Based on the constitution’s “vesting clause”, which states that “the executive power shall be vested in [the] president”, it has been favoured by conservative justices on the US supreme court in recent decades and championed by rightwing thinktanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the main architect of the radical Project 2025 blueprint which charted many of Trump’s current attacks on the bureaucracy.
Sunday’s social media post appeared particularly targeted at a ruling by US district court judge Paul Engelmayer, who had issued a temporary injunction the previous day stopping Elon Musk’s self-styled “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing the treasury department’s payment system – a vast database that contains the personal details of millions of Americans and disburses trillions of dollars via an array of government programmes.
But the courts have issued a series of legal setbacks to Trump’s crusade to remold American government, as several judges have ruled that executive orders from the White House have ignored existing law or – in the case of an attempt to revoke birthright citizenship – violate the constitution.
“Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” wrote vice-president JD Vance, a graduate of Yale law school, on X as he waded into an escalating tug-of-war between his boss, Donald Trump, and the US federal courts.
Vance’s intervention was triggered by a series of court rulings that have slowed Trump’s pell-mell rush to grab the levers of powers across the US government since returning to the presidency on 20 January.
