Summary
Legal experts warn of a looming constitutional crisis after JD Vance suggested judges lack authority over Trump’s “legitimate power.”
His remarks follow a federal judge’s ruling blocking Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data.
Musk also called for the judge’s impeachment, fueling concerns the administration may ignore court orders.
Scholars argue this undermines judicial authority and could trigger a systemic breakdown, but with Republicans controlling Congress, impeachment as a remedy appears unlikely.
The congress and the Courts don’t matter. They don’t have the actual physical power to enforce anything. The ones who enforce are the police and the army. That is the difference between constitutional states of laws and authoritarian regimes. Which system do the people with guns protect. And the people with guns receive their orders from the President and lower hierarchies of the executive branch.
So either the people with guns obey their superiors and abolish the division of power, or they disobey their direct orders and remove the authoritarian upstarts from power. If they choose to enact an authoritarian regime instead of removing the authoritarians from power, the only way out is resistance. Resistance against the people giving the orders and resistance against the people enforcing the orders.
While police are generally ‘executive’ they are often supposed to take orders directly from the courts. Most warrants begin with phrasing in this manner: “[any] peace officer shall arrest…” Some states also allow judges to directly order peace officers to make arrests for offense committed in the judge’s presence without a warrant being drawn up first. Even if their boss is telling them to not do it, they should ignore the unlawful orders and get along with the handcuffing, but it won’t ever happen.
Just like how trump was soft-handed in every courtroom for the last four years, I can’t imagine any judge right now ordering his appearance at court or an arrest. Anyone with half a brain knows that he would ignore it, and it would go to the supreme court and they would rubber stamp whatever he had done as being not subject to the law because he was ‘acting in the presidential capacity.’