On Friday, in a New York court, Donald Trump and his billionaire supporter Elon Musk faced another obstacle in their attempt to transform the US government by laying off employees, cutting costs, and dismantling the intricate bureaucracy of the world’s leading economy.
Judge Jeannette Vargas has prolonged an order barring Musk from accessing the Treasury system responsible for distributing trillions of dollars in payments.
This ruling further underscores that the greatest constraints on Trump and his executive authority stem not from Congress or the Democratic party, but from the judiciary in the United States.
“The sole institutional safeguard is the courts,” stated Noah Bookbinder, president of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, an advocacy organization that has taken legal action against the Trump administration regarding its plans to dismiss government employees.
“The reaction from Congress has been rather weak . . . [If] it fails to respond to its oversight responsibilities and allows its laws and spending directives to be ignored, it risks forfeiting much of its power and will struggle to fulfill its constitutional role, which is vital for our system of checks and balances.”
The US Constitution grants the president broad authorities while also endowing Congress with significant power, particularly over fiscal matters and the appropriation of funds, and mandates the courts to enforce restrictions on the operations of both the executive and legislative branches.
However, the flurry of executive orders issued by Trump since he took office has encompassed multiple directives concerning the allocation, or lack thereof, of funds designated by Congress.
Republican legislators have offered little commentary on these actions, unlike the vocal responses from legal experts and judges.
Just last week, a federal judge in Rhode Island mandated that the administration lift a moratorium on disbursements to the nation’s premier medical research institution and green energy initiatives, labeling the plans to obstruct such funding as “likely unconstitutional.”
These decisions are alarming Trump to the extent that he and his associates are now attempting to undermine the very concept of judicial oversight of the executive branch, arguing that such actions could threaten the fabric of democracy itself.
“He who saves his Country does not violate any Law,” Trump remarked on Truth Social on Saturday.
“If ANY judge ANYWHERE can stop EVERY Presidential action EVERYWHERE, we do NOT live in a democracy,” Musk expressed in a post on X on Thursday.
Legal experts highlight the importance of the courts, especially in light of the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to undermining various forms of oversight, including the civil service, which is facing severe budget cuts and assaults on regulatory agencies, along with independent watchdogs, such as inspectors-general, many of whom have been terminated.
Some attorneys are beginning to take action.
A number of notable prosecutors in Manhattan, including Danielle Sassoon, the acting US attorney for the influential Southern District of New York, resigned last week following government orders to discontinue a corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Only “someone who is sufficiently foolish or cowardly” would seek to dismiss these criminal investigations, Hagan Scotten, an assistant US attorney in the SDNY, stated in a scathing resignation letter revealed on Friday.
Certain lawsuits challenging Trump’s initiatives may advance to the Supreme Court, which currently features a 6-3 divide between conservative and liberal justices after Trump appointed three right-leaning judges during his first term. The Trump administration has already requested the Supreme Court to overturn a judge’s order preventing the removal of Hampton Dellinger from the Office of Special Counsel, an agency that safeguards whistleblowers within the government.
In recent years, the Supreme Court has faced accusations of partisan bias, especially as its most contentious rulings have often fallen along ideological lines. For instance, a conservative majority last year granted Trump broad immunity from criminal prosecution related to his presidential actions, raising essential questions about accountability at the presidential level.
Nevertheless, legal experts believe that Trump’s administration could still face setbacks at the Supreme Court, particularly in cases contesting proposals to restrict birthright citizenship. States and advocacy organizations that have sued the government argue such measures violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which guarantees that all “persons born or naturalized in the US . . . are citizens of the United States”.
A significant uncertainty remains regarding whether the president would comply with court orders, which could potentially ignite a constitutional crisis akin to those experienced during the Civil War, when Abraham Lincoln chose to ignore a Supreme Court ruling prohibiting the detention of individuals without a warrant.
In that event, courts might hold government officials in contempt, according to Gillian Metzger, a constitutional law professor at Columbia Law School, though she noted that such actions are “extraordinarily rare” and would raise further questions about compliance.
The federal judge in Rhode Island highlighted that evidence indicated the government persisted in withholding certain federal funds in defiance of a prior ruling. This revelation raised concerns regarding whether US courts can compel the Trump administration to comply with their decisions. The administration claimed it sought to follow the judge’s orders and attributed the delays to inefficiencies within payment systems.
Trump’s Make America Great Again movement might feel unencumbered by a judiciary that has no influence over the executive branch, remarked Aziz Huq, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
“However, this also liberates everyone else. Why should a governor, a state court judge, or anyone else heed the legal opinions of either the Supreme Court or the president?”
“This does not simply open the door to unilateral claims of power by the president; it creates a cacophony of voices, rather than a single authority dictating the law,” he added.
“The implications of this are uncertain, but they likely diverge from what proponents on the MAGA right envision.”
