Federal judges have issued President Donald Trump stinging legal rebukes in the early clashes over his blitz of executive orders, and two of his top advisers have responded by suggesting that his administration defy the courts and move forward with its agenda.
There’s no indication that Trump has adopted such a strategy, although a U.S. judge in Rhode Island ruled Monday that the administration has been violating a court order to disburse billions of dollars in already-approved grant funding and hinted at possible penalties.
But the combative rhetoric by Vice President JD Vance and top adviser Elon Musk has troubled legal experts,who said there is no modern precedent for a president to ignore or defy court orders.
Vance wrote on X on Sunday that it would be illegal for a judge to tell a general how to conduct a military operation or for a jurist to dictate how the attorney general used his discretion as a prosecutor. “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” he wrote.
The vice president also shared a post by a Harvard University professor who argued that “judicial interference with legitimate acts of state” is a violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers. Vance has made similar comments in the past, including on a 2021 podcast where he said he would urge the president to defy a court order preventing him from firing federal workers. On Monday, Vance continued to repost messages from other users embracing the theme.
Musk, who owns X and is leading the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal government, echoed Vance’s comments in his ownpostings on the social media platform. He called for impeaching a judge who last weektemporarily blocked his associates from accessing sensitive data about Americans that iskept in a Treasury Department database. Musk also shared the post of another X user who calledfor Trump to defy judges.
“It is exceptionally myopic, hypocritical and dangerous,” Georgetown University law professor Steve Vladeck said of the calls by Trump officials to defy court orders. “In our system, the way you object to a legal ruling you find objectionable is to appeal.”..