Trump, Vance criticise US courts amid legal pushback

US President Donald Trump, along with other top officials, is openly questioning the judiciary's authority to serve as a check on executive power as the new president's sweeping agenda faces growing pushback from the courts.

Over the past 24 hours, officials ranging from billionaire Elon Musk to Vice President JD Vance have not only criticised a federal judge's decision early on Saturday that blocks Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Treasury Department records, but have also attacked the legitimacy of judicial oversight, a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the separation of powers.

"We're very disappointed with the judges that would make such a ruling, but we have a long way to go," Trump told reporters on Sunday aboard Air Force One while he flew from Florida to New Orleans to attend the Super Bowl.

He added: "No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision."

Earlier, Vance said on X: "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive's legitimate power."

The court order against Musk barred his team temporarily from accessing a Treasury system that contains sensitive personal data, such as Social Security and bank account numbers for millions of Americans.

Musk and his team say they are simply rooting through government systems to identify waste and abuse at the direction of the Republican president.

Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller called the ruling "an assault on the very idea of democracy itself."

"What we continue to see here is the idea that rogue bureaucrats who are elected by no one, who answer to no one, who have lifetime tenure jobs, who we would be told can never be fired, which, of course, is not true, that the power has been cemented and accumulated for years, whether it be with the Treasury bureaucrats or the FBI bureaucrats or the CIA bureaucrats or the USAID bureaucrats, with this unelected shadow force that is running our government and running our country," Miller said on Fox News.

Legal pushback

The pushback comes as the administration's efforts to dismantle government agencies and eliminate large swaths of the federal workforce are being held up by the courts.

Judges have also blocked Trump, at least temporarily, from moving forward with mass federal buyouts, from placing thousands of USAID workers on leave and from implementing an executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the US.

Early Saturday, US District Judge Paul A. Engelmayer issued a preliminary injunction after 19 Democratic attorneys general sued, alleging the Trump administration allowed Musk's team access to the Treasury Department's central payment system in violation of federal law.

Democrats have been sounding alarms over Musk and Trump's efforts, including efforts to halt spending that has already been appropriated by Congress.

Under the US Constitution, Congress is the body in charge of spending.

"I think this is the most serious Constitutional crisis the country has faced, certainly, since Watergate," Senator Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said to ABC News.

Murphy expressed concern that the courts are ill-prepared for the onslaught they are facing.

"The pace of this assault on the Constitution in order to serve the billionaire class, it is absolutely dizzying. And so, you have to run a full-scale opposition," Murphy said.