This is an adapted excerpt from the Feb. 10 episode of “Inside with Jen Psaki.”
Donald Trump has never been shy about his contempt for the idea that we have three co-equal branches of government. In his view, all power should ultimately rest with the person sitting behind the resolute desk — especially if that person is him.
We got a glimpse of his thinking during his first administration when he claimed that Article 2 of the Constitution gave him “the right to do whatever he wants as president.” Then during the 2024 campaign, he surrounded himself with people who advocated for some pretty extreme views of presidential power.
Chief among them was the guy now serving as his vice president, JD Vance, who floated this advice to Trump back in 2021: “[I]f I was giving him one piece of advice: fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.” Vance said on a podcast.
With a Congress controlled by a Republican Party that Trump owns, the only branch left to check his executive powers is the judiciary.
“And when the courts stop you, stand before the country, and say like Andrew Jackson did, the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it,” he added.
In other words, we can’t say they didn’t warn us. Just a few weeks into this new administration, we are quickly seeing what it is like to have a president who is willing to simply ignore the law when it suits him.
We saw that when Trump tried to unilaterally revoke the bedrock principle of birthright citizenship. We saw it when the administration tried to freeze spending that is constitutionally appropriated by the legislative branch. We saw it when they threatened to shut down agencies that were legally created by Congress and forced out career civil servants who are protected by law.
The goal here is to steamroll a system that, again, is based on three co-equal branches of government. With a Congress controlled by a Republican Party that Trump owns, the only branch left to check his executive powers is the judiciary. On that front, there is a lot they are trying to keep up with.
On Monday, a federal judge in Massachusetts extended the pause on the Trump administration’s unprecedented effort to coerce federal workers to leave their jobs. Another federal judge blocked Trump’s executive order to ignore the Constitution and end birthright citizenship — the third judge to do so. Yet another federal judge halted the administration’s cuts to the National Institutes of Health. And the head of the Office of Special Counsel, an independent federal ethics agency, was granted a temporary reprieve by a judge after he sued Trump, alleging he was unlawfully fired. All of that happened on Monday alone.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop some aspects of its attempt to shut down the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID. On Saturday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Elon Musk’s DOGE crew from accessing sensitive Treasury Department payment systems. The judge in that case cited, “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.”
Seems like a fairly reasonable concern to me. Yet, that was the decision that set MAGA world’s hair on fire. Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas called the judge an “outlaw” who should be “forbidden” from hearing any more cases against Trump. Sen. Mike Lee of Utah said the decision had the feel of a “judicial coup,” to which Musk responded, “Yes.” Musk also reposted a message suggesting that he and Trump should defy the court’s order.
Vance also took to social media to share his take, posting, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.” The word “legitimate” is doing a lot of work in that statement. As a Yale Law School grad, Vance should know — and I suspect he does — that courts do make those decisions. It is literally the role of the judicial branch: to determine what is legitimate and what is not, what is illegal and what is not. As we watched those comments from Trump, Vance and their allies in Congress roll in over the weekend, it appeared that they were laying the groundwork to openly defy court orders. Now, Trump is not a graduate of Yale Law School or any law school but he does agree that this judge should not be allowed to stop him. “When a president can’t look for fraud and waste and abuse, we don’t have a country anymore,” Trump told reporters on Sunday. “So, we’re very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling.” “No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision, it’s a disgrace,” Trump added. They are not being subtle. As we watched those comments from Trump, Vance and their allies in Congress roll in over the weekend, it appeared that they were laying the groundwork to openly defy court orders. And now, a judge says they already have. On Monday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration has been violating a previous court order to lift the blanket spending freeze on federal grant programs. To put it plainly: The Trump administration froze spending, a judge told them to unfreeze it, and according to this judge, they didn’t. This puts us in uncharted territory. In fact, some Democrats and legal experts say it leaves us smack dab in the middle of a constitutional crisis. Look, I know phrases like that can sometimes sound vague, abstract and academic. But as I said, this country relies on a system of checks and balances between three co-equal branches of government. So when the Trump administration ignores that foundational principle, defies the judiciary and dares the courts to enforce their orders, it is a threat to the Constitution itself. Allison Detzel contributed.
Jen Psaki is the host of "The Briefing with Jen Psaki" airing Tuesdays through Fridays at 9 p.m. EST. She is the former White House press secretary for President Joe Biden.
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