Summary
Judges across the U.S. are blocking Trump’s aggressive executive orders, with some rulings expressing deep frustration.
A Trump-appointed judge halted his attempt to place 2,200 USAID employees on leave, while another blocked Elon Musk’s team from accessing Treasury records.
A Reagan-appointed judge condemned Trump’s disregard for the rule of law in a ruling against his birthright citizenship plan.
These legal setbacks are forcing federal agencies to reveal more details and raising concerns over Trump’s expansive use of executive power.
That’s not strictly true. They could call the DC metro police. They could call the Virginia or Maryland National Guard.
Sure. If you have an order signed by the judge, most police of whatever agency are authorized to back you up. Whether they will is up in the air, in this case where everyone surely knows they’re touching off a shit-storm the true magnitude of which there is no way to know. But it has happened before. State Police backed up Archibald Cox when the FBI was ransacking his office. There are scenarios where one police agency with a judge’s order has faced off against another police agency who is trying to just out-stubborn them, and usually the side with the judge’s order wins. And surely the FBI hates Trump by this point. They could still have a bunch of personnel show up with somebody to enter the Dept. of Education by force, and Trump could call them on scene personally and tell them they’re fired, and they could still say, “Sorry, I’ll need that in writing, I am busy, I have to go now.”
Trump would surely come after the FBI, but he is doing that already. This is like “I can’t leave him, he’ll beat me” when he is already beating you every weekend. If it’s on, let it be on, man. At least keeping it within some kind of legal framework seems like it would be ten times better either than letting him continue to get away with it, or waiting for shit to pop off outside the legal framework.