The courts are pushing back. What if Trump defies them?

Years before he became US vice-president and advocated defiance of the courts over the Trump administration's blitz through the federal bureaucracy and constitution, JD Vance revealed his contempt for legal constraints.

- Chris McGreal

In 2021, he predicted that Donald Trump would again be elected president and advised him to "fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people".

"When the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did and say: 'The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it," he told the Jack Murphy Live podcast.

Whether the seventh president actually said that remains disputed, but the sentiment is alive and well as the Trump administration defies federal court orders to at least pause its subversion of the constitution and destructive rampage through the federal bureaucracy led by Elon Musk.

In the absence of action by Congress to defend its powers, it has been government workers, state attorneys general and unions who have counterattacked. Nearly 50 legal challenges have been filed in the last three weeks, an unprecedented pushback in the courts against a new administration.