Q&A – If Judges Were Defunded, Could Private Money Step In?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Today’s note was submitted by Talkback. The listener suggested that she believes George Soros or other private citizens who fund left-wing projects would step in to fund courts to keep them operational if Republicans sought to defund them in congress.
Bottom Line: 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 nationwide injunctions against President Trump’s directives than any other president not named Trump in American history – 15.
In President Trump’s first 58 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 two terms (or more in the case of FDR). By way of comparison, President Biden had a total of 14 nationwide injunctions issued against his administration 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 64 nationwide injunctions – a number that was greater than all other presidents from 1963 to 2017 combined – most of which were later overturned on appeal – in other words unconstitutional obstruction of President Trump’s authority.
With judicial activism serving as the main mechanism of the Left’s ‘resistance’ movement currently, and with the record pace with which it’s happening, the calls for taking drastic action to combat the activism have grown loud. Last week Governor DeSantis called on congress to strip authority from lower-level federal judges to prevent them from issuing nationwide injunctions (however that’s 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 referred to the appeals process playing out to solve disputes. The idea that is imminently doable with only Republican support is to defund certain federal courts in the upcoming budget.
The notion of defunding activist federal judges is something Congressman Chip Roy has openly discussed and it’s something that I not only support but feel is the most realistic path forward given the current makeup of the senate. That takes us to today’s question. Even if congress were to defund certain federal courts – would it really work or would perhaps left-wing activists like George Soras step in to fill the gap financially instead?
Let’s start with this... The annual cost to operate the federal judiciary as currently constructed? $8.5 billion. George Soros, as an example since he was cited, is currently worth an estimated $6.7 billion. Now would Republicans defund the entire federal judiciary, of course not, at the same time Soros literally doesn’t have the means to sustain it either – especially if Republicans played out a significant reduction in the federal court system over the next four years. That’s one point. Here’s the bigger one. It’s not possible regardless of his means.
The idea of private money running government operations has come into play in recent years through donations a la what were known as “Zuckerbucks” that were used to operate elections during the pandemic and that have been banned by Florida, for example. However, the federal government and the judiciary specifically, is a whole other animal.
Federal courts are funded through congressional appropriations under Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution, “the Appropriations Clause”, which mandates that public funds be allocated by congress. The judiciary’s budget is managed by the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, and any external funding would need to comply with strict federal laws and ethical guidelines. A private citizen cannot directly fund federal court operations in the sense of replacing or supplementing public funding, as it would raise concerns about impartiality, influence, and separation of powers. Just as attempting to “buy off” a judge is considered bribery under federal law, attempting to effectively buy off whole courts would be that on steroids.
The closest a private citizen could theoretically impact a court’s operations would be through the donation of money or resources in an indirect way— like contributing to a courthouse renovation or a judicial education program. Even then there are strict guidelines, and everything would have to be disclosed ahead of time with explicit approval by congress. The Anti-Deficiency Act prohibits federal entities from accepting voluntary services or funds unless authorized by law.
Historically, private influence over courts has been a non-starter. It’s been attempted as far back as the early 1800’s. What was known as Tammany Hall, an arm of the Democrat Party, was found in a scandal between 1806-1807 – to effectively attempt to privately bankroll federal justice. This led to the explicit policy against private dollars going to any operational function of courts within the United States.