Courts and Trump set for showdown over executive power
2025-02-12
Category: news

In the first weeks of his second term, President Donald Trump has wasted no time in flexing his political muscle. That much is clear.Since taking office in January, he has ordered the suspension of all new asylum claims, cancelled refugee resettlement, frozen government hiring and spending, gutted agencies established by Congress, banned gender transition care for teenagers and offered a buyout deal for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.The whirlwind of unilateral action on his campaign promises has pushed the limits of presidential power – and prompted legal challenges from Democrats, unions and legal groups. So far the federal courts have been the only substantive roadblocks to Trump's agenda, as judges have temporarily suspended some of the most contentious proposals, including an end to automatic citizenship for anyone born on US soil.But Trump is pressing on - and seems headed for a showdown with the judiciary that could eventually end in the highest court in the land. This week, a Rhode Island judge said the Trump administration was clearly and openly defying his court order to unfreeze billions in federal funds. The White House responded by saying that "every action" the president took was "completely lawful".
If Trump's orders do reach the US Supreme Court, six of the nine justices there - including three appointed by Trump in his first term - are conservative. Just last term, the court issued a decision holding Trump, and all future presidents, largely immune from prosecution for official actions while in office. At the time, it was a landmark expansion of presidential authority. But some observers have suggested that Trump's latest moves could be part of a strategy to expand his powers even further. If the high courts agree to uphold some of his executive orders, it could strengthen his ability to enact policy changes without the help of Congress.And even if the courts rule against the president, says Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional expert at the Manhattan Institute, those legal defeats might be politically advantageous."There could be political benefits to being challenged in court and then even losing in court because then you can run against judges and make political hay of it."There is another scenario, however. Trump could simply refuse to comply with any court that tries to stop his exercise of unfettered presidential power.
In Oval Office comments on Tuesday, the president hinted that this might be an option, in his typically oblique way."We want to weed out the corruption," Trump said. "And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say we don't want you to do that.""Maybe we have to look at the judges," he continued. "I think it's a very serious violation."On Sunday, Trump's vice-president, JD Vance, was even more blunt."Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," he posted on the social media site X. That view was similar to one Vance expressed in a 2021 podcast, when he said that if Trump returned to power he should refuse to comply with any court order that prevented him from firing federal workers.Directly defying a court ruling, however, would cut against centuries of US history and amount to the opening skirmishes in a constitutional crisis that pits the president against the branch of government designed to establish and interpret the law of the land."My read is that President Trump is testing the outer boundaries of what he might be able to get away with, doing a lot of things that are blatantly against the law and maybe some things that are closer to the line," said Fred Smith, a professor at the Emory School of Law."They are breaking a lot of norms," Smith added of the nascent Trump administration. "Why he is doing that, only he knows fully. But he is doing it."
So far, Trump and his allies have made aggressive comments about unfavourable court decisions in the public and in legal filings, but have yet to be sanctioned for disobeying a court. When Trump was the target of multiple prosecutions over the past four years, he frequently questioned the legitimacy of the presiding judges, but his courtroom lawyers adhered to the law and legal procedures.The federal judge in Rhode Island, who had placed a temporary hold on another Trump order to freeze some federal spending, did warn in court filings Monday that the administration was violating his temporary restraining order but stopped short of finding them in contempt.Conservative legal scholar Ed Whelan wrote on X that it would be "extremely grave" for the Trump administration to defy a federal court order."I'm open to the argument that truly extraordinary circumstances (the makings of a wild hypothetical) might justify defiance," Mr Whelan wrote. "But in our constitutional system there should be an overwhelming presumption in favour of executive-branch compliance with federal court orders."
Should Trump disobey, and therefore delegitimize, the courts, the decision could come back to bite him when the time comes for the president to see his own lawful agenda enforced, some legal experts say. Democratic states like California, for instance, might be inclined to ignore White House directives and federal laws they don't like - and Trump would be hard pressed to use the courts to bring them to heel."If the executive decides it will obey some court orders but not others, it will find it won't get any court orders that it wishes to obey," said Philip Bobbitt, a constitutional scholar at Columbia University Law School. "I just don't think they thought that through."When Donald Trump redecorated the Oval Office to his liking in January, he reinstalled a portrait of President Andrew Jackson that had hung on the wall across from the Resolute Desk in his first term.The seventh US president is remembered for a critical moment of defiance against the United States Supreme Court. When the justices decided a dispute between the state of Georgia and Cherokee Indian governments in 1832, Jackson did not seem interested in following its direction.Jackson allegedly said of the Chief Justice's ruling, "John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!"Nearly 200 years later, Trump himself has found himself on his own collision course with America's judiciary.