The New Republic underlines the obvious, which is that Trump will say anything and do anything to get his way and we can’t stop him unless we stop him, which we’re obviously not doing.

On Thursday, President Donald Trump scored a temporary victory after an appeals court ruled that he can continue deploying the National Guard as part of his watch-me-play-fascist-on-TV response to anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles. The decision accepted Trump’s premise that conditions in L.A. permit him to take control of the guard—but it rejected his claim that such decisions should be entirely unreviewable by courts.

That latter part of the ruling is important. It’s potentially something of an obstacle to his ongoing effort to assume quasi-dictatorial powers for himself—for now, anyway.

Golly, what a robust firewall against dictatorship, right? It’s maybe possibly a sort of kind of little bit of an obstacle to full-on wearefucked.

Trump seized on this mixed ruling to threaten to send in the National Guard anywhere in the United States if and when he decrees it “necessary.” The scare quotes are mine, because on many fronts, Trump is testing how far he can get by inventing ways to claim such actions are “necessary,” a power he and his advisers see as boundless.

Ya think???

Of course he fucking is. He said he would, he is, we can all see he is. None of this is what you’d call subtle or ambiguous.

All of which highlights a deeper conundrum here: What can the courts—and the rest of us—do in the face of a president whose bad faith and willingness to concoct pretexts for abusing his powers basically have no bottom?

NOTHING. WE ARE SCREWED. What we’re seeing is exactly what it looks like and not some other surprising escape hatch.