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Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch, as seen in the recent ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Judge William Alsup, a Biden appointee, issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees—and every other federal worker across the government. According to the court’s order, this injunction prevents 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 outlined in Alsup’s ruling. 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 and official policy statements. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables. But the judicial resistance continues, with activist judges in blue districts issuing nationwide injunctions to stop the administration’s agenda before it can even get started, as reported in similar court cases on immigration enforcement and spending cuts.
And now basic personnel management is forbidden, too. The administration will undoubtedly appeal, but the damage is done, according to legal experts tracking these disputes. 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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