The Trump administration is still prohibiting National Institutes of Health (NIH) staff from issuing virtually all grant funding, an NIH official tells Popular Information. The ongoing funding freeze is also reflected in internal correspondence reviewed by Popular Information and was reiterated to staff in a meeting on Monday. The funding freeze at NIH violates two federal court injunctions, two legal experts said.
The funding freeze at NIH puts all of the research the agency funds at risk. As the primary funder of biomedical research in the United States, NIH-funded research includes everything from cancer treatments to heart disease prevention to stroke interventions.
Any official that is disobeying a lawful order from a judge is in contempt, should be charged as such, and put in jail if they don’t obey the lawful order.
If that doesn’t happen, then the people tasked with implementing the judge’s lawful orders (including contempt findings and sentences) are themselves in contempt.
This cycle should repeat until the right people start going to jail for contempt, or they start following those lawful orders.
If judges’ orders can be ignored with no consequence, we’re done as a country.
Judges have zero recourse to enforce judgements against the executive branch. All previous executives who have obeyed an order given by a judge have obeyed it voluntarily. The only recourse would be for congress to impeach and convict the president, which of course will not happen. It’s tempting to call this an oversight by the Founders, but it seems to me that this is by design. As long as there is not a congress that will convict the president, the courts cannot truly tell the president what to do.
I agree with much of what you say, but I was confused because the judge blocking the executive order isn’t the same as trying to make the administration do a thing; it’s more like telling the people at the NIH “ignore what that guy just said, business as usual (for now, at least)”. If that’s the case, I’m unclear on why things are still blocked up at the NIH. Because of this, I took the radical step of reading the linked article.
In many ways, it didn’t help; I suppose it makes sense that one of the harms of someone willfully breaking the rules is that it becomes harder to discern what those rules actually are (were?). However, one of the lawyers quoted in the article suggests that the NIH officials who are currently carrying out the blocked order may be in contempt of court. This makes sense to me, based on the understanding I outlined above. But wait, there’s more.
After the block continued to be de facto in place despite being blocked de jure, the judge issued another ruling to try to force the Trump administration to rescind the order. This is concerning because as you highlight, this Judge has no recourse to enforce this judgement. Whereas before, the blocking of the order was the Judge speaking to the NIH officials, those top officials have seemingly gone “no, we’re not listening to you, we’re listening to him”. As I have said, they may be in contempt of court by doing this, but that’s not relevant when we’re looking at urgently ensuring that years of research isn’t ruined by this. By issuing a new ruling to try to force Trump to rescind the order, the judge has been forced to step outside of normal procedure in a way where they’re doomed to fail; it’s fairly obvious that Trump will go “no, make me”, and then fuck knows what the judge is going to do.
I think the judge knows this too, but what the fuck can they do (in their role as a judge) in this situation? Oh man, it’s so fucked.
I mean, I was taught that this was specifically an executive check on judicial power in school 25 something years ago.
But again that sort of implies that it “would only be used for good” by an executive against an out of control supreme court. It didn’t really account for a fascist just telling the courts to go fuck themselves just because.
I would argue there’s a Constitutional duty for all sworn officers to be willing to impose a judge’s order if it’s lawful/constitutional (if ordered). That’s how warrants and seizure orders work, for example.
The question I’m afraid to see tested is what if any judge tells an officer to do one thing and the president tells her to do something else?
Sounds like the founders were slave owning pieces of shit!
That’s what they campaigned on, dictator on day 1. And if we don’t start seeing judicial consequences for these criminals soon, I hope some brave hero will enforce extrajudicial consequences for them.
No no. It’s a presidential act so he’s immune. Thanks supreme Court!
Only applies to the presidency and only if the courts remain a legitimate institution in the US, a fact that is increasingly in question.
But also, his goons are completely vulnerable either way and there is little the president can do with his own hands.
They all hope for/assume/were promised full pardons.
Pardons would only help with criminal contempt charges. In this case, the judge would probably be applying civil contempt to compel compliance with the court order. Since they wouldn’t be held on a criminal charge, pardoning the crime wouldn’t get them released.
And have historically gotten them too.
True but it at least requires them to go through that process and can still inconvenience and intimidate people. Trump is capricious and unpredictable and there may be uncertainty as to whether such pardons will be granted, and even if they are, people could be arrested in the meantime.
If there is a way to nail them with state charges then this would get around this although I would assume most of these activities primarily violate federal law and take place in the District which does not have the independence of a state, unfortunately.
I believe there can’t be state charges in this because that would imply a state court ordering a federal agency to do something which i believe is more or less impossible due to the Supremacy Clause.
But the capricious nature of Deputy Assistant President Trump is a real danger to these people, especially if whatever illegal thing they’re doing for him gets big bad publicity and could make him unpopular.
Federal officials can still be subject to state charges if they break state law. It’s not a matter of ordering a federal agency to do anything, so the supremacy clause should not be relevant here. The question is what state laws could they be breaking? There may not be any.
Defying court orders is not part of the presidential duties.
Yeah, but the courts explicitly can’t consider the president’s motive, so if he does it while president claiming it’s necessary for the United States, he’s free to go. It’s why he got completely let off for the hush money stuff. That had nothing to do with presidential duties.
Says you
Official act.
If Congress doesn’t say it’s okay, it’s not official.
Yeah, but congress would then have to impeach him, the courts can’t touch him.