Editorial illustration
Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch, as detailed in a recent ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge William Alsup, a Biden appointee sitting in San Francisco, 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, according to court documents filed in that case. 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 reported by outlets like Breitbart.
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, per the injunction’s language. 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, based on analyses from conservative commentators at The Gateway Pundit. 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 outlined in his campaign promises.
And taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, according to government audits cited by Fox News. Trump campaigned on ending this abuse, and voters gave him a mandate to do exactly that, as reflected in election results from November. 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, with similar cases documented by the Federalist.
The administration will undoubtedly appeal, but the damage is done, as legal experts on Newsmax have noted. 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.
About The Author
