More than 40 substantial lawsuits have been filed over the last three weeks challenging President Donald Trump’s provocative executive orders on the budget, access to government data, the rights of federal employees, including inspectors general, campus protests against the genocide in Gaza, birthright citizenship and other burning issues.
Multiple federal judges, including at least one nominated by Ronald Reagan and another by Trump during his first term as president, have ruled that an action by Trump violated federal laws, the separation of powers, or specific constitutional provisions, including the First and Fourteenth Amendments.
Since taking office on January 20, through the so-called “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) headed by billionaire oligarch Elon Musk, the Trump administration has attempted to seize control of the key machinery of federal expenditures. The assertion of extra-constitutional powers over government spending by Trump and Musk has already caused massive disruptions to social spending across the country.
In a case filed by 22 states and the District of Columbia to enjoin Trump’s freezing of most federal grants aside from defense spending, law enforcement and direct payments to individuals such as Social Security, the trial judge determined that Trump violated his order,but to date has not attempted to sanction Trump or any members of his administration.
The response of Trump administration officials has been to proclaim their intention to barrel ahead with their wrecking operation against social programs, potentially directly and openly defying court orders instructing them to stop.
On January 31, Chief Judge John J. McConnell, Jr., of the United States District Court for Rhode Island granted a temporary restraining order (TRO) over Trump’s objection, directing that the executive branch must release federal funding, as before Trump’s inauguration, while the parties file briefs and a decision can be made on the merits of a preliminary injunction.
McConnell relied primarily on Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution, the “spending clause,” which provides that Congress has sole authority to tax and spend. If a president wants to withhold authorized funding, the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974, passed after former President Richard Nixon impounded allocated money, requires a special notice to Congress that triggers a review and thereafter congressional action to approve the impound, a procedure Trump made no attempt to follow.
Applying these clear and unambiguous laws to the legal standards for TROs, McConnell found it likely that “the Executive’s actions violate the Constitution and statutes of the United States,” and that the 22 states and District of Columbia “will likely suffer severe and irreparable harm if the Court denies their request to enjoin enforcement of the funding pause.”
McConnell listed “highway planning and construction, childcare, veteran nursing care funding, special education grants, and state health departments, who receive billions of dollars to run programs that maintain functional health systems” as among the many programs threatened.
McConnell labeled Trump’s claim of unreviewable power “to align federal spending and action with the will of the American people as expressed through Presidential priorities” as “constitutionally flawed.”
That is a major understatement.
“The Executive Branch has a duty to align federal spending and action with the will of the people as expressed through congressional appropriations, not through ‘Presidential priorities,’” McConnell wrote, rejecting Trump’s claim that he has Führer-like power to express the “will of the people” independently of the federal government’s other branches.
Ten days later, on February 10, McConnell issued an order to enforce the TRO, finding that the flow of funds had not been fully restored to federal agencies, citing the National Institutes of Health and funding required under the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act and Infrastructure Improvement and Jobs Act, among other programs. While issuing no sanctions, McConnell wrote, “Persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”
On Tuesday, February 11, the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Rhode Island, three other Northeastern states and the territory of Puerto Rico, denied Trump’s petition for an immediate stay of the TRO. As of this writing, Trump has not filed for emergency relief in the Supreme Court, which is dominated six-to-three by right-wing judges highly disposed in his favor.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (Republican-Louisiana) said Tuesday he agreed “wholeheartedly” with Trump’s freezing of federal spending without congressional approval. Directly contradicting Article 1, Section 8 and the Impoundment Control Act, Johnson said, “There’s a presupposition in America that the commander-in-chief is going to be a good steward of taxpayer dollars.”
Johnson’s remarks contrasted with those of moderate Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who told a college audience Tuesday, “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 purse.”
At an impromptu Oval Office press conference, also on Tuesday, Trump threatened Judge McConnell with language reminiscent of King Henry II, “Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?” Trump mused, “It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that,’ so maybe we have to look at the judges, because that’s very serious.”
Elon Musk, the world’s richest individual and embodiment of the rapacious oligarchy, stood next to Trump, who sat at the “resolute desk.” Musk posted earlier on X that McConnell was “a corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!”
There is, of course, no evidence of “corruption” in regards to the TRO, and no federal judge has ever been impeached based on disagreement over a ruling. The constitutional remedy is appellate review.
While Trump intimated Tuesday that he will obey court orders against his administration while pursuing appeals, recent remarks by Vice President JD Vance suggest that the Trump administration may defy unfavorable rulings.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Vance posted on X.
Vance graduated from Yale Law School. He, like all other US lawyers, knows that the judicial branch has the constitutional power to review actions of the legislative and executive branches, and to rule against them. This fundamental principle has been a cornerstone of the separation of powers and the constitutional system of checks and balances since the third chief justice of the United States, John Marshall, decided Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
There are issues such as battlefield decisions that the courts have traditionally ruled to be outside the scope of judicial review. But the determination of whether jurisdiction exists to decide the constitutionality of an action by another branch of government is itself made by the judiciary. Any other rule would collapse the constitutional system altogether.
The refusal of federal officials to comply with court orders is exceptionally rare in modern US history, and in earlier periods it would have resulted in prompt arrest and incarceration, even for a high-ranking government official. But like their fascist heroes of the last century, Trump and his accomplices operate outside the boundaries of traditional parliamentary legality.
The Democratic Party, at both state and federal levels, has focused its energies on the filing of lawsuits seeking orders blocking Trump’s assertion of dictatorial powers. However, the Trump administration has responded to these orders by raving against “corrupt” judges and warning that they are prepared to escalate their ongoing coup against the constitutional separation of powers by ignoring the outcome of these cases.
Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley School of Law and a leading constitutional scholar, stated the obvious when he said, “If President Trump ignores court orders and gets away with it, our constitutional form of government is truly at an end.”
On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt denounced concern over a looming constitutional crisis as “fearmongering.” She said, “The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges in liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority,” adding, “We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law.”
Workers can have no confidence that their democratic rights and the basic social services on which they and their family members depend can be defended through court actions, because the fight against dictatorship cannot be separated from the fight against the system that produces it—capitalism.
The only social force that can ultimately defeat the White House is the working class. The collective power of millions of workers must be mobilized in the US and throughout the world in an industrial and political struggle against the Trump administration and the billionaire oligarchs behind it, to create the basis for a society based on meeting human needs.
