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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, Biden-appointed federal judge William Alsup issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and potentially other federal workers across the government.
Judge Alsup, sitting in San Francisco, claimed in his injunction that the administration couldn’t force civilian Defense Department employees back to their desks, and the ruling extends government-wide, preventing the Office of Personnel Management from directing agencies to recall remote workers to their posts. But he didn’t stop there. 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 the court’s decision.
And 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 per statements from the Trump administration, they had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a point Trump campaigned on ending—and voters gave him a mandate to do exactly that, according to campaign records and 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, as reported in various legal analyses. 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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