'Chilling pronouncement': Columnist sounds alarm at Vance's 'unthinkable' suggestion

Vice President J.D. Vance is encouraging a straight-up constitutional crisis with his threat leveled at the federal judiciary, columnist Eugene Robinson wrote for The Washington Post.

"Anyone who doubts that President Donald Trump wants to rule like a strongman should pay attention to the chilling pronouncement made by Vice President JD Vance on Sunday: 'Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,'" wrote Robinson.

Vance, himself a graduate of Yale Law School, made his remarks following a week in which multiple federal judges put restraints on the Trump administration's moves to dismantle the civil service, withhold Congressionally-approved funding from agencies, and give tech billionaire Elon Musk free reign over the federal IT and payments systems. Already one judge has warned the administration appears to be ignoring his orders.

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"There are two possibilities here. Vance might just be blowing off steam. Or he might be presaging an attempt by the administration to take the unthinkable step of defying federal court orders, which would create an existential constitutional crisis," wrote Robinson. "These rulings have been made by judges appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents — including by Trump himself during his first term ... When a federal judge issues a ruling the president does not like, the president can appeal to a higher court. Ultimately, the dispute might reach the Supreme Court, which makes a decision by which all parties, including the president, must then abide."

What Vance instead is threatening, he wrote, is to "simply ignore rulings about matters the administration believes judges 'aren’t allowed to control,'" and simply testing the inherent limits of judges to enforce rulings on their own. "The Republican majorities in the House and Senate have shown no willingness to challenge Trump as he ignores laws and withholds expenditures mandated by Congress. The judiciary, by contrast, is doing its job."

This new posture by Vance, Robinson concluded, is a "grave threat to the absolute, inviolable principle that a president is not a king."