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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. According to a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Judge William Alsup, appointed by President Biden, issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and other federal workers across the government.
And 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 detailed in the court’s decision. 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, based on this injunction from a single district judge in California who’s decided the administrative state answers to him, not to the voters who elected Trump to drain the swamp.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees, as Trump campaigned on this issue and voters gave him a mandate. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a situation highlighted in administration statements. But the judicial resistance continues: this is the same playbook we’ve seen for months—activist judges in blue districts issuing nationwide injunctions to stop the administration’s agenda, including on immigration enforcement and spending cuts, according to legal analyses from conservative outlets.
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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