Q&A – If Judges Were Defunded, Could Private Money Step In?

The idea of private money running government operations has come into play in recent years.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Have a question or topic you want to have addressed.
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and A. If judges were defunded, could private money step in?
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(00:25):
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(00:46):
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Speaker 2 (01:08):
Just like this, Defunding the judges that are going after
Trump is not going to work. I don't think they're
going to get the money from George sorows they're going
to get the money from somewhere, and I don't know
if that's legal or not, or how it has to be.
But if they get the money and say it was donated,
they're still going to be working. I keep thinking of

(01:31):
that unless I know that there's another answer. But that's
what I keep thinking. It's not going to work at
they defund them.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
There is another answer, So let's step into this. Over
the past week, we've seen a record number of nationwide
injunctions against the Trump administration issued. As we discussed last week, already,
the federal judiciary has issued more nation wide injunctions against
President Trump's directives than any other president not named Trump

(01:58):
in American history. With fifteen and President Trump's first fifty
eight days, we had more judicial intervention into presidential decision
making than during the entirety of any other non Trump
administration in history. That includes presidents who served even two
terms or more in the case of FDR and by
way of comparison, President Biden had a total of fourteen

(02:22):
nationwide injunctions issued during the entirety of his presidency. Now,
a key to this conversation is that I mentioned any
non Trump presidency. During President Trump's first administration, he faced
a total of sixty four nationwide injunctions, a number that
was greater than all other presidents from nineteen sixty three
to twenty seventeen combined, most of which were later overturned

(02:45):
on appeal. In other words, unconstitutional obstruction of President Trump's authority. Now,
with judicial activism obviously serving as the main mechanism of
the left's resistance movement currently, and with the record with
which is happening, the calls for taking drastic action to
cabat the activism have grown loud, and last week we

(03:07):
had Governor de Santis calling on Congress to strip authority
from lower level federal judges to prevent them from issuing
nationwide injunctions. However, that is a method that would require
a minimum of seven Democrat votes in the Senate. President
Trump has called on the Supreme Court to proactively step
in to limit judicial interference. However, Chief Justice John Roberts

(03:27):
referred to the appeals process, pointing out to solve disputes,
the idea that is eminently doable with only Republican support
is to defund certain federal courts in the upcoming budget. Now,
the notion of defunding activist judges as something Congressman Chip
Roly has openly discussed, and it is something that I

(03:50):
not only support, but think is the most realistic path
given the current makeup of the Senate. And this takes
us to today's question. Even if Congress were to defund
certain federal courts, would it really work? Or perhaps maybe
left wing activists like George Soros could step in and
build the gap financially instead. Well, I want to start

(04:12):
with this just some perspective. The annual couse to operate
the federal judiciary as currently constructed is eight and a
half billion dollars. Now, George Soros, since he was an example,
cided he's currently worth an estimated six point seven billion. Now.
Would Republicans fund the entire federal judiciary? Of course not.

(04:33):
At the same time, Soros literally doesn't have the means
to sustain it either, especially if Republicans played out a
significant reduction of the federal court system over the next
four years. That's one point. Here's the much bigger one,
though it's not possible regardless of his or anybody else's means.
The idea of private money running government operations that has

(04:54):
come into play in recent years through donations Allah what
we're known as zuckerbucks, right you remember this, that were
used to operate elections during the pandemic and that have
since been banned by Florida. In many states, however, the
federal government, in the judiciary specifically, is a whole other animal.
Federal courts are funded through congressional appropriations under Article one,

(05:18):
Section nine of the Constitution, what's known as the appropriation's Cause.
This cause mandates the public funds be allocated by Congress.
The judiciary's budget is managed by the Administrative Office of
the US Courts, and any external funding must comply with
strict federal laws and what are considered ethical guidelines, which

(05:39):
I do understand could be a bit of a joke
when we're talking about the federal government. But nevertheless, a
private citizen cannot explicitly cannot directly fund federal court operations
in the sense of replacing or supplementing public funding, as
it would raise concerns about impartiality and flutes in separation

(06:01):
of powers. Just as attempting to buy off a judge
is considered bribery under federal law, attempting to effectively buy
off a whole court, heywhere he's got pay for the
whole thing to operating, even just a judge. That is
that concept on steroids highly unconstitutional. The closest of private
citizen could theoretically impact a court's operations is through the

(06:23):
donation of money or resources, and what's considered an indirect way,
like contributing to a courthouse renovation or a judicial education program.
Even then you have strict guidelines, and even that practice
would have to be explicitly approved by Congress. You couldn't

(06:44):
even step in and renovate a courthouse unless Congress passed
the law saying you could do that. The Anti Deficiency
Act prohibits federal entities from accepting any voluntary services or
funds unless explicitly authorized under law. So this is one
hundred percent a no go. There's no ambiguity, and there's
no way around it, because you know, it's not like

(07:06):
you could even backdoor the thing. If Congress doesn't fund
the courts to operate, they couldn't even show up on
their own and say, yeah, but we really are just
dedicated to this cause, so we're going to do it anyway. No,
they wouldn't even be able to do that. So historically,
private influencer for courts has been a non starter. It
was this whole concept. Actually, it's not new. It was

(07:28):
first attempted in this country as far back as the
early eighteen hundreds in what was known as Tammy Amy Hall,
which was an arm of the Democrat Party. They were
involved in this kind of a scandal between eighteen oh
six to eighteen oh seven, and this led to very
explicit policy around private use of dollars and the operation
of anything to do with the courts, but also federal

(07:51):
entities in the United States,