Editorial illustration
Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. As per the preliminary injunction issued by Judge William Alsup, a Biden-appointed federal judge in San Francisco, he blocked the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and extended the ruling government-wide, preventing 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 the administration’s policy push to end pandemic-era work-from-home arrangements, which Trump campaigned on during his election bid. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a point frequently raised by Trump administration officials as stated in White House press releases.
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, as seen in blocks on immigration enforcement and spending cuts according to reports from Breitbart News. Now basic personnel management faces the same fate, with this ruling drawing from similar legal challenges documented in court filings.
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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