Federal judges have temporarily blocked nearly two dozen actions of President Donald Trump’s administration, prompting some allies in the White House and Congress to suggest that he should ignore court orders or that those judges should be impeached.
Judges have found that the administration failed to comply with restraining orders in at least two cases. The most dramatic example came this week, when a federal judge in D.C. gave the Trump administration until 11:59 p.m. Wednesday to restart hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid. The Trump administration appealed the ruling, saying it could not meet the deadline.
“I don’t know why I can’t get a straight answer from you,” U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali, who first ordered officials to release the USAID money nearly two weeks ago, told a Justice Department lawyer on Tuesday. “We are now 12 days in. You can’t answer me whether any of the funds … covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?”
Here’s what might happen if the Trump administration openly defies a court order.
How would it play out?
David D. Cole, a Georgetown University law professor and former national legal director of the ACLU, said the plaintiffs in a lawsuit against the Trump administration could appeal to a judge to enforce any order that they think Trump is defying.
If Trump were to flout a court order, he and other experts said, it would plunge the nation into dangerous territory by rupturing the checks and balances between the three branches of government laid out by the Constitution.
A judge who concludes the administration is not complying could hold the Trump administration in contempt of court. There are two types of contempt: civil, which is aimed at enforcing compliance with a court order, and criminal, which involves charges and prosecution and more serious potential penalties.
The judge would probably declare the official in charge of the agency that is being sued in civil contempt, or make that declaration for other officials responsible for carrying out the court order, Cole said.
The judge could then begin levying fines to try to enforce compliance, or even jail the person if defiance continues.
Justin Levitt, a constitutional scholar at Loyola Law School, said contempt citations are for personal behavior. That means that even though a person is acting in their official government capacity, the court may issue monetary sanctions against them as individuals, although the fines would probably be paid by the department.
A judge could also refer the official to the Justice Department to be prosecuted for criminal contempt.
How often does this happen?
U.S. officials – including Trump – have largely followed court orders over the course of American history. Trump often railed against judges who ruled against him in his first term, and who presided over his criminal cases between his two terms, but he ultimately complied with their directives.
That hasn’t always been the case, however. Southern states refused to integrate their schools after the Supreme Court outlawed segregation in education in Brown v. Board of Education, opposition that came to be known as “massive resistance.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower did not support the Brown v. Board decison, but he ultimately sent in troops to enforce the it.
In 1832, the Supreme Court ruled that Native American tribes were sovereign nations. President Andrew Jackson famously expressed opposition to that ruling, and is credited with a likely apocryphal quote about the then-chief justice: “John Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it.” Later, Jackson forcefully removed Cherokee from Georgia in an infamous relocation that became known as the “Trail of Tears.”
Can a judge really force a Trump official to go to jail?
Legal experts said there is a major flaw in the system – the judicial branch must rely on the executive branch to enforce its rulings. Federal judges use U.S. marshals, for example, to apprehend anyone ordered to jail. Justice Department prosecutors are the ones who decide whether to bring cases anyone referred for criminal contempt charges.
And it remains to be seen whether the Trump administration would jail or prosecute one of its own officials.
Trump could also pardon anyone facing a criminal contempt charge or conviction.
“The Supreme Court, as Alexander Hamilton famously said in the Federalist Papers, has neither purse nor sword,” said Jeffrey Rosen, president and chief executive of the National Constitution Center. That means if the president were to defy the high court, the justices “would be powerless to enforce” their ruling.
To illustrate his point, Rosen pointed to Eisenhower.
Rosen said the Supreme Court justices were so afraid the president would balk at their 1958 decision forcing the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in Arkansas that they signed the decision by hand on the first page “to show they meant it.”
Could there be other fallout for Trump?
Cole said refusing to comply with a ruling might be a “bridge too far even for Trump” and would bring significant blowback from the public. That would especially be true if such an order were challenged and eventually upheld by the highest court in the land.
“Trump has crossed many red lines that no one else would cross and violated many basic norms of our constitutional governance, but … I think it would be political suicide if he did,” Cole said.
Cole said courts having the final say over interpretation of the law is so deeply rooted in the country’s traditions that violating that principle could “spark massive protests.” He pointed to the episode in Israel when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tried to weaken the independence of the nation’s high court. The move drew fierce resistance in the streets that disrupted life in the country.
Could Trump be impeached for defying a court order?
Congress, the third branch of federal government, could also step in and threaten to impeach Trump if his administration refused to comply with a court order. Or lawmakers could strip the executive branch of funding in retaliation.
But so far the Republican-led majorities in the House and Senate have been reluctant to cross Trump.
When asked about the possibility of Trump defying the judiciary, many Republicans on Capitol Hill said they don’t want to see that happen, but they also echoed claims that activist judges are overstepping by blocking Trump’s actions while litigation over their legality continues.
“I think the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out,” House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) told reporters recently.
At a Wednesday confirmation hearing for Justice Department nominees, several Democrats and one Republican stressed the importance of complying. “Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court – ever,” said Sen. John Kennedy (R-Louisiana).
What have Trump officials said about defying court orders?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said recently that efforts to block Trump’s moves to dismantle segments of the federal government constitute a constitutional crisis. “Liberal judges,” she said, are abusing “the rule of law” and attempting “to thwart the will of the people” by ruling against the administration.
“The real constitutional crisis is taking place within our judicial branch, where district court judges and liberal districts across the country are abusing their power to unilaterally block President Trump’s basic executive authority,” Leavitt told reporters.
Both Vice President JD Vance and Trump aide Elon Musk have appeared to suggest that judicial orders don’t have to be followed.
JD Vance posted on social media that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Musk wrote on X that the “only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges.”
“If ANY judge ANYWHERE can block EVERY Presidential order EVERYWHERE,we do NOT have democracy, we have TYRANNY of the JUDICIARY,” Musk wrote in another post.
Will Trump actually defy the order?
It’s impossible to say, of course. But some think the concerns are overblown.
Asked about the possibility, Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule pointed to a Substack commentary he wrote that said much of the reaction to Vance’s social media post was “alarmist.”
He said he didn’t think Vance was calling for the administration to defy legal orders. Instead, he was recognizing what conservatives see as long-standing legal limits on the ability of courts to review executive action.
“The much more straightforward and less hysterical reading is that those comments referred to ordinary legal doctrines of justiciability, reviewability, standing, and the so-called ‘political question doctrine,’ which are themselves legal principles that courts apply to restrain their own jurisdiction to review executive action,’” Vermeule wrote.