President Donald Trump said on Feb. 11 that he would abide by court rulings blocking his agenda, but would also appeal them in hopes that higher courts will reverse those decisions in his favor.
“I always abide by the courts ... and we'll appeal, but appeals take a long time,” Trump said from the Oval Office. His comments came amid dozens of lawsuits challenging his administration’s actions. Many have resulted in judges issuing orders that block certain activities by his administration.
For example, three federal judges have issued preliminary injunctions blocking his attempt to limit birthright citizenship. Others have targeted his attempt to freeze federal spending, offer buyouts to federal employees, and other decisions.
Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has responded to multiple orders by filing notices of appeal—including two to the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and Fourth Circuit over birthright citizenship. DOJ has also a filed notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case over his firing of the head of the office of Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger.
Another came in response to a judge’s order blocking the administration’s spending freeze.
Trump expressed concern during his remarks that orders blocking his agenda would potentially enable corrupt activity within the government.
“It gives crooked people more time to cover up the books. You know, if a person’s crooked and they get caught, other people see that, and all of a sudden it becomes harder later on,” he said.
He added that he hoped the judges would help stop corrupt spending. “If you go into a judge and you show them, here’s a corrupt situation—we have a check to be sent, but we found it to be corrupt. ... I would hope a judge would say, ‘Don’t send it, give it back to the taxpayer,’” he said.
So far, at least two federal judges—from Washington and Rhode Island—have issued orders blocking the administration’s attempt to freeze spending. Rhode Island District Judge John McConnell also issued a ruling to enforce a restraining order he put in place, stating that the administration had violated his restraining order.
“The States have presented evidence in this motion that the Defendants in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds,” McConnell said. He added that “the freezes in effect now were a result of the broad categorical order, not a specific finding of possible fraud.”
In the 1st Circuit, the administration requested a stay on McConnell’s Feb. 10 enforcement order. “This appeal arises from an extraordinary and unprecedented assertion of power by a single district court judge to superintend and control the Executive Branch’s spending of federal funds, in clear violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers,” DOJ said in a filing.
On Feb. 11, the appeals court declined to pause the court order but said the Trump administration could file additional papers seeking to put McConnell’s order on hold by the end of Feb. 13.
“He’s testing to see what works and what doesn’t,” said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani.
Besides birthright citizenship, Trump’s decision to fire the former chair of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) could prompt the court to reconsider old precedent. More specifically, the court could use the NLRB case to reexamine Humphrey’s Executor v. United States, a 1935 decision wherein the court said that presidents did not have the power to remove certain officials for reasons other than what Congress allowed.
The NLRB case is one that is “likely to end up at the Supreme Court and test the court’s willingness to overrule ... Humphrey’s Executor,” Catholic University Law Professor J. Joel Alicea told The Epoch Times. “And if that precedent is overruled, it would be a sea change in American government—the way that the government operates.”
