Editorial illustration
Another unelected judge has decided they run the executive branch. According to a ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, Biden-appointed Judge William Alsup issued a preliminary injunction that blocks the Trump administration from enforcing return-to-office requirements for Pentagon employees and other federal workers across the government. 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.
Think about what this means. As outlined in the court’s decision, the President of the United States, who is 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.
The Trump 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 emphasized during his campaign rallies. Taxpayers have been footing the bill for empty office buildings while bureaucrats collect full salaries from their kitchen tables, a point raised in administration statements to the press. But the judicial resistance continues, with activist judges in blue districts issuing nationwide injunctions to stop the administration’s agenda, as seen in similar cases involving immigration enforcement and spending cuts.
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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