River News: Our View

During Donald Trump’s first term in office, the unelected federal bureaucracy went all in for subverting the agenda of the elected president — offering up misinformation to cabinet members, refusing or delaying implementation of executive orders, and often enough simply ignoring, if not outright defying, the White House.

If anyone seeks an explanation for Trump’s scorched earth approach to the bureaucracy this time around, that’s a big part of it — that and Trump’s ideological hatred for the deep state and the anti-constitutional threat it represents.

Less than a month in, the subversion has started again. There are a few differences this time around, though. 

For one thing, last time the bureaucracy had visible and vocal support from massive protests in the streets. Those are virtually nonexistent this time around. Truth is, most of the “masses” were paid protesters, and this time the big money decided not to pay people to take to the streets, given the shellacking they got at the polls. As for those who were real protesters, they may not like Trump any more than they did before, but now they know the sky isn’t going to fall on them.

The joke may be on them. In the second term, the sky is far more likely to fall on them, like Dorothy’s house on the Wicked Witch of the East, as the federal house of horrors crumbles and implodes.

The second big difference is, there’s a lot more pro-MAGA sentiment in the Republican Congress than last time — the GOP itself was acutely divided and less likely to support the president in the first term — and now there is also a general public loathing for policies that Democrats still cling to.

In 2017, Democrats had not completely sold their souls to the far left woke crowd; they could still pretend they were for the American working class. This time around Americans know the party is now captive to elite millionaires and billionaires who champion a new patriarchy. Its exclamation points are men in women’s sports, men in women’s bathrooms, and child mutilation. 

Why they cannot see that this is not an attractive platform no one knows, but it means the resistance is more underground that it was before.

It’s still there, though, and by underground we refer to the resistance now traveling through the underbelly of American jurisprudence, meaning liberal lower federal courts. Democratic states are filing lawsuit after lawsuit to try and derail Trump’s Shermanesque march through the federal government, and progressive judges are issuing injunction after injunction to help them.

These are pyrrhic victories that will not stand for long. They may be morale boosting, but they are certainly not legitimate, as Vice President JD Vance intoned on X earlier this week: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. 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.”

Liberals immediately and absurdly used this post to declare a constitutional crisis, which was hilarious, but they do raise a legitimate point. And the point is, we may indeed be on the cusp of a constitutional crisis but, if we are, it’s the courts, not the vice president, causing it.

We’re not really anywhere near a constitutional crisis — we said that for effect — but Vance is right that the lower courts of the U.S. have no authority to issue sweeping nationwide injunctions.

Yes, the states and Democrats can file all the lawsuits they want. That’s their right and duty if they think the constitution is being violated. And those cases must make their way through the court system. As they do, though, lower courts have no authority to halt executive branch actions before the merits of the cases are decided. 

Only the Supreme Court has that level of authority. When the lower courts do so, they are legislating, and overreaching.

None other that justice Clarence Thomas has raised this precise issue in the past. In 2018, in Trump v. Hawaii, Thomas questioned whether one federal judge sitting in some remote location of the country could impose a “universal” injunction:

“Injunctions that prohibit the executive branch from applying a law or policy against anyone … have become increasingly common. District courts, including the one here, have begun imposing universal injunctions without considering their authority to grant such sweeping relief. These injunctions are beginning to take a toll on the federal court system — preventing legal questions from percolating through the federal courts, encouraging forum shopping, and making every case a national emergency for the courts and for the Executive Branch.”

Those “universal injunctions,” as Thomas labeled them, are overly ripe for review by the high court, and we suspect that they are soon going to get the chance. Congress, too, can and should take a look because Congress created the lower courts and has control of their jurisdiction.

Meanwhile, over in the other underbelly, meaning the federal bureaucracy, the game of subversion is afoot, though this time the strategy is different. Instead of slow walking, ignoring, or defying executive orders, the strategy this time around is to twist the interpretation of executive orders into the most grotesque rendering that can be imagined, and then enforce it mercilessly by applying them to people and activities the orders were never meant for, and often by punishing the very people the orders were designed to help.

An example. Down in Charleston, S.C., the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers annually sponsors an engineering career day for an all-girls school. Not this year. Seems the Corps has deemed its annual “Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day” to be in violation of Trump’s anti-discrimination executive order and so it canceled the event.

Of course the cancellation enraged the school, the girls, and their parents, many of whom had been Trump supporters but who now took to social media to denounce the president and his executive order ending federal Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.

This, of course, was the intended effect. Never mind that the executive order has nothing to do with career days for girls, or boys, or for that matter boys clubs or girls clubs or black student clubs or Asian student clubs. Nor does it have to do with so-called cultural awareness months that the Department of Defense (DoD) has canceled its participation in going forward.

Simply put, the executive order demands that federal anti-discrimination laws that have been on the books for decades be enforced. That is to say, discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, or age in hiring, promoting, firing, setting wages, testing, training, apprenticeship, and all other terms and conditions of employment is prohibited, and so is using DEI as the basis for the national policies of the federal government.

It makes clear that DEI — overt discrimination based on identity and race — is and has been illegal. It has nothing to do with career days for girls. A career day for girls does not provide any terms or conditions of employment or education based on sex. The Army Corps could just as easily turn around and offer a career day for boys. It’s an informational career day, for Pete’s sake.

In fact, a stronger argument can be made that the Army Corps is violating federal anti-discrimination law by canceling the event because of the school’s all-girl status. Cancellation robs girls of an opportunity to be exposed to an occupation and career they would not otherwise be exposed to. 

Does this mean the Army Corps thinks it can sponsor such events for every school except those catering to all girls or all boys? The question can only be answered affirmatively when one imagines a scenario in which the Army Corps sets out to do just that. In such a case, every school would be invited except the girls school. That’s discrimination on the basis of sex.

The bottom line is, if something was legal before DEI, it’s legal now (and actually always was). That includes career days for girls and women.

None of which is to say that the Trump administration’s political leadership at the bureaucracies can’t shoot themselves in their own DEI foot. As mentioned previously, defense secretary Pete Hegseth canceled the use of any federal resources to participate in any cultural awareness month, including Black History Month.

That’s pretty stupid. That forced the Army Corps to cancel a Black History Month program it was sponsoring in Florida and stirred up unnecessary hostilities, given that a Black History Month presentation is not DEI — it is not a term or condition of employment or education, either. Equating Black History Month with racial discrimination is the kind of extremism that will surely backfire.

The cancellation occurred even though President Trump on January 31 signed a proclamation declaring February to be Black History Month, and urging the kind of celebrations his own DoD had just canceled.

“Today, I am very honored to recognize February 2025 as National Black History Month,” Trump wrote in his proclamation. “Every year, National Black History Month is an occasion to celebrate the contributions of so many black American patriots who have indelibly shaped our Nation’s history. … American heroes such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, and countless others represent what is best in America and her citizens. Their achievements, which have monumentally advanced the tradition of equality under the law in our great country, continue to serve as an inspiration for all Americans. … This National Black History Month, as America prepares to enter a historic Golden Age, I want to extend my tremendous gratitude to black Americans for all they have done to bring us to this moment, and for the many future contributions they will make as we advance into a future of limitless possibility under my Administration.”

And the president wasn’t finished: “I call upon public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities.”

Apparently Hegseth didn’t get the memo.

It’s a misstep, to be sure, but the larger problem is a federal bureaucracy run amok and determined to shred Trump’s agenda the way it did the first time around. The deep state bureaucrats who have burrowed into those agencies are liars, frauds, and totalitarians, and they hate America. 

The federal bureaucracy needs to be incinerated, from top to bottom, and the sooner that Trump, Elon Musk, RFK, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and others do so, the better.

When that day comes, let’s call it the start of National Liberty Month, and let’s celebrate like it’s Election Night 2024.

And yes, all girls schools and all boys schools are invited to join in the party of opportunity for all.