Sen. Liz Warren (D-MA) recently suggested that federal employees under the Trump administration could face legal consequences if they don’t defy President Donald Trump and follow the orders of “activist judges.” Commentators have reacted to Warren’s remarks during a recent interview with MSNBC host Rachel Maddow, describing them as “not so subtlety” threatening DOGE employees.
The comments came amid various DOGE initiatives to cut government spending, expose fraud, and make the federal government more efficient, efforts which the left has lashed out at. Warren echoed the rhetoric many of her fellow Democrats have propagated, suggesting there is an impending “constitutional crisis at hand.”
“We’ve got our toes right on the edge of a constitutional crisis here,” Warren told Maddow. “But here’s the thing, it may be the case that Donald Trump is so full of confidence that he thinks he can wave his wand and whatever he wants to happen will happen and in many cases, he will be right.”
“For example, the Republicans in the Senate just go ahead and confirm people for jobs that they know they are not qualified for, so they will kowtow to him,” she added, before noting many of Trump’s move would get tied up in the court system. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen with the courts,” she said to the host.
According to Warren, the courts could pursue punitive action against Trump’s federal employees if they were not cooperative. “And here’s the next part, they may not be able to force Donald Trump to do something, but Donald Trump isn’t actually the guy who puts in the orders and cuts people’s paychecks. There’s somebody else in the system who does that, and they’re a click down from Donald Trump, and a click down from that, and a click down from that,” she said.
Building on this point, the Massachusetts Democrat noted, “And when a federal court issues an order and then gets people in front of them and says, you either follow that order or find yourself in contempt. Now we’re going to see whether or not those are people who are going to say, oh, but Donald Trump told me, and a judge is going to say, I don’t care what Donald Trump told you, I’m telling you what the law is. You follow the law.”
“And you know my view right now is the courts are where we are hanging on to our constitutional structure. They still have the power to hold everybody else in this country in contempt if they do not follow lawfully issued court orders,” Warren concluded, before being praised by Maddow for her efforts to protest DOGE and the Trump administration.
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Commentator Johnny St. Pete reacted to the clip, writing, “Liz Warren on Maddow out here not so subtlety threatening federal workers with contempt if they don’t go rogue and follow activist judges orders and defy President Trump. Once again the buzz term of day is “Constitutional Crisis”. DOGE must really be over multiple targets at this point with all this Flak.”