress allots federal funds to maintain the building.

Jeff Mason of Bloomberg News noted Trump’s petulant rant that he would turn the performing arts center over to Congress but questioned whether it was legal to do so:

Trump, in a social media post, decried the judge’s ruling and said he would be “working with Congress to transfer this failing Institution back to them so they can make a determination as to what to do with it.” The center was previously governed by a bipartisan board of trustees, which Trump last year purged and filled with allies who installed him as the chair.

“I have instructed the Department of Commerce to make all necessary arrangements with Congress to allow a full and complete transfer of this Institution,” Trump said. The president said lawmakers “would have the responsibility for its Operation, Maintenance, and Management.”

It’s unclear if that arrangement is permitted under current law. According to the Congressional Research Service, the center is considered an offshoot of the Smithsonian Institution that operates independently. It receives funding from Congress to maintain its facilities, and money had already been set aside for the renovations.

In the second decision, a federal judge in Virginia temporarily blocked Trump’s $1.776 billion fund for his allies.

Zach Montague of The New York Times reported:

The brief order by Judge Leonie M. Brinkema of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia prohibits the government from establishing the fund or processing disbursements at least until a hearing is held in June in a pending lawsuit challenging its legality.

The order came in a case brought by a group of individuals and entities who say they have faced partisan attacks by the Trump administration but who say they expect to be excluded from accessing the fund.

The halt provided the first meaningful, if potentially temporary, roadblock to efforts to compensate the president’s political allies since plans for the fund were formalized this month. At least two other lawsuits challenging the fund have also been filed in the District of Columbia and in California, and a number of lawmakers, including prominent Republicans, have publicly objected to its aims.

The federal judge who was supposed to hear Trump’s suit against the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service before the parties reached an out-of-court settlement to establish the $1.776 billion fund opened a new front in the debate about the legality of the fund.

Judge Kathleen M. Williams reacted to an extraordinary letter addressed to her by 35 retired federal judges.

Alan Feuer of The New York Times reported:

A bipartisan group of 35 former federal judges on Wednesday asked the judge who oversaw President Trump’s remarkable lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service to reopen the case and conduct an inquiryinto whether the hasty deal to resolve it could be challenged as an act of fraud.

The move by the former judges was one of an increasing number of legal efforts to attack the validity of the two extraordinary benefits that emerged from the agreement last week: a $1.8 billion fund that could compensate allies of Mr. Trump who claim they suffered “weaponization” at the hands of the federal government and the conferral of lucrative tax benefits on the president, his family and his businesses.

The motion by the former judges, filed in Federal District Court in Miami, was a direct appeal to Judge Kathleen M. Williams, who closed the I.R.S. case last week after Mr. Trump voluntarily dismissed his suit. It asked her to bring the matter back to life under a rule that permits her to set aside a judgment she had made and examine the terms of the deal that appeared to have been reached in a plan to avoid that sort of scrutiny.

“The purported ‘settlement’ that was publicly disclosed after this court dismissed this matter raises profound questions about the parties’ candor toward the court and manipulation of the judicial system, which threatens to undermine confidence in the administration of justice,” lawyers for the former judges wrote.

Politico wrote that Judge Williams responded to the judges’ letter by announcing that she was considering opening an inquiry into the lawsuit and to inquire whether it was a frivolous and fraudulent ploy to create the fund.

A federal judge is demanding answers to allegations that President Donald Trump defrauded her court by filing a lawsuit against the IRS as a pretext to reach a settlement that resulted in a $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” fund to make payouts to his political allies.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams launched the inquiry Friday, after closing the lawsuit on her docket last week. The Miami-based Obama appointee cited a request by 35 former federal judges who urged her to reopen the case to determine whether Trump’s effort amounted to “serious misconduct” and an abuse of the court system.

Earlier this year, Trump filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his tax returns by a private contractor in 2019 and 2020. The lawsuit immediately triggered questions about conflicts of interest: How could the Justice Department and IRS now controlled by Trump appointees defend against a lawsuit brought by their boss?

But before the lawsuit advanced, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche revealed that a settlement had been reached. Instead of a payout to Trump, the settlement would result in the establishment of the nearly $1.8 billion fund to make payouts to people described in the settlement as victims of government weaponization.

It’s the latest wrinkle in a developing scandal that has drawn bipartisan outrage on Capitol Hill, multiple lawsuits aimed at blocking the “anti-weaponization” fund and demands for further investigation by government watchdogs and courts.

Judge Williams did not reach a decision, but it is notable that she is seriously considering reopening the case in which Trump was essentially suing himself. Before the parties reached a settlement, Judge Williams questioned whether there were two adversaries in the case. Was it simply a means for Trump to turn the Department of Justice fund for people who were wrongfully prosecuted into a fund for his allies?