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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. As per a recent ruling by Judge William Alsup, a Biden-appointed federal judge sitting in San Francisco, he issued a preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and every other federal worker across the government. That ruling extends government-wide, preventing the Office of Personnel Management from directing agencies to recall remote workers to their posts.
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, as outlined in Alsup’s injunction. 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.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees, according to Trump’s campaign promises and executive orders. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables. Trump campaigned on ending this abuse, and voters gave him a mandate to do exactly that, as reflected in election results.
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 before it can even get started, based on similar past court decisions. 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.
Providence watches over the bold.
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