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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. According to court documents from Judge William Alsup’s ruling, a Biden-appointed federal judge in San Francisco, the Trump administration is blocked from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees—and every other federal worker across the government. Judge Alsup issued a preliminary injunction, as detailed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California’s order, claiming the administration couldn’t force civilian Defense Department employees back to their desks; this 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 per the injunction in Judge Alsup’s 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.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees, based on Trump’s campaign promises as outlined in his public speeches and statements from White House officials reported by Fox News. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a situation highlighted in analyses from the Government Accountability Office. But the judicial resistance continues, as seen in similar nationwide injunctions from activist judges in blue districts that have halted the administration’s agenda on issues like immigration enforcement and spending cuts, according to reports from Breitbart and the Washington Examiner.
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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