While many of the nation’s institutions have either buckled or yielded to Donald Trump’s authoritarian ambitions, the federal judges not sitting on the Supreme Court have answered the call and defended the country and Constitution against the president’s power grabs.

In doing so, judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike have often not minced words to highlight the threat that Trump poses to the republic and its ideals, and it would be great if Americans paid more attention to their opinions.

On Wednesday, for example, US District Court Judge Charles Breyer ruled that Trump exceeded his authority in taking control of California’s National Guard and ordered an end to the deployment of the troops that the president had sent to Los Angeles.

In doing so, he also issued a stinging rebuke to an administration that wants total control over all levers of the government.

“The Founders designed our government to be a system of checks and balances,” Breyer wrote. “Defendants, however, make clear that the only check they want is a blank one.”

You may recall that, six months ago, Trump had claimed that scattered and largely non-violent protests against his immigration policies in California constituted the kind of grave national emergency that would allow him to wrest control of the National Guard from Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and send in the troops to quell this “rebellion.”

But, of course, there was no invasion, there was no rebellion, and there was no situation that California’s law enforcement agencies couldn’t handle on their own. In other words, the narrow conditions that would allow a president to take over the National Guard weren’t met.

There was, however, a desire on the part of this administration to escalate the situation and to create a pretext for establishing a federal police force that would do Trump’s bidding.

Breyer pointed this out in his opinion.

He stated that the administration’s lawyers had argued that, once the National Guard had been federalized for a legitimate reason, courts would not be able to ever again review the extensions of that federalization.

“That is shocking,” the judge wrote. “Adopting Defendants’ interpretation of Section 12406 would permit a president to create a perpetual police force comprised of state troops, so long as they were first federalized lawfully.”

That interpretation, he added, flies in the face of the Founding Fathers’ goal of preventing the national government from threatening individual liberty and the sovereignty of the states.

“Defendants’ argument for a president to hold unchecked power to control state troops would wholly upend the federalism that is at the heart of our system of government,” Breyer stated.

Newsom, one of Trump’s main political adversaries, applauded the ruling.

“Donald Trump diverted these brave men and women from their vital public safety operations and deployed them against the very communities they took an oath to serve,” he said. “Today’s ruling is unmistakably clear: the federalization of the California National Guard must end.”

While he was at it, Newsom should also have praised the courage of federal judges who keep standing between Trump and unfettered power in the face of threats from the president and his supporters… while knowing that the Supreme Court will more likely kneecap them than have their backs.