- Federal courts have already trimmed Donald Trump and Elon Musk's sails.
- But judges have surprisingly little recourse if Trump and Musk defy their rulings.
- If anyone is punished for such defiance, it likely won't be the president.
Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk are stepping up the Trump administration's attacks on federal judges who have halted some of the White House's most ambitious actions.
Judges keep ruling against President Trump, but they have no real power to enforce their decisions.
"The president has much more force at his disposal than do the courts," Cornell Law School professor Michael Dorf told Business Insider.
Vance questioned whether the judiciary was crossing the line not long after US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer temporarily blocked Musk's Department of Government Efficiency employees from blocking sensitive Treasury Department systems.
"Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," Vance wrote on X.
Musk went even further, arguing for the removal of the federal judge in question.
"A corrupt judge protecting corruption," Musk wrote on X.
"He needs to be impeached NOW! "
A separate judge, US District Judge John J. McConnell, said on Monday that the White House violated his previous order to "immediately restore frozen funding," baring the administration's spending freeze.
Constitutional law experts warn that if a president chose to defy court orders, judges would have limited options. The consequences would likely fall on lower-level officials, not the president himself, said Michael J. Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
"At the very least, you would have a possible contempt citation directed at a particular official who has refused to comply with a court order," Gerhardt told BI, "If they indicate they are defying it because of his order, then the court is going to include the president in the citation of contempt."
But enforcing even that would fall to the Justice Department — which answers to Trump.
Gerhardt pointed to recent examples of Trump testing limits: The president fired inspectors general without providing Congress the legally required notification and list of reasons for dismissal.
Some in Trump's orbit have previously said the president should actively confront the judiciary. Long before he was elected last November, Vance argued that Trump should forge ahead with bold actions and dare federal judges who try to stand in his way.
"I think that what Trump should, like, if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state," Vance said in 2021 on a podcast. "Replace them with our people. And when the courts — because you will get taken to court — and when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say, 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.'" (Many historians believe Andrew Jackson likely never said that.)
Presidents have expressed their displeasure with court rulings, but fundamentally ignoring a federal judge is another matter.
Michel Paradis, who teaches constitutional law at Columbia Law School, said that judges are likely to look unfavorably on any deliberate actions to defy their rulings.
"To the extent the administration's actions are viewed as improvisational, erratic, or deliberately pushing previously settled boundaries in a haphazard way, that would make any normal judge — regardless of personal politics — skeptical," Paradis told BI.
Behind the apparent disorder, Gerhardt sees a deliberate strategy.
"Part of Trump's strategy is to manifest that defiance in many ways, so it becomes very difficult to keep track of all of them," he said, "We're not just talking about one thing, it's many things. And I think one reason why there are many things is because it overwhelms the system."