Donald Trump imagined he could do as he pleased in the White House. It fell to the ninth federal circuit court in Seattle to draw the limits of the president’s authority at home by overturning an executive order barring migrants from seven Muslim-majority nations. Now the enforced departure of national security adviser Michael Flynn has mapped some of the constraints on the conduct of foreign policy. You could say the president has been humbled, except that humility and Mr Trump will never sit comfortably in the same sentence.
The opening weeks of the presidency have been as disastrous as anyone could have feared. Mr Trump has behaved in office as he did on the campaign trail. Chaos and belligerence in the White House has been mirrored by the casual disarming of allies and the empowering of adversaries abroad. America’s standing in the world could scarcely be lower. All this as the fires continue to burn in the Middle East and the North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un tests a ballistic missile that may soon be tipped with a nuclear warhead.
Mr Trump’s hopes of some sort of grand bargain with Russia’s Vladimir Putin have dissolved. Firing Mr Flynn for lying to vice-president Mike Pence about his conversations with the Russian ambassador in Washington will not staunch the disquiet about the administration’s contacts with Moscow before inauguration day. Mr Trump and his aides face three sets of questions from legislators and law enforcement agencies about the ties.