The Trump administration is racking up injunctions from federal courts, halting its efforts to shrink the federal government. From the funding freeze to the federal worker buyout, judges have put many of the administration’s early executive actions on hold. For example, on February 10, 2025, a federal court found that the Trump administration had failed to follow its injunction of the funding freeze after 22 state plaintiffs complained that, among other things, air-monitoring grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and Department of Energy subsidies for electric heat pumps and water heaters remained unavailable. The court warned that officials violating the court’s orders could be found in contempt.
The press cannot get enough of this and have labeled it a crisis. On the morning of February 11, 2025, Politico’s Playbook wrote, “Donald Trump’s stunning disregard for almost every legal norm is hitting crisis point this week.” On February 10, 2025, the Washington Post published the “analysis” column “What is a constitutional crisis? And why some scholars say we’re in one.” The New York Times morning newsletter (in an issue titled “A Constitutional Crisis?”) pointed to a sharp decline in “expert ratings of U.S. democracy” (whatever that means) and declared that “this is about the separation of powers.”
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