Trump Administration Fights Judicial Tyranny

I wrote here about the absurd order issued by a Democratic Party judge that purports to bar the Secretary of the Treasury, along with many others, from accessing the Treasury Department’s data. The judge who issued that ex parte order–that means he issued it without even waiting to hear from the government–was Paul Engelmayer. Engelmayer sits in the Southern District of New York, a venue that has no apparent connection to the Treasury Department’s operations.

The Trump administration has now moved urgently to correct Engelmayer’s error. The linked document is a Memorandum in support of a Motion to Dissolve, Clarify or Modify Engelmayer’s improvidently granted temporary restraining order. The Treasury Department’s lawyers begin by giving Engelmayer a lesson in constitutional law that he shouldn’t need:

At approximately 1:00 a.m. on Saturday, February 8, 2025, this Court issued an ex parte Temporary Restraining Order that purported to limit access to a vast swath of Treasury systems to only “civil servants,” while prohibiting “all political appointees” from doing the same. On its face, the Order could be read to cover all political leadership within Treasury—including even Secretary Bessent. This is a remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch that is in direct conflict with Article II of the Constitution, and the unitary structure it provides. There is not and cannot be a basis for distinguishing between “civil servants” and “political appointees.” Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President. A federal court, consistent with the separation of powers, cannot insulate any portion of that work from the specter of political accountability. No court can issue an injunction that directly severs the clear line of supervision Article II requires. Because the Order on its face draws an impermissible and anti-constitutional distinction, it should be dissolved immediately.

While incompetent, Judge Engelmayer’s order shows what the Left really believes: the judge and the Democratic Party are on the side of the permanent bureaucracy, democracy–the voters–be damned.

So who is Judge Engelmayer? A reader points out that he a notable pupil of Larry Tribe, the law professor turned far-left internet crank. Tribe credited Engelmayer as one of researchers on the Second Edition of Tribe’s treatise on constitutional law:

Judge Engelmayer had this case just long enough to issue a TRO. It has now been assigned to another judge, Jeannette Vargas, a brand-new Joe Biden appointee. I have no idea how she will respond to the Treasury Department’s current motion. One hopes she has enough integrity to be embarrassed by what Engelmayer did. But what is going on now, as the Democrats try feverishly to block the Trump administration from carrying out the will of the voters, is politics, not law.