WASHINGTON — The nation may be edging closer to a constitutional crisis as senior White House officials bristle over a string of court orders stymieing President Donald Trump’s agenda, sparking fears that they may ignore judicial decisions.
A federal judge in Rhode Island ruled Monday that the Trump administration failed to comply with his previous directive temporarily halting a sweeping funding freeze, reminding Trump and his top officials in stark terms that “those who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt.”
District Judge John McConnell’s order follows other legal setbacks that throw into question Trump’s plans to shrink and remake the federal government, end birthright citizenship and rein in spending, as he has pledged to do.
At minimum, the rulings suggest that varied Trump initiatives will be delayed, if not blocked altogether, as lawsuits filed by opponents work their way up the rungs of the judicial ladder.
Trump administration officials said they aren’t necessarily surprised; they said they had anticipated that the courts would loom as an impediment.
“The courts can be expected to do this,” a White House official familiar with Trump’s thinking told NBC News. “The unfortunate part is the wait time to get it to the superior courts and even to the Supreme Court if necessary.”
“We are careful in drafting the text of executive orders to make the possibility of court challenges being successful, but this is an occupational hazard,” the person added.
Others at the White House sounded more frustrated. Replying to a social media post from Pete Buttigieg, the Biden administration’s transportation secretary, senior White House aide Stephen Miller wrote: “Hey Pete, care to show us the line in the Constitution where it says a lone unelected district judge can assume decision-making control over the entire executive branch affecting 300 [million] citizens?”
In a social media post of his own Sunday, Vice President JD Vance wrote, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” he wrote. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. “
Vance didn’t specify a particular judicial ruling. His office referred an inquiry to the White House press office, which didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A GOP Senate ally voiced support.
Asked whether the White House has a right to circumvent judges who are halting Trump’s executive actions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said: “I think they do.”
Vance’s post raised the specter of a potential showdown between the Trump administration and an independent, co-equal branch of government: the courts. More than two centuries of U.S. history have established that courts are empowered to strike down laws and bar executive actions they deem unconstitutional.
Were Trump to defy a court order he disliked, it would upend the nation’s delicate system of checks and balances, with no obvious remedy.
Alberto Gonzales, attorney general in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration, told NBC News: “To willfully ignore the courts could be grounds for impeachment in my judgment — or at least public condemnation and congressional censure.”
“The courts decide ultimately what is illegal or unconstitutional, not the vice president or president. The courts have the final say as to what is the executive’s legitimate power, so in that sense they exercise some control.”
Impeachment seems unlikely, with Republicans controlling both the House and that Senate and, so far, showing little appetite to defy Trump.
Jailing a sitting president is a practical impossibility. Trump was held in contempt last year during his criminal trial in New York, but even then — when he was a candidate, not the incumbent — state Judge Juan Merchan appeared reluctant to exercise the strongest enforcement power at his disposal.
In theory, a judge could fine the government, but it’s hard to imagine a judge would fine a litigant with unlimited resources.
Laurence Tribe, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, said, “Vance’s arguments, if one can call them that, are entirely without merit and sound to me like strong hints that the White House and its [Elon] Musk contingent are planning to ignore court rulings that they find inconvenient or that they see as hostile to their takeover agenda.”
Trump has a long history of contentious dealings with judges who’ve gotten in his way. When crossed, he hasn’t hesitated to dish out scorn, even when they hold his fate in their hands.
In the case before Merchan, Trump called him “biased and conflicted.” He also took aim at Merchan’s daughter.
It’s unclear whether Trump will once again disparage judges by name, but an administration official said in an interview that nothing is off the table.
“You will have to wait and see,” the person said.
More so than congressional Democrats, judges now stand as the biggest threat to Trump’s policy blueprint. That may be no accident.
Democrats worked to stock the courts with judges of their choosing during Joe Biden’s presidency, as presidents of both parties do when they hold power.
By the time Biden left office, the Democratic-led Senate had confirmed 235 of his judicial nominees — one more than Trump pushed through in his previous term.
Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York alluded to the scorecard in a letter he sent to his colleagues Monday.
“The courts are the first line of defense in blocking illegal action of this administration,” he wrote. “Over the last four years, Senate Democrats did historic work in rebuilding the federal judiciary.”
U.S. District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer last week issued an emergency order temporarily blocking Musk and his associates at Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the Treasury Department’s sensitive payment systems, which include information like Social Security numbers.
In response, Musk wrote on X that the judge is “protecting corruption” and “needs to be impeached NOW!”
An adviser to the Trump administration expressed frustration about the judiciary’s intervening too much in the executive branch.
“This judge clearly doesn’t give a s— about the law, so what are we supposed to do — wait until we have a two-thirds majority in the Senate to impeach and remove?” the adviser said, referring to the requirements to impeach a judge. “The unconstitutional innovation here is coming from the judiciary, not from the executive branch.”
In addition, District Judge Carl Nichols issued a temporary restraining order last week barring the U.S. Agency for International Development from placing more than 2,000 workers on paid leave.
Aid agencies have said the effort to downsize USAID has already had “deadly consequences.”
And on Monday, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. extended a temporary halt on the Trump administration’s plan to offer mass buyouts to federal workers — a major early focus for Trump, who campaigned on cutting the federal workforce. As of Monday, 60,000 federal workers had accepted the deal, an administration official told NBC News.
“I don’t know how you can lose a case like that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after the ruling, adding, “I got elected on making government better, more efficient and smaller, and that’s what we’re doing.”
Past presidents were also vexed by court rulings that derailed their agendas. After winning he won re-election in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt famously tried to pack the Supreme Court with more justices in hope of diluting the power of those who’d been striking down his New Deal reforms. The effort failed.
If Trump were to defy a court ruling, it would go far beyond Roosevelt’s ill-fated court packing scheme, striking at the core notion of the rule of law, critics said.
Matthew Platkin, the attorney general of New Jersey and one of the plaintiffs in the suit over the spending freeze, said in an interview, “JD Vance did go to law school, but I don’t think he paid any attention, because you learn on the first day of law school that courts decide what the law of this nation is.”
In a statement Monday, the American Bar Association painted the Trump administration as heedless in its zeal to transform government.
“In the last 21 days, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed alleging that the administration’s actions violate the rule of law and are contrary to the Constitution or laws of the United States. The list grows longer every day,” the statement said.
“These actions have forced affected parties to seek relief in the courts, which stand as a bulwark against these violations. We support our courts who are treating these cases with the urgency they require,” it said.
Another word of caution came from Steve Bannon, who was White House chief strategist in Trump’s first term.
Bannon, host of the “War Room” podcast and a leader in Trump’s MAGA movement, called Judge McConnell “a hack” but said Trump should obey the order while he appeals.
“My natural inclination and the facts merit that President Trump should definitely defy it, and the front line of his executives should be prepared to, under contempt charges, actually go to prison,” said Bannon, who was jailed last year for contempt of Congress.
But he said that could prove self-defeating in the long run, because Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett wouldn’t reward Trump for taking a rebellious stance toward the lower court.
“You’re going to win on the merits, so the smarter strategy is expedited appeal and [the] emergency docket in the Supreme Court,” Bannon said. “If you defy it, you will lose the wimps like Roberts and Coney Barrett.”
