If The Supreme Court Is Going To Ignore The Constitution, Trump Should Ignore The Supreme Court
> March 6
https://thefederalist.com/2025/03/06/if-the-supreme-court-is-going-to-ignore-the-constitution-trump-should-ignore-the-supreme-court/
Lower courts don’t have authority to usurp the executive branch through restraining orders and injunctions, no matter what the SCOTUS says.
he Supreme Court’s shocking decision on Wednesday to allow a D.C. district court judge to order the Trump administration to disburse $2 billion in federal grant money is a major blow to the separation of powers undergirding our constitutional system of government.
But the thing about separation of powers is that they stand or fall together. All three branches of our government — legislative, executive, and judicial — have to respect the Constitution’s clear separation of powers. If one of them doesn’t, there’s no reason that the others should.
Put another way, if the Supreme Court can simply disregard the Executive branch’s constitutional authority and allow it to be usurped by an inferior federal court, which is what happened, then there’s no reason the Executive branch under Trump should pay any attention to what the Supreme Court says in this case, because it’s trying to assert an authority it simply doesn’t have.
So here’s what happened. As part of an administration-wide effort to crack down on fraudulent and wasteful federal spending, President Trump ordered a review of all federal grants, and also ordered that payments on all grants should be paused while the review is ongoing. Some of those grant recipients sued, and in a 5-4 decision handed down Wednesday, the Supreme Court denied a request by the Trump administration to vacate a recent ruling by D.C. District Court Judge Amir Ali (a Biden appointee) that ordered the State Department and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to disburse about $2 billion in federal grants to nongovernmental groups for “work already completed.”
In mid-February, Ali had issued a temporary restraining order that prohibited the Trump administration from pausing the disbursement of funds, arguing that the respondents were likely to succeed in showing the government violated the Administrative Procedures Act. After issuing this restraining order, Ali apparently grew frustrated by the slow pace of the disbursement of funds and on Feb. 25 issued a second order requiring the government to pay out about $2 billion in grant funds within 36 hours.
The Trump administration responded by filing an application to the SCOTUS asking it to vacate Ali’s order and issue a stay on his ruling. Chief Justice John Roberts granted an administrative stay and referred the administration’s petition to the full court for review.
The high court’s decision came down Wednesday, 5-4, with Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett joining the court’s Democrat appointees to deny the Trump administration’s request. The majority didn’t give a reason for this denial, which is too bad, because the ruling should trigger a constitutional crisis.
In a blistering dissent, Associate Justice Samuel Alito slammed the majority for giving a green light to the lower court’s judicial overreach. “Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”
Alito is right to be stunned. Here is a case in which a district judge, Ali, is explicitly claiming for himself executive authority to disburse federal funds and determine the time and manner in which the funds will be disbursed — powers clearly vested not in the judiciary but in the executive branch, that is, with President Trump. Ali simply brushed aside the Trump administration’s argument that sovereign immunity barred the enforcement order and arrogated to himself the right to exercise executive powers.
[rest at link]