Constitutional crisis or no? Fears of Trump overreach abound as cases proceed in court

A man stands next to a man seated at a desk.

Feb. 12, 2025 3 AM PT

Share via
- Email
- Facebook
- X
- LinkedIn
- Threads
- Reddit
- WhatsApp

President Trump and his new administration have been hauled into court by states, advocacy groups and others over his executive orders and other administrative actions in recent weeks.
Trump officials, including Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk, have expressed disdain for court rulings not in their favor.
Critics of the president have raised concerns about a looming constitutional crisis if his administration does not follow court orders, but others say the nation isn’t there yet.

WASHINGTON — A week after winning a court order requiring the Trump administration to unfreeze billions of dollars in federal funding, California and other states were back in court Friday to ask the judge to intervene once more, arguing the administration hadn’t complied with the order.

Although it was “imaginable” that thawing the freeze would take some time, there was “no world” in which the administration could be seen as complying with the court’s order, given the amount of funding that still appeared frozen a week later, the states argued.

The Trump administration, in response, said that wasn’t true. It said that federal agencies had “worked diligently to assure compliance,” and that no additional court enforcement was necessary as it appealed the judge’s order.

The dispute was one of many playing out in federal courts across the country in recent days as states, nonprofits, schools, doctors, unions, federal employees, immigrants, individual citizens and others have rushed to challenge a wave of unilateral and legally dubious actions by the Trump administration to reshape the federal government.

It was also front and center in a growing debate around the power of the federal courts to rein in the president if and when he violates the law — particularly given that the Republicans who control Congress have shown little appetite for constraining him, and the Supreme Court issued a stunning decision last year finding he cannot be held criminally accountable for official acts while in office.

As the administration’s failure to comply with the funding order percolated outward into the political sphere, Democrats and other critics began raising alarms about the administration bucking court edicts. When Vice President JD Vance signaled on Sunday that may indeed be the intent — by writing on the social media platform X that judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power” — some of those same critics began declaring, among other things, that the nation was in a constitutional crisis.

“This isn’t hyperbole to say that we are staring the death of democracy in the eyes right now,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) said Monday. “The centerpiece of our democracy is that we observe court rulings.”

Some attorneys general for the states that have sued the administration — both in the funding case and others — agreed.

“There’s a lot of talk now: Are we in a constitutional crisis?” New Jersey Atty. Gen. Matthew Platkin said during a meeting of Democratic attorneys general in Los Angeles on Tuesday. “In my view, we’re in one. I’m going to wave a flag and say, ‘It’s started.’”

Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes said that she believes “what we are seeing today is an ongoing coup against American democracy,” and that the nation is “on the brink of a dictatorship” and “has never been in a more dangerous position.”

Others, however, have been more circumspect — including California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who, when asked Tuesday if the nation was in a constitutional crisis, said, “Not yet.”

Crossing that line would take a “blatant, egregious failure to comply with a clear court order,” which he said he hadn’t seen just yet.

Asked whether Vance’s statements foreshadowed such a moment, Bonta said Trump administration officials such as Vance were “socializing” the idea that presidents shouldn’t follow court orders — an effort to make it “sellable,” which he said was dangerous.

“I’m not naive about that at all,” he said. “But it has not yet come to pass.”

Several scholars agreed. They said the legal moment is indeed fraught, with Trump clearly trying to replace the Constitution’s system of checks and balances with an all-powerful executive branch. But the nation still faces — and hasn’t yet fallen over — the precipice between troubled waters and full-on crisis, they said.

Adam Winkler, a UCLA law professor, said we “seem to be on the precipice of a constitutional transformation,” but it was too early to tell whether Trump will succeed in bending the other branches of government to his will.

Michael McConnell, a Stanford law professor and a former federal judge appointed by President George W. Bush, said he would not yet say the nation is in a constitutional crisis, despite the fact that Trump appears to have repeatedly broken the law.

“The sheer volume of controversial orders leaves everyone gasping. Some are lawful and some are not. I am pretty confident that the courts will strike down the unlawful ones,” he said. “Now, if the president decided to refuse to comply with direct court orders, we might well face a crisis.”

David Cole, a Georgetown law professor and former ACLU legal director, said Trump’s first weeks have shown “the dangers of an unchecked president,” as he has “engaged in retaliatory firings, appointed loyalists with no experience to core positions, issued executive orders that violate core constitutional principles and ignored clear statutory requirements.”

However, he said he doubted the nation would fall fully into a constitutional crisis, with Trump in outright defiance of the courts.

“No president in history has defied the Supreme Court,” Cole said. “Were he to cross that line, the political fallout would be immense, and Trump would come out the loser.”

In addition to public outrage, defiance of the courts could rile the courts themselves — including the Supreme Court. In his year-end report, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. cited defiance of court orders as the ultimate threat to the rule of law.

“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system — sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power,” Roberts wrote. “Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.”

“These dangerous suggestions,” he said, “must be soundly rejected.”

The American Bar Assn. struck a similar note Monday when it called on elected officials and attorneys all across the country to speak up in defense of the rule of law.

“We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law,” ABA President William R. Bay wrote. “It is part of the oath we took when we became lawyers. Whatever your political party or your views, change must be made in the right way. Americans expect no less.”

How the administration will proceed from here is unclear, in part because its actions haven’t always mirrored its rhetoric.

At times, the administration has appeared not to be following court orders even as it has talked about doing so in court, as was the judge’s assessment in the funding freeze case. At other times, it has acted normally in court and seemingly followed orders there, even as its top officials have lambasted the courts and seemingly called for outright rebellion in remarks on X and elsewhere.

For all the tough talk, however, there has not been a showdown moment where Trump has stated his intention to defy the courts outright. And Trump administration lawyers have been signaling just the opposite in court filings — which hold a lot more weight than social media posts.

Trump himself has suggested that court rulings hold sway.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. agreed with the states in the funding freeze case, finding that the evidence they presented suggested the administration “continued to improperly freeze federal funds” in some instances and “refused to resume disbursement” in others, in violation of his “clear and unambiguous” order.

On Tuesday, Trump was in the Oval Office addressing questions about the wave of court challenges his administration has faced, as Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s appointee to ferret out federal waste and fraud as leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, stood by his side.

Trump said he always abides by court orders but would continue to appeal those he disagrees with — which he said have slowed down his agenda. Musk, who has repeatedly and openly questioned the legitimacy of the courts in recent days, said, “The people voted for major government reform and that’s what the people are going to get,” adding, “That’s what democracy is all about.”

About the same time, an appellate court denied a request by the Trump administration to stay McConnell’s orders as the litigation continues, delivering a legal blow to the president’s agenda — and adding to the pile of losses.

Trump in recent weeks has lost in court repeatedly. Federal judges have blocked his executive orders and other moves purporting to rewrite the Constitution by outlawing birthright citizenship; to block spending programs approved by Congress, to cut federal funding to hospitals, researchers and others; to layoff huge numbers of federal employees; and to give Musk and his DOGE deputies access to Treasury Department databases and other systems.

Scholars noted the rulings are proceeding in normal fashion, and the Trump administration has yet to turn away as if they don’t matter — at times to its benefit.

About 1 a.m. Saturday, U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer, without hearing from the administration, handed down a broad order in the DOGE case that said Trump and his administration may not “grant access to any Treasury Department” data system.

While “civil servants” working for the agency may have access to the records, the order denied access to “all political employees, special government employees and government employees from outside the Treasury Department” — clearly targeting Musk and his team.

Republicans and conservatives reacted angrily, arguing the order appeared to apply to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, which they said was absurd. Trump called the ruling a “disgrace,” Vance made his post about courts not being “allowed” to challenge the president, and Musk accused the judge of being “corrupt” and said he “needs to be impeached NOW.”

Lawyers for the administration, however, went back to court. They filed an emergency appeal, arguing that “basic democratic accountability requires that every agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the president.”

And on Tuesday, a different federal judge granted the appeal, ruling the order directed at Musk and DOGE did not apply to Bessent.

The administration, sticking to the legal process, had scored a win.

Savage reported from Washington, Rector from San Francisco and Sharp from Los Angeles.