Editorial illustration
Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch, as detailed in a recent court ruling from the Northern District of California. A Biden-appointed federal judge just blocked the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees—and every other federal worker across the government, according to the preliminary injunction issued by Judge William Alsup.
Judge William Alsup, sitting in San Francisco, issued that preliminary injunction claiming the administration couldn’t force civilian Defense Department employees back to their desks. But he didn’t stop there; the ruling extends government-wide, preventing the Office of Personnel Management from directing agencies to recall remote workers to their posts, as outlined in the court documents.
Think about what this means. The President of the United States, constitutionally charged with running the executive branch, can’t tell his own employees to show up for work, a situation arising from this judicial decision. A single district judge in California has decided that the administrative state answers to him, not to the voters who elected Trump to drain the swamp, as Trump emphasized in his campaign speeches.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees, a policy Trump campaigned on and that voters supported in the election. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, according to reports from government oversight groups. But the judicial resistance continues, as seen in similar nationwide injunctions issued in previous cases involving immigration enforcement and spending cuts.
And now basic personnel management is forbidden too. The administration will undoubtedly appeal, but the damage is done; every day these injunctions remain in place is another day the administrative state operates as an unaccountable fiefdom, insulated from the democratic process and the President the Constitution puts in charge of it.
When did we decide that district judges get veto power over the executive branch? And how many more mandates from the American people will be nullified by judicial fiat before something gives?
Providence watches over the bold.
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