Trump vs Judiciary: Headed for a showdown

TOI Correspondent from Washington: US President and MAGA supremo Donald Trump is headed for an epic showdown with the judiciary after several judges in Democratic-governed states struck down executive moves on issues ranging from birthright citizenship, to freezing government spending, to DOGE teams access to sensitive Treasury Department systems.

Judges from WashingtonDC, New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island and other Democratic-leaning areas who are ruling against the Trump orders are being excoriated as "Obama judges" by the President's supporters amid a growing political schism with red Republican strongholds in Middle America.

Vice President JD Vance jumped into the row on Monday arguing that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” even as Musk called for judges to be impeached. On Monday alone, five different federal judges ruled against Trump actions on a federal grants freeze, funding for NIH, and birthright citizenship among other issues.

"Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government. Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!" Trump said in a direct attack on the lower judiciary.

Trump also appeared to give the schism a geographic twist by singling out New York and California, the biggest Democratic redoubts for withering criticism on social media.

"New York is the most corrupt State in the Union. That is why so many businesses and people are fleeing. We need great Judges and Politicians to help fix New York, and to stop the kind of Lawfare that was launched against me," he said in a post, accusing "a corrupt and highly conflicted Judge" of "criminally attack me for political purposes."

He also mocked California for counting votes on the 2024 Presidential Election till recently, weeks after the elections, while accusing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) of "spending tens of millions of dollars in Democrat areas," while disobeying orders, and leaving the people of North Carolina (a Republican state which faced floods) high and dry."

MAGA principals are now urging Trump to defy the judicial rulings from the Democratic-run states, with VP Vance leading the charge against the judiciary, even as some of the rulings are expected to be bumped up to the Supreme Court stacked with Trump nominees, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority.

In a post to X, Vance wrote that if a judge "tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal...If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal."