(WASHINGTON) — As courts block parts of his agenda, President Donald Trump and his allies are ramping up criticism of judges and continuing to question judicial oversight of the executive branch.
While he’s said he would abide by their rulings — but also appeal them — he kept up the effort to undermine the authority of the courts on Wednesday, alleging in a social media post that a “highly political, activist judge” wanted to stop the work of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Musk’s aggressive and controversial cost-cutting effort has faced several lawsuits, one resulting in his team being temporarily restricted from accessing the Treasury Department’s vast federal payment system containing sensitive information of millions of Americans.
The court action prompted swift rebuke from Musk and Trump’s team. Vice President JD Vance went so far as to suggest judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
“Maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that’s a very serious violation,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Tuesday afternoon alongside Musk, who defended his team’s work.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt continued to blast the courts at Wednesday’s press briefing, claiming “each injunction is an abuse of the rule of law and an attempt to thwart the will of the people.”
“We will comply with the law in the courts, but we will also continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump’s policies can be enacted,” she said.
The escalating clash between the new administration and the courts has some legal experts sounding the alarm, and is prompting fears of a potential constitutional crisis.
“The entire premise of our constitutional system of limited government of checks and balances and separation of powers involves deference to judicial determinations of what the law says and complying with it. This goes back to the beginning of the republic,” said David Schultz, a constitutional law professor at Hamline University.
Ray Brescia, a professor at Albany Law School, called the theory being pushed by Trump allies that the executive branch should operate free of judicial checks “preposterous.”
“They are velociraptors testing the fence. They’re looking for holes. They’re looking for weaknesses. They’re checking to see where they can push the envelope,” Brescia said of the Trump administration. “I think for now, the system has largely held but we’ll see as these cases get to the appellate courts, and ultimately, many of them are likely to go to the Supreme Court.”
Much of Trump and Musk’s attempt to overhaul the federal government is being met with lawsuits, including the dismantling of USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as well as the buyout offer extended to tens of thousands of federal employees.
The key question is how Trump and his officials will respond as the court challenges progress.
In his first term, Trump amended his policies to comply with judicial rulings. One example was what Trump referred to as his “Muslim ban” restricting travel from several countries that have a majority Muslim population, which was rewritten several times before it passed muster with the Supreme Court.
“We thought that administration was so shocking and bending the rules on executive authority and so on, but it turns out to have been nothing compared to this one where it is seriously being discussed and contemplated whether or not the executive branch has a duty to follow the courts,” said Claire Finkelstein, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School.
ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Trump directly on Tuesday: “If a judge does block one of your policies, part of your agenda, will you abide by that ruling? Will you comply?”
“Well, I always abide by the courts and then I’ll have to appeal it. But then what he’s done is he slowed down the momentum,” the president responded.
If that were to ever change, however, it would be uncharted territory in the modern political era with no obvious recourse.
Judges can push back if the administration refuses to comply but their power is limited, experts said. They could hold the administration in contempt, and either impose fines or in extreme cases direct the U.S. Marshals Service to take individuals into custody.
There are complications, though. The U.S. Marshals Service falls under the Justice Department, which is unlikely to go after Trump officials.
“Presidential refusal to comply with court orders undermines the very concept of constitutional order and limited government our country is supposed to respect and if Trump were to refuse to comply, then we have a constitutional problem,” said Schultz.
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