What did Donald Trump do today?

He lost yet another lawsuit in an attempt to steal the appropriations power from Congress.

Since returning to office, Trump has tried many variations of the same tactic: refusing to spend money that Congress has ordered by law be spent in certain ways. Sometimes, an appropriations bill allows for exceptions or presidential discretion in how money is spent.

In other cases, Trump's lawless withholding of money does the damage he's intending whether or not a court overrules him: for example, when specially formulated food aid intended for malnourished children rotted in a warehouse before it could be delivered.

But otherwise, the law is what it is, and all Trump can do is force the injured party to sue—something he has attempted to make financially impossible for the small business contractors and researchers that are most often hurt. Trump lost another one of these cases today, when a federal district judge ruled that a trick he invented to get around his legal obligations had no basis in law. Essentially, Trump's position was that if he tells Congress he's going to ignore the law within 45 days of the end of a session of Congress, and it doesn't pass a whole new resolution forbidding him to do so, it's legal for him to withhold funds. As the judge noted, there is no such rule in the actual laws of the United States.

Trump is on a remarkable legal losing streak lately, even by his standards. He's lost major cases on almost every front imaginable: his attacks on universities, his imposition of massive import taxes on American consumers, his deployment of the actual United States military against American cities to "fight crime" (or spread mulch), and his attempt to deport several hundred children in the middle of the night without any legal oversight in the hopes that a judge would literally be asleep at the switch.

It's even extended to his attempts to prosecute what might, under normal circumstances, be considered actual crimes. The Constitution requires that anyone charged with a felony under federal law must be indicted by a grand jury. Because prosecutors effectively conduct grand juries themselves, and because the standard required for an indictment is so much lower than what is needed for a criminal conviction, it is extremely rare for a grand jury to refuse to indict. In one year, it happened in 11 out of about 162,000 cases, or 0.0068%. 

But as Trump's newly appointed US Attorneys, picked more for their personal loyalty than their legal acumen, have been under pressure to over-charge weak cases for political reasons, and grand juries are noticing: there have been five "no bill" cases in the last few weeks in just the Washington, DC federal district alone. This included a man charged with felony assault for throwing a sandwich at a federal agent during Trump's occupation of Washington. 

A magistrate judge appointed during Trump's first term said recently that Trump's Justice department wasn't just "losing credibility" with American citizens, it was past the point of having any credibility to lose.

Why does this matter?

• No matter how much it bothers Trump, he is a president, not a king or a dictator.