Trump: "I always abide by the courts, but then I'll have to appeal it."

Everyone take a deep breath.

President Trump gave a press conference today from the Oval Office. A reporter asked "If a judge does block one of your policies, will you abide by that ruling?"

Trump replied, without hesitation, "I always abide by the court, but then I'll have to appeal it." You can see it at the video around the 17:30 mark.

"I always abide by the courts," Trump says. pic.twitter.com/QVha7a6fl7

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) February 11, 2025

Everyone needs to take a deep, deep breath. There is no constitutional crisis.

And to be clear, none of the temporary restraining orders run against the President. The injunctions run against appointed officers in the executive branch. It is impossible for Trump to ignore any of these pending orders because they do not actually bind him. Have we learned anything from Seth Barrett Tillman's work on Ex Parte Merryman? See Ed Whelan's post today.

So what are people actually afraid of? They're afraid that Trump will order his subordinates to disobey a court order. I've seen no evidence of that. At most, it is difficult for the government to comply with the torrent of nationwide TROs. If the court finds there are willful efforts to not comply that may be different. Instead, I think they will find the government struggling to keep up with the litigation front.

Comments

[Katall]

"Instead, I think they will find the government struggling to keep up with the litigation front."

You think? And with the firing of a significant portion of the workforce, it may indeed struggle mightily.

[damikesc]

Yes, the government, alone, is the one entity where cutting some fat is just impossible. It is PERFECT.

[Alan Vanneman]

Everyone take a deep, deep breath, and then hold it for a very long time. Especially you, Josh. I mean, if you can swallow Trump's seditious attempts to hold onto power following his loss in 2020, and you certainly can, and did, you can swallow anything, and will. You are such a toady to power.

[AtR]

But ... big orange man bad!

[Noscitur a sociis]

So what are people actually afraid of?

Gee, maybe something like, say, this?

And to be clear, none of the temporary restraining orders run against the President. The injunctions run against appointed officers in the executive branch. It is impossible for Trump to ignore any of these pending orders because they do not actually bind him.

…

Have we learned anything from Seth Barrett Tillman's work on Ex Parte Merryman?

What exactly is it that you think people should have learned here?

[not guilty]

Rule 65(d)(2) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure states:

(2) Persons Bound. The [injunction or restraining] order binds only the following who receive actual notice of it by personal service or otherwise:

(A) the parties;

(B) the parties’ officers, agents, servants, employees, and attorneys; and

(C) other persons who are in active concert or participation with anyone described in Rule 65(d)(2)(A) or (B).

While there might be separation of powers problems with the judiciary finding the President in contempt and ordering him confined in jail, Rule 65(d)(2)(C) doesn't exempt the President. Willful noncompliance with a federal court order is a crime, per 18 U.S.C. § 402. It can accordingly be an impeachable offense.

[not guilty]

Impeachment may be an idle threat right now. But the Republican margin in the House of Representatives is razor thin, and midterm Congressional elections historically have not gone well for the party in control of the White House.

[David Nieporent]

I mean, it's fine to talk about such in the abstract, but it's ultimately nothing more than verbal masturbation. As we know from Trump's first term, impeachment itself will do nothing to chastise him, and conviction is not going to happen regardless of what he does. So it's an idle threat, right now and after the midterms.

(The Dems can take the House, but they have roughly zero chance of taking the Senate — and the Chiefs have greater odds of winning Super Bowl 59 days after the game ended than the Dems do of getting to the 67 seats needed for removal.)

[Brett Bellmore]

"and conviction is not going to happen regardless of what he does."

Built into this is a tacit admission that he's not actually going to shoot somebody on 5th avenue, rob a bank, or do anything else that would uncontroversially be a crime if anybody else did it. It's just being proposed to impeach him for political reasons, and not enough members of the Senate share your politics.

[Sarcastr0]

Brett, you are the poster boy of there is no line Trump will cross that would lose your support. You defend him to the hilt on everything.

[Brett Bellmore]

Not everything. Haven't I said that his birthright citizenship moves are unconstitutional? (Though that's no guarantee he'll lose completely at the Supreme court.)

But as I say, it's easy to say his supporters will defend anything he does, when he HASN'T shot somebody on 5th avenue, but instead only done things you hate for political reasons.

[David Nieporent]

Not at all. It is an accusation that the cult is so strong that him shooting someone on 5th avenue, rob a bank, or do anything else that would uncontroversially be a crime if anybody else did it would not move the needle for the GOP.

[Brett Bellmore]

Right, it's an accusation, but it's an utterly irrational and almost certainly unfalsifiable accusation, since you can be confident that Trump ISN'T going to shoot somebody.

So you don't ever have to worry about being proven wrong about it.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Where would anyone get that confidence, after the pardon for the J6 coup mob? Or after Trump pointedly announced publicly he had withdrawn security details from various former government figures who annoyed him?

[grb]

I've never been in a cult or personally known someone ensnared in one. Therefore cult mentality seems bizarre & strange to me - one example being Blackman's assumption anything Trump says has the slightest value immediately after he said it.

No evidence supports that assumption, everything suggesting the exact opposite. That said, I can understand Blackman's predicament. After two or three rounds of White House nominations, there he is still stuck at South Texas College. Of course he might hold out hope for a Judgeship, but still.....

[mike petrik]

When you are incapable of responding on the merits, go with juvenile snark because it is so convincing.

[grb]

Snark is hardly required when your "argument" relies on the honesty of Donald John Trump.

[Doug Heffernan]

It's so handy to be able to take one of Trump's more reasonable statements entirely literally, while at the same time being able to not take literally his less reasonable statements, and demand that critics of the less reasonable statements use finesse and nuance to interpret their actual meaning.

As long as the correct lens is used, everything Trump says is perfect!

[David Nieporent]

It's sort of odd to make this post when we've already seen defiance of court orders.

[Dr. Ed 2]

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. "

[Noscitur a sociis]

Where are you going with this?

[Vryedni]

Josh, if you'd stop sniffing your farts long enough to take your own advice, the air you inhale might clear your head of the fantasy that a Trump promise means any more than an account receivable from the Trump Organization, a grant from the Trump Foundation, or a degree from Trump University. As he's speaking, his administration is already flouting court orders.

[JoeFromtheBronx]

The "constitutional crisis" is cumulative.

Impeachment already twice failed as a check in blatant cases, the Insurrection Clause was wrongly defanged, and immunity from wrongdoing was illicitly applied.

Civil remedies were of limited value & now parties are settling patently frivolous lawsuits in Trump's favor because they fear the consequences. The one case that resulted in a criminal prosecution was settled with an unconditional discharge setting up a "be elected and be immune from consequences" scenario.

Congress also didn't (not that it necessarily had to) further enforce 14A, sec. 3 to ease the process of application to Trump and others. That issue is likely to rise again when the covered people run for public office or are appointed for public offices that they have no constitutional qualification to hold (states still can enforce the provision in respect to state offices). *

Other constitutional checks, including media reporting, also failed to properly answer the situation.

Once Trump was in office, he and his administration set forth a slew of unconstitutional and otherwise illegal orders. The possibility that the courts eventually will address some of the consequences (like trying to clean up a bag of pasta that scatters all over the place), while so many people and institutions suffer in the meanwhile, is of limited value.

As with the failures of the first set of constitutional checks, the results will have lasting effects that will taint our constitutional system for quite some time.

We are now told Trump assures us he will follow court orders as if we should rely on his word, especially after multiple administrative officials by reporting I saw already didn't follow court orders & the vice president sent a clear message that was fine.

I'm not relieved though not surprised JB is.

===

* Trump's pardons and commutations does not constitutionally waive the constitutional disqualification.

[DixieTune]

Were you concerned with patently frivolous and illegal lawsuits against gun manufacturers?

[damikesc]

Oh.

You're a fucking moron.

Muted.

[not guilty]

Professor Blackman fails to mention that a District Judge in Rhode Island has found that the White House has defied his temporary restraining order which prohibits all categorical pauses or freezes in obligations or disbursements based on an OMB Directive or based on the President’s 2025 Executive Orders.to release billions of dollars in federal grants. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.58912/gov.uscourts.rid.58912.96.0_5.pdf The plaintiff states had not sought contempt sanctions. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.58912/gov.uscourts.rid.58912.66.0.pdf

[Brett Bellmore]

Man, the scope of that TRO is staggering. One solitary judge issues an order, and an entire branch of government must snap to.

So much for co-equal branches.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Uh, weren’t you just saying that the branches aren’t co-equal?

[Brett Bellmore]

Yes, I said that the Constitution created a system of mild legislative supremacy. Is that judge Congress? No, he's a member of "the least dangerous branch".

To be clear, the Supreme court issuing a nation-wide injunction of this scope wouldn't be insane. But any rando judge anywhere in the country being able to bind the whole government? That is insane.

There should be a procedure where judges can apply to the Supreme court for these sorts of orders on an emergency basis, but the scope of a single judge shouldn't reach beyond their district.

[not guilty]

As the District Court in Rhode Island opined:

As the District Judge here opined:

It is a basic proposition that all orders and judgments of courts must be complied with promptly. * * * 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. The orderly and expeditious administration of justice by the courts requires that an order issued by a court with jurisdiction over the subject matter and person must be obeyed by the parties until it is reversed by orderly and proper proceedings.

Maness v. Meyers, 419 U.S. 449, 458–59 (1975) (citations and quotations omitted) (emphasis supplied by District Court).

That principle holds true even where an injunction itself would also unquestionably be subject to substantial constitutional question. The way to raise that question is to apply to the trial court and, if necessary, the appellate courts to have the injunction modified or dissolved. Walker v. City of Birmingham, 388 U.S. 307, 317 (1967).

[Brett Bellmore]

To translate into laymaneese, it's a basic principle among judges that you absolutely have to obey judges, even when their orders are illegal or unconstitutional. And you'll be punished by judges for failing to obey them even if a higher court decides they weren't legally entitled to issue the order in the first place.

So that a single low level judge can order the entire federal government around in detail, and everybody must humor him even if a higher court is going to eventually conclude he's nuts.

IOW, judges agree that judges are all powerful, news at 11.

I think the Supreme court is getting a bit tired of this national injunction madness, and will use the flood of them against Trump as an opportunity to restrain them a bit.

[ReaderY]

Does Professor Blackman have any idea how many times during the 1930s Hitler assured Western diplomats and members of the Western press, particularly at diplomatically delicate moments, that the hype was all overblown and Jews in Germany weren’t going to be in any real danger?

[GKHoff]

I'm not sure Professor Blackman has the time or the inclination to participate in trivia contests.

[arpiniant1]

I've seen no evidence of that, he says, hard to see evidence from under traitortrumps desk

[Mike45]

Trump and the Sec Treasury should have complied with the TRO and locked the doors to the Treasury based on the well known principle that if the boss can't sign the checks the bills don't get paid (including the judges salary). Note the Sec Treasury also signs the money printed by the gov.
Musk could have given the judge an award for single handedly doing the most to reduce federal spending.

[questioner7]

When courts said he lost the 2020 election, did he abide by that? No, he tried to change the official results through extra-judicial means. (If he'd merely kept saying he won, that would have been fine, but he went way beyond that.)

[wvattorney13]

Couldn't Trump just bypass the Secretary of the Treasury and order himself what the Secretary is enjoined from ordering?