The Washington Post ran a troubling story yesterday under the headline, “Trump allies suggest defying court orders after stinging legal rebukes.” It is true there is a lot of that kind of talk surging around on our side, but defying court orders would be a terrible idea. We are nowhere close to a “defy the courts” moment. Don’t panic until I give the signal.
It is true that a pleonastic series of left-wing judges have been tossing out wokabulary-packed TRO’s like obscenely shaped candy tossed in hairy handfuls from a Pride Parade float. “The president,” WaPo crowed, “has lost nearly every battle in court in the opening weeks of his administration, with some judges using biting and incredulous language to push back on administration plans they have deemed unconstitutional, ill-planned or cruel.”
Indeed, yesterday a Massachusetts federal judge blocked the prefectly sensible 15% overhead cap on NIH grants. Also yesterday, Rhode Island Judge John J. McConnell Jr. scolded the administration for failing to comply with the “plain language” of his earlier TRO requiring the OMB to unfreeze trillions in wasteful and abusive federal grants and loans.
It is starting to seem like the courts would rather run the Executive Branch for themselves.
It is worth noting that amnesiac corporate media completely forgot all the glowing words of praise it heaped on Joe Biden’s “creative” circumvention of a series of Supreme Court decisions stopping his student loan forgiveness schemes. The media’s hypocrisy is frustrating, but it is bait we should not eat.
Let them step on the legal rakes.
Three weeks ago, when Trump first issued his blanket pause on federal spending and his new, Schedule-F “at will” category for federal workers, I suggested that he was laying a trap. You’ll recall we discussed the Reagan-era “unitary executive” theory of Executive Branch powers. I told you then that Trump’s blanket orders were inviting lawsuits right out of the gate to tee up a final showdown at a Supreme Court poised to cement Trump’s budgetary and employment powers into law.
Well, the judges couldn’t resist and have taken the Trump bait. The dizzying slew of TRO’s contains some of the worst and weakest judicial reasoning ever excreted from the federal bench. Patience, young Jedi. We should celebrate these particular TRO’s instead of freaking out over them. Weak, injudicious, poorly reasoned orders are much easier to beat than judicious, well-reasoned orders.
My appellate mentor once told me that an overlong long, apparently devastating order packed with pages of ridiculous factual findings is the best kind of order— even though at first it looks like a death sentence. “The more the robes talk,” my mentor said, “the more we have to work with on appeal.” That advice is truer now than it ever has been.
There is no need for panic. The worst thing Trump’s team could do is overreact and start openly defying court orders—that’s a losing strategy with long-term constitutional consequences. Trump has the Supreme Court. It’s much smarter to let these weak orders pile up and then race them up the appellate ladder, which is exactly what is happening now.
It would be different if the Supreme Court were adversarial. That is what happened to President Lincoln, forcing him toignore the order and arrest Justice Taney’s messenger rather than comply with the ruling in Ex parte Merryman. Lincoln faced an existential crisis where compliance with the court’s order would have crippled the Union’s ability to suppress the rebellion— or to facilitate the Northern Aggression, depending on your point of view.
But either way, in 2025 the Supreme Court is not adversarial to President Trump—it is more inclined to define and reinforce his executive authority rather than dismantle it.
That’s why we must show restraint and hew to the rule of law. Let these leftist lower courts exhaust themselves with legally dubious rulings, and then let the Supreme Court do what it was built to do: settle the matter decisively.
I don’t believe it was accidental that Trump practically invited these challenges from Day One. The President knows all about this kind of lawfare—it was background music throughout Trump 1.0. We have enjoyed a brief, encouraging sprint of cheap success while the Swamp was caught off guard, but we always knew this day of lawfare would come. We are now entering the second phase. Trump is playing a longer game. Everything he is doing now is intended to expand his legal authority—constitutionally—using the very same court system that is currently chucking sand into the machine of reform.
“The Trump administration probably will prevail in some cases,” the WaPo finally admitted, late in the article, “as they wend through the appeals courts or make their way to the Supreme Court.”
The Swamp’s strategy is founded on delay and obstruction. Trump’s counter is acceleration and good politics. He isn’t waiting for these fights; he’s forcing them now, when he has momentum, rather than later, when the bureaucracy might recover and dig in. This flurry of weak rulings will provide the leverage needed for the Supreme Court to weigh in decisively—very likely in the President’s favor.
As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the TRO cutting off “political appointees” from access to Treasury’s computer systems, things are proceeding as I suspected. No “compromise” was arranged from the court’s order to “meet and confer.” The briefs were filed late into last night—and the DOJ’s reply was strong. Here’s part of its conclusion:Believe it or not, the best thing that could happen would be for the Obama-appointed judge to uphold the TRO in full or even in part. Trump’s team would then be all set for an emergency appeal.
Remember: we lose nothing by the delay while these cases climb the appellate ladder. The waste, fraud, and abuse have been happily trundling along for decades. Relatively speaking, a few more months won’t hurt. But the highly visible battle for commonsense reforms infuriates the public, spotlights the left’s contradictions, and forces Democrats to waste valuable political capital defending the indefensible. The best prize lays at the end of the fight: a Supreme Court order completely cutting off lower courts from micromanaging the Executive Branch.
Trump’s legal strategy is brilliant, and it is working. Let the man work.
☕️ HEIL SLURPY ☙ Tuesday, February 11, 2025 ☙ C&C NEWS 🦠
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