At 1:00 in the morning on Saturday, February 8, an activist District Court judge in Manhattan issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) to prevent Elon Musk, his DOGE team members, and even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from accessing the data in payment systems in the Treasury Department. Repeat: The judge blocked the Treasury Secretary from the Treasury Department’s systems.
The Democrats have largely been reeling in shock from the swiftness of the Trump administration’s actions so far. Now they’re starting to rev up the #Resistance through the lower courts.
How should Congress and the Trump team deal with these activist judges who think they can keep punching above their weight class?
Isn’t it funny how there always seems to be an activist judge somewhere in the country that Democrats can wake up to issue an emergency ruling in the middle of the night on a weekend to stop Donald Trump?
We saw this play out all four years of President Trump’s first term in office. Remember the Muslim ban, which would have prevented any immigrants from terrorist countries from moving into the USA? They found a District Court judge in Hawaii to overturn the so-called ban that was intended to protect every American.
The judge’s ruling on Saturday was beyond childish. It was only four pages long and contained no legal precedence. The judge simply ruled that only unelected civil servants—employees—of the Treasury Department can access its payment systems. Meanwhile, “all political appointees” are prohibited from doing the same. Their access to huge swathes of information is limited as long as the TRO is in place.
Political appointees of course includes Elon Musk and his underling math wizards on the DOGE team. But it also includes Secretary Bessent himself, who is also a political appointee.
It’s an incredibly telling ruling from this judge because it confirms Americans’ worst fears about the Deep State. The judge is saying that the constitutional system that we all learned in school no longer applies.
We’re supposed to have political appointees overseeing federal agencies. That’s how we have accountability. Secretary Bessent is accountable to President Trump, who is accountable to “we the people.”
The judge is saying the career bureaucrats in federal agencies are the ones with the real power. They’re the ones running the Treasury Department and every other federal agency. Treasury employees outrank the Treasury Secretary himself.
Indeed, this activist judge seems to think that he outranks the President of the United States. Many leftwing armchair lawyers on X are claiming as much with their bad legal takes right now.
“The judiciary is a co-equal branch of government! Dur!”
The Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government. All the lower federal courts are lesser creations of Congress. In fact, Congress could vote to abolish all these lower courts tomorrow and they would cease to exist. Therefore, a lone activist judge in New York City is not a co-equal with the leader of the Executive branch.
President Trump’s DOJ lawyers have asked the Southern District of New York (SDNY) court to vacate the restraining order. They argue, “No court can issue an injunction that directly severs the clear line of supervision Article II requires.”
They also note that there is no sound reasoning for restraining a confirmed Treasury Secretary from overseeing the Treasury Department. What’s the point of even having a Treasury Secretary if that’s the case? If the unelected and impossible-to-fire Treasury employees are the ones really running the show, we don’t even need a Treasury Secretary then. (Suddenly, Pete Buttigieg’s stint as Joe Biden’s Transportation Secretary makes more sense.)
So, how do we solve this as a country? Congress is too slow and cumbersome to keep up with the lightning-fast Trump administration. What measures should be taken to rein in these activist courts so they can’t keep gumming up the works for Trump’s team?
Getting Congress to impeach judges is such a long, slow process—and such a rare event—that it’s unlikely that will happen. Elon Musk proposed firing the worst 1% of judicial appointees every year (barring Supreme Court Justices), as determined by elected bodies.
“This will weed out the most corrupt and least competent,” Musk says. That seems like a farfetched idea too, unfortunately.
One thing is certain. Something needs to be done to rein in these activist courts that only support the Democratic Party. They should not have the authority to overrule an elected President and his Cabinet members and appointees. Until we fix this problem, President Trump is going to have trouble implementing his agenda. Activist judges are willing to stay awake long into the night on weekends just to try to slow him down.
