Latest news with #EzraKleinShow
New York Times
02-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
The Disaster That Just Passed the Senate
This is an edited transcript of an episode of 'The Ezra Klein Show.' You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm taping this introduction on Tuesday, July 1. The Senate passed Donald Trump's 'big beautiful bill' just moments ago in a 50-50 vote, with Vice President JD Vance as the tiebreaker. This bill is a bad piece of legislation — trillions of dollars in tax cuts, very much tilted toward the rich, with savage cuts to Medicaid, nutrition assistance and green energy. Even with those cuts, we can expect more than $3 trillion to be added to the national debt over 10 years. And befitting a policy like that, the bill is hugely unpopular: A poll from late June found nearly two-to-one opposition to the bill. Vulnerable Republicans do not seem excited to run on the wreckage it's going to create. Thom Tillis, the Republican senator from North Carolina — a state Trump has won over and over again — just announced he's stepping down at the end of this term, in part over the Medicaid cuts. But bad policy only matters if people know about it, and a lot of people don't. Those of us hearing about this bill — even those of us covering it — can't keep the whole package in mind. The Times has a great list of nearly all the provisions, and a lot of them would be major policy fights on their own. But in part because of that — and because the Trump administration is flooding the zone with so many other major policy fights — it has been hard to focus attention on what is passing and what can actually be done about it. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
22-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Mike Braun's property tax cut lost the plot
As a surprisingly semi-regular contributor to IndyStar Opinion, I feel compelled to offer some thoughts about this legislative session's marquee debate over property taxes. It's a little tricky, though, because of how we deeply misunderstand the nature of time. We judge our personal lives by minutes and days, when we'd be better off thinking in weeks and months. We assess career success in weeks and months, when we should probably be thinking in years. When it comes to public policy, we try to evaluate immediately, even though the real-world impacts often take decades to fully reveal themselves. So, while I do have thoughts and opinions on this Indiana General Assembly session, I find myself in more of a reflective mood. Rather than diving deep into the policy weeds, I want to ask a bigger question that underlies the entire debate, and has shaped Indiana politics for the last two decades: What is the goal of state government? For my money, one of the most fair and clear-eyed observers of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency DOGE experiment is Santi Ruiz. Ruiz, a right/libertarian-leaning commentator, was initially hopeful about the idea of a Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy-led federal efficiency commission. His March '50 Thoughts on DOGE' Substack post remains the most balanced and insightful thing I've read on the topic. Briggs: Mike Braun got suckered into a tax-cut promise he couldn't keep The short version: Ruiz sees flashes of good, but ultimately argues that the chaos of the execution has undermined the project's stated purpose. On the Ezra Klein Show, Ruiz diagnosed a core flaw in the effort: Goodhart's Law, which is the idea that 'when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.' In other words, once you fixate on the number, you lose sight of the reality it's supposed to represent. In DOGE's case, Ruiz argues, cutting government headcount and contracts, rather than improving government efficiency, became the metric of success. Instead of making the federal government more efficient, DOGE may be making things worse, because it has lost sight of the goal. In my view, this is precisely what happened with property tax reform in Indiana. Cutting property taxes was Gov. Mike Braun's top priority going into session, and from the start, there were clear divisions between him and legislative fiscal leaders. Local governments, for their part, warned that the proposed cuts would gut key services. You know what happened: Everyone dug in. The result was a compromise that made nobody happy: cuts too modest for the hardliners, yet deep enough to jeopardize local services. And to plug the hole, local governments were given the option to raise income taxes. The complexity of this issue was apparent from the outset, and it should have been clear to any observer that doing nothing, or something like punting this to a summer study committee, would have been far better in the long run. But ultimately, the measure (the highest possible dollar amount of property tax cuts, this session) became the goal, and our leaders ended up passing something that no one is happy with. When the measure becomes the mission, we tend to make decisions that don't hold up over time. All of which brings us back to the bigger question: What is the goal of state (and local) government? The core argument of the property tax cut hardliners is one that much of Indiana's political class seems to share, or at least publicly proclaim: that the goal of government is simply to be as small as possible. I saw this up close during the 2023 mental health funding debate. We had broad, bipartisan support for investing in our state's mental health system. During session, a legislative leader pulled me aside. He reiterated his support, but said he needed help avoiding the perception that this was just another 'big government' solution. Never mind that, since the days of English common law, caring for people with mental illness has been a core function of government. Never mind that failure to invest in mental health just shifts the cost to other government-funded systems like jails and emergency rooms. Never mind that, without government, there is no one else to pick up the slack. This legislator understood all this, but he was feeling pressure, not about whether the policy was right, but about whether it looked like too much government. Hicks: Braun cut taxes for businesses, but most Hoosiers will pay more We figured out a path forward, but the conversation stuck with me. Why is government such a loaded word? Why is it an insult instead of a neutral tool we can choose to use (or not use) depending on the problem? Why is the size of government any kind of goal at all, especially at the state and local level, which tend to be much more responsive to constituent needs and feedback than the federal behemoth? At the end of the day, government size and spending is a measure, and an important one, but it is not the goal. Instead, the goal should be whatever contributes to the best conditions for thriving families and communities. Sometimes that means getting the government out of the way, like removing regulatory barriers to innovation. Sometimes it means making government work better, like Mitch Daniels' legendary BMV turnaround. And, yes, sometimes it means investing more in the kinds of services and infrastructure that improve lives and expand opportunity. The irony is that almost every serious legislator and government official in Indiana knows this, but they are often paralyzed by the outsized influence of a small but loud chorus of folks who treat any additional investment as a betrayal. Ultimately, though, if we want better outcomes from our government, our leaders need space to act on what most of them already understand: that good governance (at any size) is about advancing the common good. Jay Chaudhary is the former director of the Indiana Division of Mental Health and Addiction and chair of the Indiana Behavioral Health Commission. He writes the Substack, Favorable Thriving Conditions. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana's new property tax cut turned measure into misssion | Opinion
Indianapolis Star
22-04-2025
- Business
- Indianapolis Star
Mike Braun's property tax cut lost the plot
As a surprisingly semi-regular contributor to IndyStar Opinion, I feel compelled to offer some thoughts about this legislative session's marquee debate over property taxes. It's a little tricky, though, because of how we deeply misunderstand the nature of time. We judge our personal lives by minutes and days, when we'd be better off thinking in weeks and months. We assess career success in weeks and months, when we should probably be thinking in years. When it comes to public policy, we try to evaluate immediately, even though the real-world impacts often take decades to fully reveal themselves. So, while I do have thoughts and opinions on this Indiana General Assembly session, I find myself in more of a reflective mood. Rather than diving deep into the policy weeds, I want to ask a bigger question that underlies the entire debate, and has shaped Indiana politics for the last two decades: What is the goal of state government? But first, a DOGE detour For my money, one of the most fair and clear-eyed observers of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency DOGE experiment is Santi Ruiz. Ruiz, a right/libertarian-leaning commentator, was initially hopeful about the idea of a Musk/Vivek Ramaswamy-led federal efficiency commission. His March '50 Thoughts on DOGE' Substack post remains the most balanced and insightful thing I've read on the topic. Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle. The short version: Ruiz sees flashes of good, but ultimately argues that the chaos of the execution has undermined the project's stated purpose. On the Ezra Klein Show, Ruiz diagnosed a core flaw in the effort: Goodhart's Law, which is the idea that 'when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.' In other words, once you fixate on the number, you lose sight of the reality it's supposed to represent. In DOGE's case, Ruiz argues, cutting government headcount and contracts, rather than improving government efficiency, became the metric of success. Instead of making the federal government more efficient, DOGE may be making things worse, because it has lost sight of the goal. Goodhart's Law in action in Indiana In my view, this is precisely what happened with property tax reform in Indiana. Cutting property taxes was Gov. Mike Braun's top priority going into session, and from the start, there were clear divisions between him and legislative fiscal leaders. Local governments, for their part, warned that the proposed cuts would gut key services. You know what happened: Everyone dug in. The result was a compromise that made nobody happy: cuts too modest for the hardliners, yet deep enough to jeopardize local services. And to plug the hole, local governments were given the option to raise income taxes. The complexity of this issue was apparent from the outset, and it should have been clear to any observer that doing nothing, or something like punting this to a summer study committee, would have been far better in the long run. But ultimately, the measure (the highest possible dollar amount of property tax cuts, this session) became the goal, and our leaders ended up passing something that no one is happy with. When the measure becomes the mission, we tend to make decisions that don't hold up over time. 'Smaller' government is a measure, not a goal All of which brings us back to the bigger question: What is the goal of state (and local) government? The core argument of the property tax cut hardliners is one that much of Indiana's political class seems to share, or at least publicly proclaim: that the goal of government is simply to be as small as possible. I saw this up close during the 2023 mental health funding debate. We had broad, bipartisan support for investing in our state's mental health system. During session, a legislative leader pulled me aside. He reiterated his support, but said he needed help avoiding the perception that this was just another 'big government' solution. Never mind that, since the days of English common law, caring for people with mental illness has been a core function of government. Never mind that failure to invest in mental health just shifts the cost to other government-funded systems like jails and emergency rooms. Never mind that, without government, there is no one else to pick up the slack. This legislator understood all this, but he was feeling pressure, not about whether the policy was right, but about whether it looked like too much government. Hicks: Braun cut taxes for businesses, but most Hoosiers will pay more We figured out a path forward, but the conversation stuck with me. Why is government such a loaded word? Why is it an insult instead of a neutral tool we can choose to use (or not use) depending on the problem? Why is the size of government any kind of goal at all, especially at the state and local level, which tend to be much more responsive to constituent needs and feedback than the federal behemoth? At the end of the day, government size and spending is a measure, and an important one, but it is not the goal. Instead, the goal should be whatever contributes to the best conditions for thriving families and communities. Sometimes that means getting the government out of the way, like removing regulatory barriers to innovation. Sometimes it means making government work better, like Mitch Daniels' legendary BMV turnaround. And, yes, sometimes it means investing more in the kinds of services and infrastructure that improve lives and expand opportunity. The irony is that almost every serious legislator and government official in Indiana knows this, but they are often paralyzed by the outsized influence of a small but loud chorus of folks who treat any additional investment as a betrayal. Ultimately, though, if we want better outcomes from our government, our leaders need space to act on what most of them already understand: that good governance (at any size) is about advancing the common good. Favorable Thriving Conditions.
Yahoo
12-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Comfort in History
From the G-File on The Dispatch Greetings from Virgin Gorda—which, by the way, means corpulent incel. Maybe it's all the rum drinks, but I find myself a bit more relaxed about the drama in Washington than you might expect. Part of it is my personality, I think. I'm one of those people who tends to calm down when people around me start to freak out. But I'm also trying to follow my American Enterprise Institute colleague Yuval Levin's lead these days. I've mentioned it a couple times, but he was recently on the Ezra Klein Show and was, as is typical, unflappable and even-keeled about the spectacle in D.C. This seemed to perturb Klein a bit. 'As they're trying to really change the system of government here, what would really frighten you?' he asked. 'Make you think this is not just the normal surrealism of an early administration but actually the emergence of something we've seen in other countries?' Yuval replied: It's a very important question. My biggest fear is the administration deciding not to abide by court orders. What they're doing so far is legitimate. Whether you agree with it or not, it's operating within the system. A court said no, and they pulled it back. And they're going to try again, and they'll push and pull. That's how our system works. It's fine that it makes people uneasy. And a lot of what they're pushing makes people uneasy for substantive ideological reasons. That's how politics works. But when the boundaries of the system itself are under threat, it's important to think in constitutional terms. It's not about the politics, but it's about the constitutional structure that keeps things in order. Yes, Yuval recently came out with a great book called American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again, but I don't think he's just trying to move product. I mean, if he'd come out with a book on the Kama Sutra, I don't think he would have told Klein, 'I think in moments of political crisis, it's important to consult an ancient Indian sex manual.' Regardless, I agree with Yuval's answer. The Constitution anticipates political actors pressing their advantage as far as they can, just as it anticipates other political actors pushing back. If they don't push back, then politicians will exceed their authority as much as they can. The good news is that the Constitution is set up to make the pushback easier than the assault. But that doesn't mean the pushback always succeeds. And, sometimes, the correction comes much later than we'd like. The Supreme Court slapped down Harry Truman for exceeding his legal authority in seizing the nation's steel mills pretty quickly, but it took longer to overrule the Roosevelt administration's internment of Japanese Americans. The Supreme Court didn't fully reject the policy as unconstitutional until 2018 in, ironically, Trump vs. Hawaii. Chief Justice Roberts declared, 'Korematsu was gravely wrong the day it was decided, has been overruled in the court of history, and—to be clear—'has no place in law under the Constitution.'' A lot of people have goldfish-like memories these days, but I find comfort in looking at history. Among the many problems with historical ignorance is that it can foster panic and hysteria because people are constantly surprised by things that are not nearly as new or as unprecedented as they think. This gives people permission to overreact. I know it's uncool to talk about norms, but the cycle of norm-violations is often fueled by ignorance. If you think everything you don't like is unprecedented—if you greet every outrage with 'This has never happened before!'—then you will be open to unprecedented responses. I think Yuval is right to be worried about the White House refusing to abide by court decisions. I do not think we're there yet, but I also think there's good reason to believe that the Trump administration is laying the rhetorical and political groundwork for just such a crisis. Or at least it's testing the waters to see how the public, and the president's own party will respond. Elon Musk is prattling about a 'judicial coup' and demanding a judge be impeached over a ruling he doesn't like. Russell Vought, just confirmed as OMB director, has an exceedingly robust view of executive authority. And then there's J.D. Vance. 'If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,' he tweeted over the weekend. 'If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.' Now, it's important to note this is mostly what legal experts would call 'wrong.' Judges tell the military what they can and can't do all the time. The Supreme Court issued all sorts of rulings during the Iraq War limiting the powers of the military. (Remember all that stuff about enemy combatants, Guantánamo, etc? You'd think Vance, both a lawyer and veteran, would.) Judges also rule on the limits of prosecutorial discretion all the time. They have balancing tests, constitutional standards, tiers of scrutiny, and all sorts of stuff like that to determine where the lines of deference should be drawn. I mean, if you took a drink every time Sarah or David mentioned 'tiers of scrutiny' on their nifty little podcast, you'd need to go to rehab. Vance is right insofar as the courts cannot control the executive's legitimate power, but they do get to decide what is legitimate. This isn't just semantics. If the Trump administration started rounding up American citizens and putting them in camps without proper cause, the Supreme Court would—and certainly should—say 'You can't do that!' Hopefully, Congress would agree and refuse to fund the effort. The crisis comes when the president says, 'You're not the boss of me,' and does it anyway. Why that would be a real crisis is pretty simple. The Supreme Court doesn't have an army or an (adequate) police force to stop him—and neither does anybody else. The only thing that gives the Constitution any binding power is the consent of the American people in general, and the government itself, to be bound by it. A lot of people don't like hearing this, because it's scary to think that all that stands between us and a lawless, personalist autocracy is the civic self-restraint of Donald Trump and his political allies. But as Sarah Isgur noted on Advisory Opinions, 'The rule of law does not have its own force. It is a thing we've all agreed to do. So if you elect someone who then decides that we don't have the rule of law, it cannot police itself. It cannot create itself. It cannot enforce itself. But we're not there.' Yet. So, what should people do if Trump does refuse to defer to the Supreme Court? Obviously, I think he should be impeached and removed from office. And if Vance went along with a blatantly unconstitutional scheme, a scheme declared unconstitutional by a court brimming with six Republican appointees, half of whom were appointed by Trump, he should be thrown out, too. That's what the impeachment clause is for. I can think of scenarios where even many Republicans would join Democrats in an impeachment effort. But I can also think of scenarios where they wouldn't. Anyone with a lot of confidence in the civic mindedness of Congress, on either side of the aisle, hasn't been paying much attention. And this is where I think being history-minded has real value. If the worst-case scenarios come to pass, I'm all for massive, outraged-fueled, non-violent 'resistance.' But the resistance must have at its core a mission to restore and refurbish the guardrails established in the Constitution. It should be a constructive learning exercise, not an opportunity to respond to lawlessness with more lawlessness. If you're outraged by norm-breaking, the price for your righteous indignation must be a willingness to restore the norms, not use them as permission for ever-greater violations. Among the many reasons I was so appalled by Joe Biden's myriad norm violations is that they gave Republicans permission to commit even greater ones in the future, just as Trump's myriad norm violations in his first term made it easier for Biden to do what he did. This 'you did X so we can do 2X' dynamic is exhausting. The cycle of two wrongs making a right needs to end. Biden's preemptive pardons of his friends and family, for example, were outrageous on the merits. 'But what about Trump's pardons!?!' is not a refutation of that, it's a declaration of hypocrisy. Recognizing that any abuse of power by your team will, inevitably, make it easier for the other team to abuse power is how democracies fix themselves. In 1973, amid all the Watergate drama, Sen. Alan Cranston of California made an interesting admission: 'Those who tried to warn us back at the beginning of the New Deal of the dangers of one-man rule that lay ahead on the path we were taking toward strong, centralized government may not have been so wrong.' It's really annoying that such revelations dawn on people only when it's the other team going too far. America has slipped the bounds of constitutionality many times in the past. Andrew Jackson may or may not have actually said 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.' But that basically captures his attitude. The Republic survived. Woodrow Wilson was an affront to the Constitution on numerous fronts. The Supreme Court pushed back against Wilson on some fronts while he was in office and on others after he left office. But it also let many of his transgressions stand. The Republic survived. Then there's FDR. I'm one of those cranks who thinks FDR—a Wilson administration retread—ruled like an anti-constitutional autocrat. It didn't seem like it to many at the time—though he did not lack for critics who shared my opinion—because he had so much political capital. He won in back-to-back landslides that delivered massive majorities in Congress. When Congress is a rubber stamp, voters are desperate, and the press is fawning, it's really easy to act like an autocrat. In other words, when autocracy is popular no one wants to hear that autocracy is bad. Because people have a really annoying tendency to think anything they like must also be good and constitutional. I won't go down a lengthy rabbit hole on this, but I do keep thinking of something FDR's commerce secretary, Harry Hopkins, told New Deal activists in New York. 'I want to assure you,' he said, 'that we are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have a lawyer who will declare anything you want to do legal.' That pretty closely tracks the Trump administration's approach these days. More importantly, it's worth recalling that FDR was more aggressive in declaring war on the Supreme Court than any president since, Trump and Biden included. His court-packing scheme threatened to turn the Supreme Court into a rubber stamp, just like Congress, but it failed and dealt a serious blow to FDR's power and reputation at the time. His standing in the polls suffered, and that emboldened members of Congress to rediscover their backbones a bit. As H.W. Brands writes in Traitor to His Class: Heretofore Roosevelt had been able to count on popular support when Congress hesitated, and that popular support had typically caused Congress to fall in line. Now the dynamic worked in reverse: the popular disaffection with Roosevelt's court plan gave courage to those senators and representatives who opposed it. They stood firm and refused to reconsider. But FDR's brazen effort was not a total failure. FDR—norm-breaker he was—still managed to get reelected twice more, violating the tradition established by Washington of serving only two terms, and ultimately requiring Congress to amend the Constitution to restore the norm. Moreover, the court-packing threat almost certainly caused Justice Owen Roberts to switch his position on the constitutionality of the minimum wage, hence the famous phrase, 'The switch in time that saved nine.' For generations, conservatives who complained about the excesses of Wilson or FDR were treated like reactionaries, antediluvian cranks, and acolytes of the 'Constitution in Exile.' I want to grab those critics by the lapel and ask, 'Now do you get it?' Indeed, I can all too easily dispel my laid-back attitude by dwelling on the hypocrisy and cynicism of Trump enablers—who have spent decades talking about how much they love the Constitution and who decried the tyranny or lawlessness of Democratic presidents when they exceeded their authority—who are now falling over themselves to celebrate Trump's embrace of arbitrary power. I can also harsh my mellow by contemplating all of the progressives who cheered Obama and Biden's pen-and-phone unilateralism, and decried constitutional restraints as undemocratic relics, suddenly fretting over the threat to constitutional checks and balances. The point of all this is that the fight for the rule of law is never permanently lost, so long as people are willing to learn from their mistakes, get up off the floor, and fight for its restoration. Again, I don't want to get ahead of things. We are not there yet, and we may never get there. Trump could conclude that a constitutional squeeze wouldn't be worth the juice. A brazen defiance of the Supreme Court could, and I think would, have profound political costs for him. Markets would not like it, and neither would many Republican officials, who I suspect would balk at the potential blowback from even Republican voters who didn't think they were voting for this. But on the other hand, I do want to get ahead of things. If the worst does come to pass, it wouldn't be the 'end of democracy' or 'end of the rule of law.' After all, there's always a lot of ruin in a nation. It would be another opportunity for America to exercise its capacity for self-correction. Defeatism is the opposite side of the coin of triumphalism. As T.S. Eliot said, 'There is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause.' When it comes to freedom, democracy, republicanism, the rule of law, and all such things, all victories are temporary, as are all defeats. What is permanent is the necessary struggle to make the victories last as long as possible, and to make the defeats as small and as short-lived as you can.
Vox
11-02-2025
- Business
- Vox
Will Trump really defy the courts?
Donald Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to transform federal spending and the federal workforce is crashing up against judges who've temporarily blocked several of their policies. Judges have frozen Trump's 'spending freeze' orders, the Musk team's effort to access government payment systems, Musk's 'fork in the road' offer for federal employees to resign, and an attempt to put most of USAID's staff on administrative leave. Which has raised the question: Will the administration comply with these judges' orders, or try to defy them? Vice President JD Vance seemed to hint at the possibility of open defiance in an X post on Sunday. 'If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,' Vance wrote. 'If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.' But traditionally, in the American system, what counts as the 'executive's legitimate power' has been determined by the judiciary. Blatantly defying a court order would be a monumental step, one that even many conservatives would find alarming. Yet there are elements in right-wing circles — Vance included — who have previously advocated doing just that. And if they win out, we'll be embroiled in a very serious constitutional crisis. Despite Vance's rhetoric, the Trump administration has not yet openly rejected any judicial order so far. In court filings, they've claimed to be complying with all of them. But there are questions about whether they actually are. One judge ruled Monday that the administration had failed to comply with his order unfreezing the spending freeze. And USAID employees are claiming in a court filing that they haven't been reinstated in their jobs. In the near term, slipperiness like this — rather than explicit, unambiguous defiance of court authority — may be the way the Trump administration will try to circumvent court orders they dislike. That way, they can claim they're complying with the letter of a ruling, while not exactly following the spirit of it. Then, if the judge complains, they could try something similar again — or try to go above the judge's head with an appeal, eventually to a Supreme Court that may be friendlier. The American Enterprise Institute's Yuval Levin is the epitome of the reasonable, thoughtful conservative. He's a recurring guest on the Ezra Klein Show , and when he appeared last week, his takes on the Trump administration so far were characteristically calm and measured, viewing it mainly as politics as usual rather than something to panic about. So Klein asked Levin: What would have to happen to make him worry that Trump truly was headed in a dangerous and unprecedented direction? 'What would really frighten you?' 'My biggest fear is the administration deciding not to abide by court orders,' Levin said. 'If the administration openly defies a court order, then I think we are in a different situation.' A willing, voluntary respect for the rule of law holds the constitutional system together. Indeed, with congressional Republicans ill-inclined to criticize or counter Trump, the courts may be the most important check on presidential power remaining. So long as the courts rule on whether the Trump administration's policies are illegal — and so long as the administration respects their rulings, even negative ones — the rule of law still exists. So if you don't like a judge's ruling, what you should do is appeal. And if you appeal all the way up to the Supreme Court, and you don't like their ruling either, well, you've got to accept it anyway. Many traditional conservatives share this point of view — not least because the current Supreme Court majority is quite conservative and will likely be able to restrain Democratic presidents for many years to come. But some thinkers on what's known as the New Right have in recent years argued that major changes to the American system of government are necessary — and that, if the courts get in the way, they should be ignored. The vice president of the United States has, in the past, voiced agreement with such views. In 2021, then-US Senate candidate Vance said that Trump, if restored to office, should fire 'every single midlevel bureaucrat' and 'civil servant' — 'and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'' 'We are in a late Republican period,' Vance elaborated (referring to the Roman Republic). 'We're going to have to get pretty wild, and pretty far out there, and go in directions that a lot of conservatives right now are uncomfortable with.' Ultimately, this amounts to a belief that the president should seize more power and ignore legal and procedural obstacles in his way, including judicial rulings. It's a dangerous road to go down, because — as Vance's apocryphal Jackson quote indicates — judges don't actually have power to force the administration into compliance. A willing, voluntary respect for the rule of law holds the constitutional system together. So does the Trump administration actually intend to make good on Vance's redpilled fantasies? In the second Trump administration's first three weeks, officials have accepted several adverse court rulings — such as one blocking Trump's attempt to roll back birthright citizenship — in the ordinary fashion. That is, they've said they're abiding by the ruling, even though they disagree with it, and promising to appeal. But one particular judicial order made them irate. This was a Saturday morning decision by New York District Judge Paul Engelmayer, dealing with the Musk team's newfound control of the Treasury Department systems that disperse government salaries, payments, and grants. Per Engelmayer's order, only properly cleared civil servants were permitted to have access to these payment systems — Musk's DOGE team had to stay out. Now, this order was only set to be in effect for a few days; this lawsuit was being handed off to another judge, who will hold a hearing on Friday. The hold was a temporary measure to let this next judge hear the case and decide what to do going forward. But many on the right reacted to it with fury, calling it overbroad. Musk called the judge corrupt and demanded his impeachment. And on Sunday, Vance posted his assertion that 'judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.' Given Vance's past comment that Trump should defy judicial orders, many interpreted this as a signal that the constitutional crisis had arrived — that the Trump administration was gearing up to defy a court order. Later that night, however, the administration's lawyers sounded a more measured tone in a court filing. While criticizing Engelmayer's ruling and asking it to be revoked or modified, they stressed that they 'are in compliance with it' — as they have in other suits where their policies have been frozen by judges too. But in some of those cases, questions have arisen about just how compliant the Trump team has been. Chief Judge John McConnell, of the US District Court in Rhode Island, has been weighing a challenge to Trump's 'spending freeze,' and issued a temporary halt on that policy. However, in a ruling Monday, McConnell wrote that the administration had 'continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated funds.' He ordered them to 'immediately restore frozen funding' and 'end any federal funding pause.' Soon, we will see how the Trump administration responds to that order. But so far, the administration has not gone so far as blatantly and unambiguously defying a court order. They have not told a judge: 'We simply refuse to do what you say.' They are still at least acting like they're playing by the courts' rules. We'll see how long that keeps up.
