WASHINGTON (CN) — Congressional Republicans were far from a monolith this week on whether the Trump administration should comply with court orders reining in a slew of executive actions — even after the vice president appeared to suggest the judiciary lacked such authority.
President Donald Trump in recent days has found his administration’s agenda stymied by federal judges: A Washington court on Tuesday issued a temporary order requiring the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration to restore certain online materials stripped from their websites following an executive order from the White House.
The judiciary has also blocked Trump’s efforts to roll back birthright citizenship for the children of immigrants and has stopped the administration from putting thousands of employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development on indefinite leave.
That judicial intervention prompted a furious response from the White House and its surrogates over the weekend and some top GOP lawmakers still defended the White House’s sweeping executive orders and actions at federal agencies as necessary reforms, suggesting that the courts should allow the administration to press forward.
But some Republican lawmakers have taken a decidedly more measured approach, with some suggesting that the administration should not circumvent court rulings but rather follow the traditional process for contesting them.
“My answer is one word: appeal,” Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley told Courthouse News on Tuesday. The GOP chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee added that the White House should “surely” appeal rulings that they believe are unconstitutional.
South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds, speaking on MSNBC Tuesday, agreed, saying that Congress would have to follow court rulings on Trump’s executive orders.
“We will follow the decisions of the court, and I don’t think there’s been anybody saying no,” he said.
And Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters during a news conference Tuesday afternoon that the controversy between the White House and the judiciary was part of the “natural give and take” between the branches of government.
“I think that this is a process that will continue to play out,” said the top Senate Republican. “But do I believe that the courts have a very valid role and need to be listened to and heard in that process? The answer is yes.”
But not all congressional Republicans appeared to agree with that interpretation.
House Speaker Mike Johnson on Tuesday told reporters that the branches of government had to “respect the constitutional order,” adding that he expected the White House to appeal any rulings against its executive orders. But in the meantime, he said, he “wholeheartedly” agreed with Vice President JD Vance’s perspective.
In a post on X Sunday morning, Vance fumed that federal judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” the vice president said. “If a judge tried to command the attorney general how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal.”
“There’s a lot more to come, and I think that the courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out,” said Johnson Tuesday, arguing that the White House’s actions are “good and right” for the American people.
The House speaker has previously defended the Trump administration’s efforts to clamp down on federal agencies, including those under Congress’ purview, and has said that he does not see those actions as a threat to the constitutional separation of powers.
Utah Senator Mike Lee called the rulings against Trump a “judicial insurrection.”
Meanwhile, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton piled on, seething in a post on X Tuesday morning about a Saturday federal court ruling barring billionaire Elon Musk and his allies from accessing the Treasury Department’s system which distributes tax returns and Social Security payments.
“The idea that an unelected district court judge can block the Secretary of Treasury … from accessing Treasury’s data is outrageous,” he wrote. “It’s counter to our entire system of government.”
Musk himself — a Trump adviser whose so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s constitutionally questionable audit of federal agencies has been a flashpoint of controversy — has gone so far as to argue for the impeachment of judges who rule against the White House.
“The notion of having a judge job for life, no matter how bad the judgements, is ridiculous!” Musk wrote on X Tuesday. “We should at least ATTEMPT to fire this junky jurist. Enough is enough.”
The White House’s so-called “government efficiency” czar has also called lawsuits against the administration “anti-democratic” and “judicially mandated corruption.”
Judiciary experts, though, are skeptical of the attacks on the court system by Vance, Musk and some Republicans.
“I just think he’s wrong,” Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said of the vice president. “The president doesn’t get to decide what’s legal and what’s not legal in issuing executive orders.”
The White House must comply with rulings from federal judges and appeal decisions it disagreed with, he said.
“Anything else, I think judges are just not going to stand for in the federal system,” Tobias added.
Tobias was similarly dismissive of Johnson’s argument that the courts should “step back” from reining in White House actions, saying that the speaker’s comments were “foolishness.”
As for whether the White House would follow through and ignore federal courts, Tobias said that he was cautiously optimistic that “cooler heads will prevail,” and that he hoped the Trump administration would not force federal judges into what would amount to a constitutional crisis.
“The courts are now the bulwark,” he said.