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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. A Biden-appointed federal judge, William Alsup, sitting in San Francisco, issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and extends it government-wide, preventing the Office of Personnel Management from directing agencies to recall remote workers to their posts, as detailed in the court’s ruling.
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. 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, according to reports from conservative outlets like Breitbart covering the injunction.
And 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 himself campaigned on this issue and voters gave him a mandate, based on his public statements and campaign promises. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a concern raised in various administration memos and echoed by fiscal watchdogs.
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 documented in multiple court filings and analyses from sources like The Federalist. Immigration enforcement? Blocked. Spending cuts? Halted. Now basic personnel management? Forbidden.
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, per legal experts commenting on the case.
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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