For a good year, blue states, labour unions, and non-profit companies have descended on national judges up and down the East Coast seeking to end President Donald Trump’s plan. And they have found sympathetic partners in a select few federal judges who are willing to issue temporary restraining orders, or TROs, to quickly, and occasionally without giving any notice, obstruct the executive branch’s normal operation.
To be clear, the TROs entered do not address specific problems between Trump and the defendants, where the defendants allege a certain activity injures them in some particular way. Instead, the nation is seeing significant alliances of plaintiffs who oppose the government’s plan file claims challenging the senior branch’s general policies and procedures.
Take the case of New York v. Trump, which involved more than twenty states filing lawsuits in federal court in Rhode Island. In that case, the claims initially challenged an Office of Management and Budget ( OMB) Directive that temporarily halted activities and distributed federal funds that were in conflict with various executive orders. The OMB after rescinded that law. Yet federal prosecutor John J. McConnell, Jr., a Barack Obama appointment, entered a TRO ordering the President of the United States never to “pause, ice, impede, block, withdraw, or cancel” federal financial aid to the state.
According to the Trump administration, the TRO just forbids the freezing or canceling of grants based on the government’s or the government’s numerous executive orders. Certainly the governmental agencies may continue to review several grants as is always the official’s prerogative?  ,
Never in accordance with an attempt that Judge McConnell issued yesterday in response to a request that the states use to quake the TRO.
Judge McConnell unambiguously stated in that context that Donald Trump “must soon restore frozen funding” and that it has “immediately finish any federal funding pause.” The order was all embracing, applying to “any national funding delay”. It didn’t matter why the national money was paused, whether the delay was permitted by the grant, a act, a legislation, or done as part of the inner management and oversight by companies. It was irrelevant whether the funding came from one of the defendant agencies or from the plaintiff states, as the order clearly stated.
The Executive was completely overthrown by the order.
The Trump Administration made a quick court notice of its intention to file an appeal. A TRO, however, is not normally appealable, meaning the executive branch may remain hijacked until the lower court resolves the pending Motion for a Preliminary Injunction, which can then be appealed.
Despite how outrageous this decree is, a worse one exists, which is the TRO that a New York federal judge has entered.
At 1: 00 a. m. on Saturday, another Obama appointee, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, entered a TRO prohibiting Trump and the secretary of the Treasury from granting access to treasury department data systems to any person “other than civil servants”. Additionally, the TRO specifically stated that Trump and the Treasury secretary could not grant access to the systems to any political appointees.
19 blue states requested that TRO despite the fact that the Treasury secretary had stated that only a select few executive branch representatives could access the databases, and that access was only permitted by a read-only mechanism. Then, in the early morning hours of the weekend, a federal judge granted the injunction against the president of the United States, barring members of the Trump Administration from having access to many of the Treasury Department’s computer systems.
What sane world can a federal judge direct a federal judge to the executive and the Treasury secretary about computer access for employees?
The Trump Administration filed an emergency motion to void the TRO, writing:” The answer was clear — none.”
This remarkable intrusion into the Executive Branch goes against the unitary structure it provides and Article II of the Constitution. There is not and cannot be a basis for distinguishing between” civil servants” and “political appointees”. Every executive agency’s work must be supervised by politically responsible leadership, who ultimately answer to the President, according to fundamental democratic principles. A federal court, consistent with the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of that work from the specter of political accountability. No court has the authority to impose an injunction that directly circumvents the clear line of authority that Article II demands.  , Because the Order on its face draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction, it should be dissolved immediately.
Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who was given the case, is currently hearing that motion. ( Judge Engelmayer merely handled the after-hours emergency filing. )  ,
Vargas requested a meeting with the parties early on Monday to discuss the situation, but by late afternoon, the states had submitted a response opposing anything other than a minor revision to the TRO. The states responded by saying that the Trump Administration had no justification for using the computers because political appointees could ask for any kind of information from civil servants.
However, the executive branch is not required to instruct the states or a federal judge in how to conduct computer system audits. It’s not yet clear whether Judge Vargas will consent.
What is clear, however, is that opponents of the Trump Administration’s agenda care not for democracy, our Constitution, or the rule of law: They care only for power. And they worry that in 2024, they will soon lose control of the government’s unelected bureaucrats who finance their leftist causes and organizations.  ,
However, they won’t go down without a fight, and the recent wave of TROs is likely just a taste of what will come.
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She then worked for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals as a permanent law clerk for nearly 25 years. Cleveland was a full-time faculty member before switching to a teaching adjunct position. The New Civil Liberties Alliance also has Cleveland as its attorney. Cleveland is a follower of her greatest accomplishments, her dear husband and dear son, on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. Cleveland’s views are those expressed here in her personal capacity.
