Right-wing firebrand Sen. Josh Hawley is among those warning the Trump Administration to not defy court rulings—contrary to what Vice President JD Vance controversially suggested over the weekend.
Hawley, who was one of Vance’s top allies in the Senate, said Tuesday that Donald Trump’s anger with unfavorable rulings—like one overturning a federal funds freeze—was “understandable,” but said to defy the courts would be to devolve into lawlessness.
“I think you can dislike the court’s opinion and think they’re wrong on the substance, and criticize them for that, and you certainly can vigorously appeal,” Hawley told Business Insider. “I think outright, sort of just like, ‘Oh, we’re just going to completely ignore the decision?’ That, I think you can’t do. Andrew Jackson did that, infamously. He was wrong on that. That was the Trail of Tears. That was lawless. That was wrong.”
Hawley is not the only Republican lawmaker pushing back against rumblings from the White House that some “highly political” federal judges should be ignored.
The 90-year-old Sen. Chuck Grassley said he has understood the separation of powers since middle school, hammering home that the court’s role in checking executive power is long established in this country.
“We’ve got a system of checks and balances, and that’s what I see working,” Grassley said Monday night. “I learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.”
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, also a Republican, agreed.
“The courts obviously are the sort of the branch of our government that calls balls and strikes and referees, and I think that they’ve got an important role to play,” he said. “I mean we have three branches of our government in this country, coequal and independent branches, and the judiciary is the one that resolves some of the differences that often occur between executive and legislative branches.”
Fears of a possible constitutional crisis emerged Sunday after Vance suggested the courts did not have the power to keep Trump in check.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal,” Vance said. “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.”
The vice president was mocked relentlessly by people who claimed he—a graduate of Yale Law School—did not have a firm grasp on how the U.S. government is set up.
Vance has long believed an executive can overrule the courts, it seems. He suggested in a 2021 interview—before he was in public office—that he supported President Jackson’s defiance of the courts.
He said: “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.”
Trump has lashed out at the courts himself this week.
“Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government,” the president wrote. “Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH.”
A federal judge in Rhode Island accused the Trump Administration on Monday of defying a ruling he made in January that temporarily overturned a federal spending freeze. States came back to the judge and claimed the White House was still holding up certain funds in violation of the court’s order.
Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. seemingly saw this sort of defiance coming. He wrote in December that “dangerous suggestions” about ignoring federal court rulings must be immediately shut down.
“Every administration suffers defeats in the court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications for executive or legislative power or other consequential topics,” he wrote. “Nevertheless, for the past several decades, the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have been followed, and the nation has avoided the standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.
“Within the past few years, however, elected officials from across the political spectrum have raised the specter of open disregard for federal court rulings. These dangerous suggestions, however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.”
