Source: Brownstone Institute | VIEW ORIGINAL POST ==>
We are in the deep throws of a constitutional crisis in the following sense: we are trying to find our way back to it.
In a likely never before seen openly brazen way, we have not two, but all three branches of our government jockeying for control. It is unprecedented in the modern day. Historically it is the Executive and Legislative Branches that engage in fierce and costly competitions for the power to do something to the citizenry, albeit directly to us, or with our money.
But now in 2025, we see the once-thought highly respectful Judicial Branch entering the ring. A true power struggle of epic proportions. Who is right, and who is overstepping? A verifiable crisis indeed.
The cause is clear. So is the answer.
The cause? Well, we have a new administration in the White House, one that was resoundingly put there by an unquestionable majority of Americans. The 47th President won not just the Electoral College, but he won the popular vote by millions of votes. It was a modern-day landslide. However, We The People did not stop there.
This past November, we didn’t simply elect a new leader; we also gave him all the tools he would need to get the job done. Namely, we gave him a Republican House of Representatives and a Republican Senate. We Americans, tired of the lawlessness of the Biden years, (where the absurdities came at such a rapid rate that your head would spin, and then explode, from the shock of their backward policies), decided to clean house at a level not seen in recent memory.
We cast aside the radical, anti-American policies of Biden and his handlers, and we gave President Trump the White House for a second time. This time, however, that privilege was coupled with a mandate, and we cleared the path for him to execute it. An all-Republican-Congress will do his bidding, which is our bidding. Gone are the days of outlandish insanity (like appointing a Supreme Court Justice who has no idea how to define a woman because well, as she explained, she’s not a biologist). No more! Logic, law, and order are full steam ahead. Nothing can stop us now…
Or so we thought.
This somewhat unusual one-party rule of Republicans at the federal level of our government has birthed a new battlefield for the radical Deep State (or Shadow Government) that has been running our country these past four years. The result can only be described as a war zone. Clearly these entitled, unelected, behind-the-scenes puppet masters are not going to let go of their power base too easily. After all, if they lose the unprecedented (and unconstitutional) stranglehold that they’ve had on the American public these past four years, it will mean the end of their well-stocked gravy train. They can’t have that, now can they? Certainly not. Thus, we see that their powerlessness has pushed them to the only battlefield they can find upon which they might, just possibly, be able to gain ground…that is, the courts!
The Deep State supposes that if they can tap into the activist judges (who are nothing more than political hacks), then they may be able to preserve their illegal power base. They knew this on November 5th. In fact, I’m sure they knew this well before Election Day, for it is obvious to anyone paying attention that the Deep State has been preparing and planning so that they could have their arsenal assembled and ready to fire on Day One, or January 20, 2025, to be exact.
Immediately following the inauguration, President Trump started signing a flurry of Executive Orders, all clearly designed to advance the mandate that we had issued him. Almost simultaneously thereafter, the Deep State started filing lawsuit after lawsuit to try to neutralize the President’s power. The result? Unfortunately, many of those inappropriate (dare I say frivolous) cases are finding legs in federal courts manned by activist jurists. In other words, we are seeing federal court judges doing things that can only be described as judicial overreach. And so, it begs the question…who’s in charge, anyway?
Well, I can tell you who should be in charge. That one’s easy. Let’s revisit grade school Social Studies class. As I have opined many times in past articles, interviews, and speeches, we have three co-equal branches of government all working to keep the other two in check. The balance of power is key. Truly it is the cornerstone of our free society. Each branch has its own powers and duties. When one branch of government usurps a power that rightfully belongs to another branch, that disrupts the clever balance of power, and the result is tyranny. Sound like a strong word to use? It is. And yet, it is wholly proper – for it is the people who lose control when tyranny takes hold, and thus it is we who suffer in a tyrannical situation.
Alas, we come to who should be in charge…Ultimately it is we the people who should be in charge. That is what our Founding Fathers envisioned, after fighting a long, bloody, and very costly revolutionary war to break free from Great Britain, and that is what they codified in our Constitution. My mantra as a constitutional law advocate and scholar is – the Constitution was written to keep the government in check…It was not written to keep We The People in check!
So how does that manifest itself in everyday life? Through our elected officials. We put Donald Trump back in power because we wanted him to change the downward, nosedive trajectory of our country. He has started doing that. Can the courts stop him?
The answer is, in some cases, courts can curb the actions of a president, but that is only when the president usurps the power of another branch, not when a court disagrees with the president’s policy decisions. To be clear, a court cannot curb the actions of a president when he is acting within his constitutional mandate. For example, when Biden “forgave” the student loan debt of hundreds of thousands of students, he was overstepping his power, he was sued, and the United States Supreme Court shut him down. (Of course, you know that those loans were not forgiven, but instead, the cost of that debt was shifted to you and me as taxpayers).
Similarly, when Biden told his OSHA to issue a nationwide mandate to require all employers with 100 or more employees to require their employees to get the Covid shot or face likely expulsion, he (and his agency) were wildly overstepping their Executive Branch power. The United States Supreme Court shot that down based on the Separation of Powers doctrine. Wrong branch, buddy. Only Congress can make laws, not agencies, and not the President.
Sound familiar? It’s eerily similar to the quarantine camp lawsuit I fought against New York’s authoritarian Governor and her dystopian DOH. Talk about government overreach on steroids…as they wanted to lock people up, indefinitely, wherever they wanted, without due process, and without proving you were sick! More on that battle can be found in many of my writings, for example here and on my Substack here.
So how about President Trump? Is he overreaching, and does he need to be put back into his lane by the courts? Or are the courts engaged in the Judicial Branch’s version of lawfare?
There is no hard, fast answer, because as is the case with all things in life, it depends on the circumstances. That being said, if we look at a handful of the court rulings against Trump since he returned to the White House last month, it becomes clear that it is indeed the courts that are overstepping in a rather lockstep manner. Maybe we should call it judicialfare, which I would define as the clear overreach by activist judges who don’t like the President’s policies, so they are using their seats of power to undo what the President has done (or is trying to do). However, they are far surpassing their constitutional powers in the process, and so they are breaching the sacred Separation of Powers doctrine that is so clearly laid out in our Constitution, and which is essential for the proper operation and success of a constitutional republic, such as ours.
In just the first three weeks of Trump’s second term, federal judges have:
- blocked Trump’s executive order clarifying birthright citizenship
- forced Trump to lift his federal spending freeze on grants and loans
- blocked DOGE from having access to Treasury Department records to see how federal funds are being spent
- blocked Trump’s severance pay buyout packages to federal employees
- forced Trump to restore webpages related to sex change operations and gender ideology on CDC, HHS, and FDA’s websites
My opinion is that the judges in these rulings thus far are way out of line. In fact, someone should send them a copy of the Constitution, because it’s obvious that they need a refresher. Let’s look at one of the recent judicialfare examples – the aforementioned DOGE decision…
In trying to carry out its orders from the President (who is fulfilling the mandate we issued him), DOGE staff started reviewing the Treasury Department’s records to see, amongst other things, where our tax money has been going. They began uncovering horrendous uses of our tax dollars. (See my recent article regarding some of the USAID money squandering that has been taking place).
As the facts were coming out and the swamp creatures were being exposed, and the President started shutting down their gravy train, the Deep State jumped into action to try to halt the bleeding. They turned to the court system. Our unfortunate NY Attorney General, Letitia James, led 19 states in a lawsuit to stop DOGE from examining the books.
They filed on a Friday night, and the Democrat federal judge, within hours, granted their preliminary injunction (which was granted ex parte – meaning without the DOJ being heard). As such, the judge forbade DOGE workers from continuing on and blocked their access to Treasury records! The judge’s reasoning was so weak that even a grade-schooler would know it didn’t pass the sniff test. You can read his full decision here, but this is the crux of the “logic” of his ruling:
“The Court’s firm assessment is that, for the reasons stated by the States, they will face irreparable harm in the absence of injunctive relief. See Winter v. Nat. Res. Def. Council, Inc., 555 U.S. 7, 20 (2008). That is both because of the risk that the new policy presents of the disclosure of sensitive and confidential information and the heightened risk that the systems in question will be more vulnerable than before to hacking.”
Then there’s the other elementary-school-level knowledge that this judge lacked (or conveniently forgot), which is that presidents are the chief executive officers of our country, and they control the Executive Branch which includes all of the agencies that fall under that umbrella (of which there are hundreds). Here’s what the DOJ had to say in their brief:
“The government is aware of no example of a court ever trying to micromanage an agency in this way, or sever the political supervision of the Executive Branch in such a manner. This Court should not be the first.”
Let me be clear…Courts cannot order the President to stop using his agency workers where/how he is authorized to use them pursuant to law. Such a ruling by a judge exceeds the power of the judiciary by a large margin. Moreover, we have seen former presidents do this very thing that President Trump is doing with DOGE (though they didn’t call it DOGE back then). The difference is that those Presidents had a “D” after their name, such as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton. And yet, this is not about a political party affiliation. At least, it shouldn’t be. It should be about the Constitution and preserving the power of the people and our voice over and through our government.
The problem is that is not the case when the Deep State is involved.
The answer to the problem? In my opinion, it comes from the bottom up. Not from the top down. The electorate spoke loud and clear on November 5th. Now it is time to maintain that boisterous voice so that the Deep State begins to wither and their enablers die off with them. Remember, federal judges are appointed by presidents and can be impeached by Congress. We just need to ensure we put into those positions of government power defenders of our Constitution, and not destroyers of the gatekeepers. Only then will the opposition dissolve and the resistance find itself quashed.
