By Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan

At his speech before the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, President Donald Trump told many lies as he bragged, “We are just getting started.” Federal courts are also just getting started, as scores of lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders proceed. Several key decisions have halted or delayed some of Trump’s attempts to demolish much of the U.S. government, aided by his largest campaign donor, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, and by Vice President JD Vance, who argues that court orders are optional (they’re not). The Republican-controlled Congress has completely ceded its role in the system of checks and balances, so the fights are taking place at protests in the streets and in Federal courts across the country.

One key sector currently under threat is medical research. The United States has long been regarded as the world’s leader in cutting-edge medical research and innovation. Many of the advances that billions of people rely on around the world come from countless labs in this country. On February 7th, Trump’s stripped-down National Institutes of Health (NIH) issued a memo changing the allowed amount for laboratory overhead to 15%, gutting university research. “Overhead” or “indirect costs” cover things like rent and administrative staff, which allow researchers to conduct their life-saving work. Arbitrarily cutting those pre-approved rates sent shockwaves through the research community and provoked several lawsuits. On Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts overruled the NIH, compelling the original overhead payments to resume, citing the “risk to human life as research and clinical trials are suspended.”

This case will be appealed and will likely end up in the Supreme Court, where six of the nine justices are Republican appointees – three of them appointed by Trump himself. While he might consider the Supreme Court to be in his pocket, Trump got a surprise on Wednesday, when, in a 5-4 decision, the court ruled on another case – against Trump.

This case, State Department v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC), deals with the abrupt freezing of all U.S. foreign aid – described initially as a “90 day pause” – and the attempted dissolving of USAID, the United States Agency for International Development. AVAC sued, with the help of Public Citizen Litigation Group. Attorney Nicolas Sansone explained the case on the Democracy Now! news hour:

“After the judge entered this temporary restraining order requiring the executive branch to lift the foreign assistance freeze, the executive took no steps toward compliance, restoring none of the funding, renewing access to no grant money and restarting none of the projects upon which communities worldwide depend. So, after nearly two weeks of noncompliance, the court entered an order requiring the government to take specific steps towards complying.”

White House lawyers asked the Supreme Court to overturn that court order, and, in an unsigned, one-paragraph order supported by the three liberal justices and by Chief Justice John Roberts and Trump-appointee Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the request was denied. The Trump administration must now release about $2 billion in aid, a fraction of the more than $40 billion the agency disburses annually.

Nicholas Enrich, acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, wrote a memo obtained by the New York Times, which detailed likely impacts of the foreign aid funding freeze. Among them: up to 18 million cases of malaria, a 30% increase in tuberculosis globally, 28,000 cases of Ebola, and 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year over the next decade. After the memo’s publication, Enrich was placed on administrative leave.

Mitchell Warren, executive director of the AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, the lead plaintiff in the case, speaking on Democracy Now!, described the value of PEPFAR, the U.S.-funded AIDS treatment program for people in Africa living with HIV, launched by President George W. Bush with bipartisan support:

“PEPFAR, over 20 years, has helped to get 20 million people on antiretroviral therapy that saves lives and prevents infections. Millions of people’s lives have been saved…PEPFAR has ensured that people are living and economies are growing. And the United States benefits from that.”

Warren added:

“PEPFAR…is the most data-driven, the most evidence-based intervention we’ve seen, honestly, in the history of global health…it’s important to note that Secretary of State Rubio, when he was Senator Rubio, was one of PEPFAR’s biggest supporters. So we need to remind people what they said, what they believed, and to stop this willful disregard of congressional authority and of science.”

The case goes back to the district court, where attorney Nicholas Sansone hopes to prevail.

Described here are just two cases, among at least 105 federal lawsuits challenging Trump’s abuse of executive power. In parallel, massive grassroots organizing is happening, mobilizing in defense of federal workers, immigrants, trans rights and more. The opposition to Trump’s second term, to use his own words, is just getting started.