JD Vance Suggests Judges ‘Aren't Allowed’ To Control Trump After Courts Block His Policies
Key Facts
“Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power,” Vance claimed on X on Sunday, after noting judges can’t “tell a general how to conduct a military operation” or “command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor.”
Vance also shared a post from legal scholar Adrian Vermeule, who claimed, “Judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers.”
The posts came after a federal judge blocked billionaire Elon Musk and his associates at the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) from accessing sensitive information at the Treasury Department, one of multiple court rulings that have come out in recent weeks against the Trump administration.
Vance and Vermeule’s posts have been met with heavy pushback, with Georgetown Law professor Stephen Vladeck saying in response to Vermeule, “Just to say the quiet part out loud, the point of having unelected judges in a democracy is so that *whether* acts of state are ‘legitimate’ can be decided by someone other than the people who are undertaking them.”
The judiciary branch is a co-equal branch of government to the executive branch and courts have long overturned presidential actions, including some of Trump’s in his first term.
What To Watch For
While the Trump administration has not yet defied any of the court orders that have curbed his policies, doing so could set up an unprecedented constitutional crisis, in which Trump takes actions even if courts tell him they’re illegal.
What Has Elon Musk Said?
Musk has also railed against the ruling against DOGE and used it to claim there’s corruption in the judicial branch, despite there being no evidence there was any corruption involved in the court’s ruling. “I’d like to propose that the worst 1% of appointed judges, as determined by elected bodies, be fired every year,” Musk said on X on Sunday morning, after previously claiming the judge who issued the ruling should be impeached and calling the order against him “absolutely insane.” Musk also shared posts complaining about the ruling, including one from Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, claiming, “This has the feel of a coup—not a military coup, but a judicial one.”
What We Don’t Know
How many more court rulings could still be coming against Musk and DOGE. A number of lawsuits are pending in court that challenge Musk’s government work, including multiple ones that challenge DOGE’s authority in being established in the first place. U.S. District Judge John Bates declined to issue an order Friday blocking DOGE’s access to information at the Department of Labor in response to a lawsuit brought by labor unions, because he said the unions hadn’t shown standing to sue, but said he had “concerns about defendants’ alleged conduct.” The legal challenge is still ongoing, which means Bates could issue an order in the future targeting DOGE’s access to the agency’s records.
Key Background
Trump’s executive orders targeting everything from immigration to transgender rights have been swiftly challenged in court in the weeks since he took office, resulting in a slew of rulings blocking the policies while litigation continues. Trump’s order rescinding birthright citizenship was the first to be blocked in court on Jan. 23, and subsequent court rulings have paused Trump’s directive requiring transgender women to be incarcerated in male prisons, the administration’s memo halting most federal spending, the deadline for federal workers to accept a buyout offer and a plan to put 2,200 employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on paid leave. Judges appointed by presidents from both parties have blocked Trump orders: U.S. District Judge John Coughenour blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship rule—arguing “The president cannot change, limit, or qualify this Constitutional right via an executive order”—while Trump appointed-Judge Carl Nichols was the one to restrict the administration from putting USAID workers on leave. The order barring DOGE from accessing Treasury documents came from New York-based Judge Paul Engelmayer, an Obama appointee, who ruled no political appointee or “special government employee”—like Musk and his DOGE associates—can access the Treasury Department’s systems until there’s a further ruling on the issue next week. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by Democratic state attorneys general.
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