By Canadian Press

White House says judges balking at Trump’s actions are provoking a ‘constitutional crisis’

Feb 12, 2025 | 12:03 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Wednesday that court rulings going against the Trump administration are coming from “judicial activists” on the bench whose decisions amount to a “constitutional crisis.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt made the comments as she pushed back against critics of Republican President Donald Trump’s expansive actions.

“We believe these judges are acting as judicial activists rather than honest arbiters of the law,” Leavitt said.

Trump’s moves in the first weeks of his second term to remark the federal government and fulfill his campaign promises have been met with more than 50 lawsuits. Judges have blocked, at least temporarily, his effort to end birthright citizenship, permit access to Treasury Department records by billionaire Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency and roll out a mass deferred resignation plan for federal workers.

“This is part of a larger, concerted effort by Democrat activists, and nothing more than the continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump,” Leavitt said, referring to Trump’s personal legal challenges, including the criminal trial in New York in which he was convicted last year.

Judicial oversight is a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the separation of powers.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest man who has been given far-reaching powers by Trump to shrink the federal government, has posted on social media that judges who rule against the administration should be impeached.

“A corrupt judge protecting corruption. He needs to be impeached NOW!” Musk wrote about the judge in the Treasury Department case. Vice President JD Vance said Sunday on X, “ 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. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

As court cases pile up, questions have arisen about whether Trump, pushing to expand the limits of presidential power, would comply with court rulings.

Trump on Tuesday said he would, but suggested he would consider some kind of response to the judges and called their actions a “violation.”

“It seems hard to believe that a judge could say, ‘We don’t want you to do that.’ So maybe we have to look at the judges because that’s very serious, I think it’s a very serious violation,” Trump said.

Leavitt made clear that Trump’s team will also “seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions and ensure President Trump’s policies can be enacted,” she said.

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Price reported from New York.

Michelle L. Price And Zeke Miller, The Associated Press