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Floor Speech

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Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, I want to thank our chairman for bringing us together on the Senate floor today to reaffirm a proposition that really ought not to be in any doubt, and that is the proposition that when a court has ruled on a matter, the executive and legislative branches are bound to follow the law.

As the chairman said, you may choose to appeal or you may choose to obey or, if you have a hugely principled objection, you may choose to resign, but you don't get to simply disobey court orders that you don't like.

Now, thankfully, a number of our Republican colleagues are on record supporting that simple proposition. The majority leader, Senator Thune, said:

The courts obviously are . . . the branch of our government that calls balls and strikes and referees and I think that they've got an important role to play. 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.

Chairman Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, added:

We've got a system of checks and balances, and that's what I see working. I learned in eighth grade civics about checks and balances, and I just expect the process to work its way out.

Senator Hawley said:

You may think that's not the right ruling, but you know, they're still the law.

And Senator Kennedy said:

I don't agree with all the rulings. It's often the case that I'll disagree with an opinion that a court issues, but I don't attack. I don't attack, and I don't intend to attack the legitimacy of the Federal judiciary.

He, as the chairman said, advised the witnesses before: Don't ever, ever take the position that you are not going to follow a court order.

So from all of that, you would think that things were fine and that this was a wasted exercise of time here on the Senate floor. But, unfortunately, it is not because at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, the White House is constantly attacking the rule of law from all angles. And this administration is teetering on full-blown defiance of court rulings.

Vice President Vance posted that ``Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power.'' That is an invitation to violate court orders if the executive takes the position that its own view of what its legitimate power is, is what controls.

One Senate Republican went so far as to call court orders that the administration lost a ``coup.'' Well, if there is any coup going on, it is the executive branch coup taking place in our country right now, not a court-ordered coup.

The Department of Justice, which should know better--including the Solicitor General who should for sure know better--refused to say that they will always follow a court order, and many colleagues actually defended them.

And then outside of the immediate danger of refusing to obey a court order is the attack on the integrity and safety of the judiciary. We have seen this in Rhode Island. A judge in Rhode Island--very respected judge, very well-known throughout our State, very well-regarded, very experienced--made the determination that the freeze order of the Trump administration was unconstitutional, which, in my view, is not even a close call. That was an easy, easy answer. Rather than respond, they dropped--what I call--the flying monkeys on him. Elon Musk maintains on X a cohort of extremists and oddballs who he can launch by targeting an individual to go and attack and harass that individual and their family. He did precisely that to this judge to the point where the judge's daughter was actually doxed by one of these extremist followers of Musk.

It ought to be self-evident the judge's orders are to be followed. It ought to be self-evident if you don't like a judge's order, you don't threaten the judge or his daughter; instead, you appeal it.

And the third tactic that they are using is what I call the fog bank tactic. So the order is the freeze is unconstitutional. OMB, you have to let the money go. And then people who have money coming to them properly obligated, properly appropriated try to call up and say: OK. The order says you can't hold it back. When is it coming? What do they get? No clear answers--the fog bank. The executive officials retreat behind refusal to answer emails, refusal to answer phone calls, vague answers that give no response. Sometimes even happy indications that: Don't worry. Hang out there. I am sure that we can work this out. And even in some cases: Yes, you will have access to these funds. And no matter what the answer is from the fog bank, it doesn't change the fact that the money just doesn't go.

It reminds me of old bad movies of the Soviet Union where the KGB guy in the corner makes all the decisions and the nominal chief of the agency says: Oh, yes, of course we are going to do this. But unless the KGB guy signs off, the money doesn't go.

In this case, it isn't the KGB guy; it is the little muskrats who are in these Departments trying to foul up the lawful flow of properly appropriated and obligated funds. That is a slo-mo contempt of these court orders. And as courts and plaintiffs dig in, I think we are going to find more and more evidence of the deliberate contumacious nature of that fog bank strategy.

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