President Donald Trump’s purge at independent agencies is putting a target on a nearly 100-year-old Supreme Court precedent that protects certain officials from the political whims of the White House.

As courts issue orders that pause or restrict a number of Trump actions, a more seismic conflict potentially lies ahead. On Monday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ruled that Trump is refusing to fully comply with his order to release federal grant money that the Administration tried to freeze.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke of the authority of the courts and the limits of the executive branch’s power Tuesday as experts fear a looming constitutional crisis, NBC News reported. “Our founders were hellbent on ensuring that we didn’t have a monarchy and the first way they thought of that was to give Congress the power of the