SETH BARRETT TILLMAN: President Trump’s Reverse-Merryman. “Trump is telling the courts, loudly and truthfully, this is what I intend to do to secure the country in what I and half the country believe to be an emergency of an existential kind. If the courts constrain my hands, the President will not share political responsibility for the consequences with the courts. Trump is saying that if you (the courts) constrain the presidency, and afterwards, should harmful consequences follow, then you (the courts) will have to own all the consequences. In doing this, Trump has not broken any rules relating to the conduct of litigation. He is not threatening to burn the Court down or stop the Justices’ salaries. But he is doing his very best to make them decide, and if that inconveniences them or makes them squirm, he does not care. This is what Taney did to Lincoln, and this is what Trump is doing to the Court.”