Power grabs are formally rescinded only where defiance carries an institutional price.
Injunctions alone are routinely appealed, stalled, or defied, but when appropriations chairs control the money, unions hold binding contracts, or the constitutional violation is unambiguous, the executive formally abandons its own consolidation moves.
The same conclusion keeps arriving from across the workspace's research — 1 topics independently instantiate this theme. Filter the evidence by where it came from:
Facing a likely-unconstitutional-condition ruling on the loyalty screen, the executive formally abandoned the hiring test rather than defy — the abandonment where defiance is priced.
Binding union contracts and litigation forced the formal rescission of the shutdown-RIF directives rather than continued defiance.
The retreat came only after the appropriations chair controlling NIH's budget objected — formal abandonment exactly where defiance carries an institutional price.