Here we go again. At the beginning of his first term as president, Donald Trump issued an executive order temporarily banning travel from several countries—Yemen, for example, Sudan, Libya, and four others—that had been identified as major exporters of terrorism. The left went nuts, excoriating Trump for his “racist” “Muslim travel ban.”
It wasn’t a “Muslim travel ban,” but try telling that to Seattle District Court judge James Robart. He sniffed the air, sensed the pleasing hysteria and press coverage, and issued a cursory restraining order against Trump’s executive order. The humorous part of Robart’s order came towards the end. As I wrote at the time, Robart insisted that the “declaratory and injunctive relief” outlined in his order be applied immediately and on a “nationwide basis” (my emphasis).
Seattle has spoken, Comrades! Judge Robarts finds (where? how?) that his court has jurisdiction over … well, over just about everything: the president and the head of the Department of Homeland Security, for starters, but also “the United States of America (collectively).”
So all across the fruited plain, “Federal Defendants and all their respective officers, agents, servants, employees, attorneys, and persons acting in concert or participation with them are hereby ENJOINED and RESTRAINED” from enforcing the President’s executive order.
This may be the best place to pause and point out that Donald Trump, acting as the president of the United States, was perfectly within his rights to issue an executive order to suspend travel from particular countries.
And so it is now with Trump’s deputies in the Department of Government Efficiency. Tasked with the Herculean labor of unscrambling the byzantine Rube Goldberg device that is the 21st-century administrative state for furthering corruption, illegal payments, and partisan influence at home and abroad, DOGE commander Elon Musk and his laptop-and-algorithm-toting lieutenants have been patiently uncovering the pyramid of waste, fraud, and abuse that is the foundation of the United States government in its twenty-first-century incarnation.
In a remarkable piece called “Override: Inside The Revolution Rewiring American Power,” a blogger known as EKO showed how it worked. Four young coders arrive at the Treasury Department in the wee hours of January 21. Within hours they have succeeded in tracing long-hidden payment directions.
No committees. No approvals. No red tape. Just four coders with unprecedented access and algorithms ready to run.
“The beautiful thing about payment systems,” noted a transition official watching their screens, “is that they don’t lie. You can spin policy all day long, but money leaves a trail.”
That trail led to staggering discoveries. Programs marked as independent revealed coordinated funding streams. Grants labeled as humanitarian aid showed curious detours through complex networks. Black budgets once shrouded in secrecy began to unravel under algorithmic scrutiny.
The difference between Trump’s first term and his second (acknowledged) term can be explained in two words: velocity and preparedness. In 2017, Trump’s initiatives were hampered, blindsided, litigated, and smothered in red tape. This time the Leviathan’s usual expedients are impotent. “Their traditional defenses—slow-walking decisions, leaking damaging stories, stonewalling requests—proved useless against an opponent moving faster than their systems could react. By the time they drafted their first memo objecting to this breach, three more systems had already been mapped.” And here’s the point:
“Pull this thread,” a senior official warned, watching patterns emerge across DOGE’s screens, “and the whole sweater unravels.”
He wasn’t wrong. But he misunderstood something crucial: That was exactly the point.
The left gets it. And their heads are exploding. So far, their biggest gun was the creaky cannon Judge Robart wheeled out: the emergency injunction with immediate “nationwide effect.”
The New York Times, a house organ for anti-Trump hysteria, has a long hand-wringing column about the latest wheeze. Paul A. Engelmayer, a U.S. District Judge appointed by Barrack Obama, just issued an “emergency order” to restrict Elon Musk’s and DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department’s payment and data system. He also insisted that anyone who had access to those systems after January 20 “destroy any and all copies of material downloaded from the Treasury Department’s records and systems.” Fun part: even Scott Bessent, the Secretary of the Treasury, is prohibited from looking into the corrupt structures of his own department.
Engelmayer’s order came in response to a lawsuit filed on Friday by Letitia James, Attorney General of New York and professional scourge of all things Trump, along with 18 other Democratic state attorneys general. What was the charge? The stated predicate was that by authorizing the investigation, Trump had failed in his Constitutional duty to “faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress.” The real predicate was that Musk’s beavers were uncovering the inner mechanism of the deep state and the resulting truths were unbearable.
“Humankind,” said T. S. Eliot, in “Burnt Norton,” “cannot bear very much reality.” Similarly, Bureaucrats cannot bear very much transparency. Like vampires, the sunlight is fatal to them.
How will Trump respond? We do not know yet. I hope it will be at least partly as Andrew Jackson is said to have responded in his contretemps with Chief Justice John Marshall. In 1834, the Supreme Court determined that the Cherokee Indians owned Northern Georgia. Nevertheless, Andrew Jackson evicted the Indians, reputedly observing that Marshall “has made his decision; now let him enforce it.”
Lincoln responded in a similar fashion to Chief Justice Roger Taney in 1861. In April of that year, Lincoln suspended the writ of habeas corpus between Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. This allowed military commanders to imprison suspected saboteurs without indictment. Taney said (in “Ex Parte Merryman”) that Lincoln did not have the authority to do this. Lincoln basically ignored him, invoking the novel doctrine of “nonacquiesence.”
As usual, Lincoln demonstrated his deep understanding of the issues involved. “Are all the laws but one to go unexecuted,” he asked Taney, “and the Government itself go to pieces lest that one be violated? Even in such a case, would not the official oath be broken if the Government should be overthrown when it was believed that disregarding the single law would tend to preserve it?”
In my view, Trump’s actions to expose the partisan corruption of the administrative state are in response to an existential threat is as grave, if less bloody, than the Civil War. The permanent bureaucracy that rules us has for decades been erecting and fortifying a nearly impenetrable edifice from which to preserve its privileges and power, stifle criticism, and export its globalist agenda. Donald Trump was elected to deconstruct that edifice. Elon Musk is one of his most potent aides in accomplishing that task. Of course, the left is hysterical. Their gravy train is being derailed before their eyes. The people who elected Trump are delighted.
I suspect that the squeals and tantrums of the ruling party and its minions will amount to no more than theater. I further suspect that Trump will resort not only to “nonacquiesence” but also to non-payment. In 2022, New York received $383 billion in federal spending. There are many ways in which Trump could stanch the flow of federal dollars to obstreperous states. I think he should consider them all. I am also happy to see some official pushback. Rep. Darrell Issa, for example, just announced that he is “immediately introducing legislation next week to stop these rogue judges and allow Trump and DOGE to tell you where government is spending your money.” Good for him.
One final suggestion. If left-wing regime-party judges can issue emergency restraining orders with “immediate nationwide effect,” why couldn’t a politically mature district judge in, say, Alabama do the same, overturning the order issued by his left-wing colleague on an “immediate, nationwide basis?” I offer the idea free and for nothing.
The judge is a crackpot, a Constitutional illiterate, who should know that he has no power to insert his opinions, as executable acts (judicial executive orders), into the Executive Branch which is managed by the President. And he is not a legislator. He is only a legal advisor whose opinions are noted by the public and the Congressional legislators they voted for. It is up to the Congress to act if they believe this one judge. The President is the highest ranking member of the Executive Branch who has no Constitutional restrictions placed upon him regarding how he operates the agencies and bureaucracies in his branch of government. Any such restrictions requires an Amendment. The Judge, a member of the judiciary, lacks any executive or supervisory power as to how the Executive Branch operates. In fact he is only a lowly District Judge. Even the SCOTUS, which is the equivalent of the POTUS, lacks such power. The same is true for the Congress. As an example – it created an Act but the President (Kennedy) created the USAID which he runs, independently or with the help of underlings. The USAID can also be destroyed by its creator… the President. This judge is over reaching. How would he like it if the President attempted to run the Judiciary? This is what happens when appointed judges are used as legislators and executives by radicalized politicians who were, themselves, never educated to understand the concepts associated with America’s Constitutional form of government which is based on a Separation of Powers among each of the three branches of government. If the Congress wishes to stop the President they can legislate specific laws regarding specific executive actions such as war making. The way to deal with a President who is doing illegal things, specifically not authorized by legislation, or that damages the Country, or has gone rogue, is by impeachment. The Court is not an equal co executive. If anything the Court should say “please” to the president and simply request he do what this one judge request he do.
When the Constitution was drafted and ratified there was only one Court, the SCOTUS. It was Congress that created the other Federal Courts and the States created their own respective Courts. It was clear that the Founders were big on the Separation of Powers Doctrine (Montesquieu). It also emphasized the Legislature more than the Executive and Judicial Branches. Currently, based on the Marbury v Madison Decision, the concept of Judicial Review elevated the court to give itself president when it comes to laws and statutes that it finds are Constitutionally illegal. It can override the Congress in that regard. But that pertains only to the SCOTUS relevant to the Congress and not to the Executive. It is the Congress which has power over the Executive and can Constitutionally remove remove the chief executive… the President. The chief executive cannot remove the Congress or any of its many members because that is another similarly equal branch which he does not have power over. Congress can do that to their own members. And the President, as the Chief of the Executive Branch, cannot remove the judiciary but he can hire and fire within the Executive branch and only that branch. The Congress, likely, can also impeach and remove a Supreme Judge. So in effect the Congress can remove the President and Supreme judges but only the SCOTUS justices, and not some district judge, can declare Congressional Law unconstitutional. Ultimately it is up to the Congress to discard such laws and the President, out of respect for the oath he took and fear of Congressional impeachment would likely cease and desist executing what has been determined, by opinion, what is deemed constitutionally illegal. Currently there is no law preventing the President from exercising what he deems necessary to protect America’s citizens and the SCOTUS has not offered an opinion in regard to the opinion of this district judge. It is the district judge, trying to intimidate the President that is overreaching and acting in an ultra varies illegal fashion. It would take 5 SCOTUS judges to make such a case and it would also take the Congress to suggest to the President that his executive behavior is rouge enough to enact impeachment proceedings and removal.
At the moment the President is under no restrictions other than by insane opinions from the Marxist wing of the Democratic Congress (mostly the entire Democratic Congress), the MSM and a District Judge (lacking SCOTUS authority) to do anything differently. In fact even the SCOTUS, as once told by President Jackson, lacks any ability to do anything to prevent the President from doing what he and his advisors believe is Constitutional. It is the Congress that ultimately has enforcement powers via impeachment and removal and that is the only power available to stop unconstitutional executive actions.
I have said multiple times, the American government is unmoored from its Constitution as written. The politicians and judges are far more adamant in undermining the Constitution out of ignorance and preference for globalist idiocracy. Any member of the Squad and/or Kamala Harris makes that clear every time they give their opinions.
If anything what Musk is doing at the request of the President is to determine what is illegal. And what is illegal is beyond theft. It is treason. The discoveries have now become so significantly criminal that the DOJ needs to continue the work.
In conjunction with Trump’s glorious quest with the aid of Musk’s Pirates, I picture Pam Bondi with the song going through my head-----“You’ve got a friend in me”.
What also comes to mind can be found in Luke 13:28 - In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves being thrown out.
For now, one of my favorite lines comes from Walter----Jeff Dunham’s alter ego----“Now all you can do is run to the end of your chain and bark.”
Edited: As we go forth to do battle today over Trump’s efforts to defang the Administrative State, I want to link two articles you may find worthwhile as weaponry in the fight. One is by Jonathan Turley as he discusses the Left’s reaction to the monster they created. The second is Byron York writing in the Washington Examiner that gives ammunition when countering what the Trump Administration actually did in regard to grants at NIH and how his decision is not the end of the world as we know it, but merely places a cap on “indirect costs”—which do not in any way cut the amount allocated for research.
A couple of thoughts regarding Mr. Kimballs’s column. First, the fraud and egregious waste of taxpayer dollars that has been uncovered by the DOGE boys will pale by comparison when these young sleuths turn their attention to the Pentagon and entitlements.
The ensuing public outrage could measure a 10 on the Richter scale and a REAL insurrection would not be uncalled for.
Second, Chief Justice John Roberts often frets about the sanctity of the High Court and of the reputed reputation of the federal judiciary in general. If his concerns are sincere, then he should eagerly anticipate (and signal via cryptic SCOTUS intent) appeals to the court challenging these activist leftist judges and their anti-constitutional rulings.
In other words, SCOTUS needs to speak very forcefully to these activist judges; “Guys, knock it off!”
Avoiding another Civil War comes to mind as one of the reasons leftist Federal judges misusing their positions to overturn the duly elected Will of the People has got to end. Democrats use these rouge judges to make their authoritarian desires appear as if they’re embedded among the People. They’re confident that since no one has put up a serious fight against their little authoritarians, they and their fellow travelers can and should expect it to continue in perpetuity. It’s up to the Trump administration to show unelected leftist Federal judges and their generous paymasters where they can all go.