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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. A Biden-appointed federal judge, Judge William Alsup, just blocked the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees—and every other federal worker across the government, according to his preliminary injunction issued in San Francisco. That 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 Judge 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, as Trump emphasized during his campaign rallies.
The administration had been pushing to end the pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements that have become permanent fixtures for thousands of federal employees, a policy Trump highlighted in his platform to cut waste. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, according to reports from federal oversight groups. 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.
The administration will undoubtedly appeal, though the immediate impact of these injunctions keeps the administrative state operating as an unaccountable fiefdom. 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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