<Vice President J.D. Vance signaled that President Donald Trump's administration is poised to ignore a judicial ruling, according to experts.

Raw Story reported on Saturday that legal analysts looking at Elon Musk's social media activity predicted that he would at least consider denying a major court order that limited his access to Treasury Department data.

The next day, Vance seemed to indicate that same plan, according to attorneys. The V.P. said in part, "Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power."

This led to the Co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, Elizabeth Goitein, saying, "The Trump administration seems to be gearing up to defy a court order, with JD Vance tweeting this morning: 'Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.'"

"The battle lines for our democracy have been drawn," she added. "As anyone who has had an introductory civics class knows, if a president disagrees with a court order, the remedy is to appeal. There’s a reason Trump & co. don’t like that option: they know their actions are illegal and many will be rejected even by Trump’s own SCOTUS justices."

In her conclusion, Goitein said, "Ultimately, SCOTUS will decide whether the administration’s actions reflect 'legitimate executive power.'"

"If the Trump team ignores the courts, any remaining doubt will be gone: they are trying to reverse the revolution that overthrew King George and gave birth to democracy," she added.

CNN anchor Jim Sciutto shared that commentary, and added, "Please pay attention to this."

Former Department of Justice white-collar crime prosecutor Ankush Khardori appeared on MSNBC on Sunday, where he was also asked about the Vance comment.

"This is disturbing," he said on the weekend show.

Editor Nathan J Robinson said, "They didn't teach us much law at Yale Law School but one thing I do remember is that actually when the executive branch violates the law, the judiciary is fully entitled (and obligated) to command the executive branch to behave legally.">

<Colombia recently rejected two U.S. military deportation flights, quickly drawing the wrath of President Donald Trump. In response, he declared an “emergency 25% tariff” on Colombian goods, citing national security concerns. The White House faced ridicule after a press release misspelled “Colombia” as “Columbia,” confusing the country with the university.

Critics, including former Trump campaign aide A.J. Delgado, pointed out the error, questioning the competence of the administration. DNC delegate Christopher Hale said, “White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who recently disclosed over $300,000 in unpaid campaign debts — including approximately $200,000 from illegal contributions — can’t spell Colombia.”

Delgado wrote, “Did a WHITE HOUSE PRESS RELEASE really misspell Colombia? I remember how much I had to proof read and correct BASIC mistakes in drafts by others on the 2016 Campaign but this is… wow.”

Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro stated that deported migrants must be treated with dignity, which led to the rejection of military flights. The Colombian government indicated it would use civilian planes for future deportations to ensure dignified treatment.

Trump wrote, “I was just informed that two repatriation flights from the United States, with a large number of Illegal Criminals, were not allowed to land in Colombia,” adding, “This order was given by Colombia’s Socialist President Gustavo Petro, who is already very unpopular amongst his people.”

In response to Colombia’s actions, Trump declared an “emergency 25% tariff” on all goods from Colombia, with the possibility of increasing it to 50%. The Trump administration’s sanctions included a travel ban and visa revocations for Colombian government officials and supporters.

Trump stated, “These measures are just the beginning. We will not allow the Colombian Government to violate its legal obligations with regard to the acceptance and return of the Criminals they forced into the United States!”

President Gustavo Petro said, “A migrant is not a criminal and must be treated with the dignity that a human being deserves. That is why I returned the U.S. military planes that were carrying Colombian migrants,” adding, “You don’t like our freedom, fine. I do not shake hands with white enslavers.”....>

Closing with this gem:

<....White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt stated, “Today’s events make clear to the world that America is respected again.”>

Um, yeah, airhead.

<[Event "8th Eastern Class Championships"] [Site "Woburn Mass"]
[Date "1999.03.06"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Friedel, Joshua E"]
[Black "Spycher, Bernard"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B33"]
[WhiteElo "2074"]
[BlackElo "2350"]

<George Conway predicted that Donald Trump would engage in a constitutional showdown that could spell the end of U.S. democracy.

Vice President J.D. Vance argued Sunday that federal courts “aren’t allowed” to limit the president's “legitimate power," after a judge temporarily blocked Elon Musk and other political appointees from accessing sensitive data and payment systems at the Treasury Department. Conway told MSNBC's "Morning Joe" the issue would likely force a constitutional clash.

"J.D. Vance is an embarrassment to the law school that I attended," Conway said. "But the fact of the matter is, he's telling us something that we should have already known, and last week I said it. They are not going to obey court orders, they have decided that they are going to push the boundaries on executive power by basically infringing on the Article 1 power of Congress, and they are violating statutory, they're violating the text of the Constitution in the birthright citizenship issue.

"They are violating the text of statutes by having DOGE run around and do all the things that they've been doing, the executive orders, there's no reason that this government that has decided not to obey the laws and the Constitution of the United States is going to obey a court order and, as you know, having practiced law there's really only one way that courts can enforce their orders when somebody is being contumacious and refusing to obey an order, and that's to send the U.S. Marshals out to take somebody in and to hold them in contempt or to otherwise enforce court orders."

"Well, who does the U.S. Marshals Service work for?" Conway added. "The U.S. Marshals Service is part of the United States Department of Justice. It reports to Donald J. Trump, and what's going to happen here, mark my words, is that at some point, they are going to basically tell the United States Marshals Service, do not enforce any of these orders, we will not obey them, and you are not to enforce them and, once that happens, I mean, I hope it doesn't happen, but I know in my heart that it will, our 236-year experiment in the federal rule of law, in democratic self-governance for the United States of America, in American constitutionalism, is essentially over."

Conway didn't see any institutional bulwark against Trump's abuse of the rule of law.

"The only recourse is to go out on the streets and march," Conway said. "That is the only recourse. The courts have no mechanism to enforce their orders other than through the United States Marshals Service, and that's through the Department of Justice, thus through the executive branch. The reason why we obey court orders is because the executive branch complies with court orders. If the executive branch does not comply with court orders and makes a point of saying that we will not comply with court orders, the rule of law, as far as the federal government is concerned, is over, and that is something we need to start focusing on and discussing, because that's where these people will go."

"There is no logical stopping point for them, and this is, you know, the only recourse will be for people to get out and say, we want the rule of law, we want a government that obeys the law, and that's going to require people to go out on the streets, because that is, there is no other alternative," he added.>

<[Event "8th Eastern Class Championships"] [Site "Woburn Mass"]
[Date "1999.03.07"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Mac Intyre, Paul"]
[Black "Spycher, Bernard"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B33"]
[WhiteElo "2322"]
[BlackElo "2350"]

<In 1803, when our constitutional democracy was still young, the Supreme Court established the principle of judicial review in Marbury v. Madison. That case forms the basis for judicial review, the court’s power to declare laws unconstitutional. The justices can, and every term do, review and strike down laws, executive actions and administrative actions that violate the Constitution. They are the final arbiter in this regard, and this function serves a vital purpose in our democratic system — one that everyone from a high school student to an Ivy League law school graduate like Vice President JD Vance should understand.

One of the seminal judicial review cases involves the power of the presidency, Youngstown Sheet & Tubing Company v. Sawyer. In April 1952, as the United Steelworkers of America prepared to strike during the Korean War, President Harry Truman issued an executive order directing his secretary of commerce to take over the nation’s steel mills. On appeal, the Supreme Court ruled that Truman lacked the constitutional authority to take that step, ruling 6-3 that “the President’s power to see that the laws are faithfully executed refutes the idea that he is to be a lawmaker.” There is no doubt that the court has the ability to decide that presidential actions exceed the powers the Constitution grants to a president.

The Founding Fathers purposefully created the judiciary as a check on the executive and legislative branches, in part, to prevent a president from becoming a tyrant.

The Founding Fathers purposefully created the judiciary as a check on the executive and legislative branches, in part, to prevent a president from becoming a tyrant. Parties must follow the courts’ decisions, even though they often do so with some grumbling. In its 1975 decision in Manness v. Meyers, the Supreme Court explained that “all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly. If a person to whom a court directs an order believes that order is incorrect, the remedy is to appeal, but, absent a stay, he must comply promptly with the order pending appeal. Persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”

When the Supreme Court gutted Section V of the Voting Rights Act, a law passed by Congress, in Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, Democrats complied. Republicans didn’t protest, instead taking advantage of the new rule to pass a variety of state-level measures designed to make it more difficult to register and vote. In another example, Trump v. Anderson, the court held individual states misinterpreted the Constitution when they used it to prevent Donald Trump’s name from appearing on their ballots. The list of examples is long.

Federal judges are appointed to office by the president and receive life tenure, an inherently political process. Once they take the bench they are, at least theoretically, no longer beholden to the political party that helped them rise to power. Republican appointees, including some appointed by Trump, underscored their independence in the wake of the 2020 presidential election when they ruled repeatedly in favor of free and fair elections.

But not everyone seems to be enthusiastic about that independence. Over the weekend, Vance appeared to challenge judicial review, which the Yale-educated Republican would have learned as a first-year law student is an essential part of our constitutionally based court system. On Sunday morning Vance posted: “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

It’s hard to view that objectively inaccurate statement as anything other than an argument that the laws that apply to everyone else don’t apply to Trump. Trump has already benefited personally from special immunity rules that prevented him from being prosecuted for official presidential acts. Now Vance and other Trump allies seem to be hinting that special rules blocking judicial rule of executive action, which have never applied to other administrations, should be applied to his.

Earlier in the day Vance reposted other comments that were even more troubling. Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., posted that it was “outrageous” that federal Judge Paul Engelmayer issued a temporary restraining order blocking members of Elon Musk’s DOGE project and others lacking the proper security clearances from accessing Treasury Department systems. “This outlaw should be reversed immediately and Engelmayer should be forbidden by higher courts from ever hearing another case against the Trump admin,” Cotton raged.....>

<....Conservative Harvard law professor Adrian Vermeule seemed to concur. “Judicial interference with legitimate acts of state, especially the internal functioning of a co-equal branch, is a violation of the separation of powers,” he claimed. Vance reposted Vermeule, raising further concern that he was advocating for the administration to ignore court orders it disagrees with.

If any party, including the government, doesn’t like a court order, it can appeal it. It doesn’t get to just disregard it.

That is most definitely not how our system works. If any party, including the government, doesn’t like a court order, it can appeal it. It doesn’t get to just disregard it. Vance took an oath to uphold the Constitution, just like Sen. Cotton did. And yet, this weekend they seemed to be advocating for lawlessness. If that’s not the case, now would be a good time for them to clarify their views. If they don’t, they are flirting with blowing up one of the three pillars of democracy.

At least for now cooler heads seem to have prevailed. The Trump administration filed an appeal of Judge Engelmayer’s decision — the right step to take when disagreeing with a lower court’s ruling. But the country is in a dangerous place if every time a judge issues a decision against the Trump administration — as a Rhode Island judge did Monday morning in a case challenging the administration’s ability to impound congressionally allocated spending and a Massachusetts judge did Monday afternoon in the case challenging the administration’s new rules around National Institutes of Health grant payments — the judiciary and our democracy are threatened all over again.

On Monday, Musk commented “Absolutely” in response to a post that began “JUDICIAL OVERREACH IS A THREAT TO DEMOCRACY.” The true threat to democracy are [sic] efforts to undercut the legitimacy of the courts by misrepresenting the importance of judicial review.

In the words of Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., “We don’t have to be lawyers to know that ignoring court decisions we don’t like puts us on a dangerous path to lawlessness.”

And Republicans, just like Democrats, take an oath to uphold the Constitution, not to pander to the president. The political consequences of these misplaced legal arguments have to be taken seriously. But the legal arguments underpinning them are deeply unserious. And leaders like Vance should be ashamed to even be seen engaging with them.>