President Trump’s supporters have denounced the federal judges seeking to stall or stop this administration’s government overhaul. But there is at least one person who, despite a show of outrage and condemnation, is neither surprised nor intimidated: Trump himself.
The politically appointed judges have ordered, among other actions, that federal agencies reinstate thousands of fired probationary employees; that billions of taxpayer dollars be paid to questionable USAID projects and contractors; and that foreign-born criminals deported to their native countries be returned and granted due process. Regardless of the legal merits, the American people recognize these orders as obstructions to what Trump said he would do if elected, and what voters elected him to do. Yet the judges’ resistance is expected—they’re bound up in and rewarded by the system Trump seeks to reform.
Two-thirds of Americans believe the “system” is broken, but for years progressive politicians and their mouthpieces posited that the system couldn’t be fixed. Intellectuals on the Left, including New York Times columnist David Brooks, said America’s flaws were “systemic” in nature: systemic racism, systemic sexism, and systemic injustice. They whined and preached but offered no solutions for the millions of Americans of all races and both genders struggling and failing to unlock their potential to succeed.