The Trump team’s disdain for court orders is blowing up in court. Accountability has been slow in coming

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A federal judge raked President Donald Trump’s administration over the coals on Monday in a case involving his plans to renovate a public golf course in Washington, DC.

After the administration cut down more than 430 trees without properly notifying US District Judge Ana Reyes, she said last week she was “furious” and issued a court order to stop it.

Then, after Trump on Sunday said construction would begin “immediately” despite the judge’s order , she forced officials to testify on Monday and sought to highlight the apparent unwillingness of Justice Department lawyers to vouch for the administration’s claims in court.

All of this comes as the administration accuses the judge of “egregious” behavior and seeks to remove her from the case .

It’s been quite the scene. But it’s also been a long time coming.

Reyes’ exasperated displays come after a series of similar examples of the administration flouting and even violating court orders.

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District judges like Reyes ruled that the administration had violated court orders in at least 31 lawsuits over 15 months, according to an Associated Press investigation in May. That’s in addition to more than 250 other examples of noncompliance that judges have found related to immigration cases.

And the judges finding these violations are often Republican-nominated ones.

Any one of these examples could be understood as a mistake or a mishap. But the growing volume of them — along with Trump and those around him often speaking openly about violating court orders , as Trump did Sunday — suggest there’s something more going on. (A whistleblower last year also claimed that a top DOJ official explicitly spoke about the possible need to ignore court orders .)

At the same time, there’s been no accountability that is seeming to make the administration change its approach. Because this just keeps happening.

Let’s recap some of the high-profile examples of the administration flouting or violating court orders, and what became of them.

Mere weeks into Trump’s second term, a federal judge in Rhode Island found the administration had violated a court order by failing to un-freeze many of the federal grants it blocked after he ordered it to do so.

The conclusion : The judge opted not to hold the administration in contempt of court, but he did issue a warning. He quoted from a 1975 Supreme Court ruling that said: “Persons who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt even if the order is ultimately ruled incorrect.”

US District Judge James Boasberg ordered the administration to turn around planes that were deporting migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. But the flights continued.

The conclusion : Boasberg initiated contempt hearings , saying that “probable cause exists to find the Government in criminal contempt.” But after a lengthy process that included plenty of stops and starts, two Trump-nominated judges on a divided appeals court ended the inquiry and called it a “clear abuse of discretion.”

US District Judge Paula Xinis found the administration had engaged in “ willful and intentional noncompliance ” with her orders related to the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the administration wrongfully deported to El Salvador, later charged criminally and tried to deport again.

The conclusion : Xinis also repeatedly floated possible contempt . But eventually, in June 2025, Abrego Garcia was returned , despite the administration having previously claimed it didn’t have the power to make that happen.

Around the same time, US District Judge Brian Murphy of Massachusetts said that the administration’s rapid third-country deportations of migrants despite his injunction were “unquestionably violative of this court’s order.” He also accused the administration of manufacturing chaos and trying to evade court orders .

The conclusion : Murphy said he would leave the contempt question “for another day,” but he didn’t proceed with such an inquiry.

Other judges have found hundreds of instances of immigration authorities failing to comply with immigration-related court orders. Patrick Schiltz, the GOP-nominated chief US district judge in Minnesota, said he found more than 200 such instances .

The conclusion : Schiltz at one point took the extraordinary step of summoning Todd Lyons , then the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and threatening him with contempt. But Schiltz canceled the contempt hearing after ICE complied with an order to release a wrongly detained man from Ecuador.

Despite a court order blocking Trump from barring media outlets whose coverage he didn’t like, including CNN, from the White House grounds, those journalists were initially unable to access the grounds. And Trump has since then barred CNN from traveling with him on Air Force One .

The conclusion : The access to the grounds was soon restored as the case proceeds. The access on Air Force One wasn’t explicitly mentioned in the court order, and the White House has continued to block CNN from boarding on its assigned pool days.

Despite another federal judge ruling that the administration had to cancel all future airings of Trump’s controversial taxpayer-funded political ads , the administration was again slow to comply. The ads aired hundreds more times , CNN reported last week.

The conclusion : A Justice Department lawyer apologized “to the court and the plaintiffs,” and no further legal action has been taken.

Trump-appointed US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher of Maryland has found that ICE wrongfully deported more than 50 unaccompanied minors who had blanket court orders barring their removal. And in a separate case, she found it twice wrongfully deported an asylum-seeker to El Salvador, in violation of three court orders.

The conclusion : These two examples appear to be the only ones in which a judge has found the administration in contempt. Gallagher held the administration in contempt for the first one in August , according to Law360, and for the second one a few weeks ago .

Despite those two rulings, the administration has flouted or delayed complying with court orders in three other cases — the media ban, the political ads and now the golf course — since then.

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周一，一名联邦法官严厉批评了唐纳德·特朗普总统的政府，该案涉及他翻新华盛顿特区一座公共高尔夫球场的计划。

上周，政府在没有适当通知美国地区法官安娜·雷耶斯的情况下砍伐了 430 多棵树，雷耶斯法官表示她“非常愤怒”，并发布了法院命令制止这种行为。

随后，尽管法官下令禁止施工，特朗普周日仍表示将“立即”开工建设。周一，她迫使官员们出庭作证，并试图强调司法部律师显然不愿意在法庭上为政府的说法作证。

这一切都发生在政府指责法官行为“极其恶劣”并试图将其撤换出此案之际。

这真是一幅壮观的景象。但这也是酝酿已久的。

雷耶斯愤怒的表态，源于此前政府一系列类似的藐视甚至违反法庭命令的行为。

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据美联社5月份的一项调查显示，像雷耶斯这样的地区法官裁定，在过去15个月里，政府至少在31起诉讼中违反了法院命令。此外，法官们还发现了250多起与移民案件相关的其他违规行为。

而做出这些违规裁决的法官往往是共和党提名的法官。

这些例子中的任何一个都可以被理解为错误或失误。但此类事件的数量不断增加——再加上特朗普及其身边的人经常公开谈论违反法庭命令（就像特朗普周日所做的那样）——表明背后可能另有隐情。（去年一位举报人也声称，一位司法部高级官员曾明确表示可能需要无视法庭命令。）

与此同时，似乎没有任何问责机制促使政府改变其做法。因为这种情况一直在发生。

让我们回顾一下政府藐视或违反法院命令的一些引人注目的例子，以及最终的后果。

特朗普第二个任期开始仅仅几周后，罗德岛的一名联邦法官就裁定，特朗普政府违反了法院命令，未能解冻其在他下令后冻结的许多联邦拨款。

结论：法官选择不以藐视法庭罪追究行政部门的责任，但他确实发出了警告。他引用了1975年最高法院的一项裁决，该裁决指出：“即使最终裁定命令错误，擅自对法律做出解释并拒绝服从命令的人通常也面临刑事藐视法庭的风险。”

美国地区法官詹姆斯·博斯伯格下令政府根据《敌侨法》遣返将移民送往萨尔瓦多臭名昭著的监狱的飞机。但这些航班仍在继续飞行。

结论：博阿斯伯格启动了藐视法庭听证会，称“有合理理由认定政府犯有刑事藐视罪”。但经过漫长的程序，期间多次中断，两名由特朗普提名的法官在意见分歧的上诉法院终止了调查，并称其为“明显滥用自由裁量权”。

美国地区法官保拉·西尼斯认定，政府“故意且蓄意地不遵守”了她关于驱逐基尔马·阿布雷戈·加西亚的命令。政府错误地将加西亚驱逐到萨尔瓦多，后来又对他提起刑事诉讼，并试图再次将其驱逐出境。

结论：希尼斯也多次暗示可能存在藐视法庭的行为。但最终，在2025年6月，阿布雷戈·加西亚被遣返回国，尽管此前政府声称其无权这样做。

大约在同一时间，马萨诸塞州联邦地区法官布莱恩·墨菲表示，尽管他已发布禁令，但政府仍迅速将移民遣返回第三国，这“无疑违反了本法院的命令”。他还指责政府制造混乱，试图逃避法院命令。

结论：墨菲表示，他将把藐视法庭的问题“留待以后再处理”，但他并没有继续进行此类调查。

其他法官也发现了数百起移民当局不遵守与移民相关的法院命令的案例。明尼苏达州共和党提名的首席联邦地区法官帕特里克·希尔茨表示，他发现了200多起此类案例。

结论：希尔茨一度采取了非同寻常的举措，传唤了时任移民和海关执法局代理局长托德·莱昂斯，并威胁要以藐视法庭罪名起诉他。但在移民和海关执法局遵照命令释放了一名被错误拘留的厄瓜多尔男子后，希尔茨取消了藐视法庭听证会。

尽管法院下令禁止特朗普禁止他不喜欢的媒体（包括CNN）进入白宫，但这些记者最初仍然无法进入。此后，特朗普还禁止CNN记者乘坐空军一号随行。

结论：随着案件的进展，进入白宫的权限很快恢复。法院命令中并未明确提及登上空军一号的权限，白宫也继续阻止CNN在指定的媒体采访日登机。

尽管另一位联邦法官裁定，特朗普政府必须取消所有未来播放的由纳税人资助的、备受争议的政治广告，但政府再次迟迟未能遵守裁决。据美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）上周报道，这些广告又播放了数百次。

结论：司法部律师向“法庭和原告”道歉，没有采取进一步的法律行动。

由特朗普任命的马里兰州联邦地区法官斯蒂芬妮·加拉格尔裁定，美国移民及海关执法局（ICE）错误地驱逐了50多名无人陪伴的未成年人，这些未成年人持有禁止遣返的全面法院命令。在另一起案件中，她发现ICE两次错误地将一名寻求庇护者遣返回萨尔瓦多，违反了三项法院命令。

结论：这两个案例似乎是法官认定政府藐视法庭的仅有的案例。据 Law360 报道，加拉格尔法官在 8 月份就第一个案例认定政府藐视法庭，并在几周前就第二个案例认定政府藐视法庭。

尽管有这两项裁决，但自那以后，政府在其他三起案件中——媒体禁令、政治广告以及现在的球场——都藐视或拖延遵守法院命令。