Officials in the White House are angry that the courts are slowing down parts of Trump’s plan.

In the White House, legal problems were called a “occupational hazard,” and some lawyers are worried that the country could be heading for a constitutional crisis.

Washington, D.C. Senior White House officials are angry about a string of court orders that are getting in the way of President Donald Trump’s plans. This has caused fears that they may ignore the decisions of the courts, which could lead to a constitutional crisis.

Monday, a federal judge in Rhode Island said that the Trump administration did not follow his previous order to temporarily stop a broad funding freeze. The judge told the president and his top officials in no uncertain terms that “those who make private determinations of the law and refuse to obey an order generally risk criminal contempt.”

Trump has promised to cut back on spending, change the federal government, and end birthright citizenship. However, district court judge John McConnell’s order comes after other legal losses that call these plans into question.

The rulings suggest that many of Trump’s plans will be delayed or even stopped while cases from people who don’t agree with him work their way up the judicial ladder.

Officials in the Trump administration said they weren’t completely shocked; they said they knew the courts would be a problem.

“You can count on the courts to do this,” a White House official who knows how Trump thinks told NBC News. “What’s bad is that we have to wait to get it to the higher courts and, if necessary, the Supreme Court.”

“When we write the text of executive orders, we try to make it possible for court challenges to succeed, but this is part of the job,” the person said.

Some people at the White House sounded more angry. White House aide Stephen Miller replied to a social media post from former Biden administration Cabinet official Pete Buttigieg: “Hey Pete, care to show us the line in the Constitution where it says a single unelected district judge can take over decision-making control over the entire executive branch affecting 300 [million] citizens?”

Vice President JD Vance emphasized that judges cannot control the executive’s power, stating that directing military operations or prosecutor discretion is illegal.

Vance did not name a specific court decision. When asked for comment, his office sent the question to the White House press office, but they did not reply.

One GOP senatorial friend spoke out in support.

“I think they do,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., said when asked if the White House can get around judges who are stopping Trump’s executive moves.

Vance’s post made it seem like there might be a fight between the Trump administration and the courts, which are a separate and equal part of the government. For more than two hundred years, U.S. history has shown that courts can overturn laws and stop executive acts that they think are unconstitutional.

If Trump disobeyed a court order he didn’t like, it would upset the country’s delicate system of checks and balances, and there doesn’t seem to be a way to fix it.

NBC News talked to Alberto Gonzales, who was attorney general under Republican President George W. Bush. Gonzales said, “Ignoring the courts on purpose could be grounds for impeachment, or at least public condemnation and congressional censure.”

“Not the vice president or president, but the courts decide what is illegal or against the Constitution in the end.” In this way, the judges have some control because they are the last word on what the executive’s legal power is.

Republicans control both the House and the Senate and haven’t shown much desire to stand up to Trump so far, so impeachment doesn’t look likely.

It is not possible to jail a president who is still in office. During Trump’s criminal trial in Manhattan last year, he was held in contempt. But even then, when he was a candidate and not the incumbent, Judge Juan Merchan didn’t seem eager to use the strongest punishment power he had.

In theory, a judge could fine the government, but it’s hard to see how they would fine a litigant who had endless funds.

Laurence Tribe, emeritus professor at Harvard Law School, told NBC News, “Vance’s arguments, if you can call them that, are completely without merit and sound to me like strong hints that the White House and its [Elon] Musk contingent are planning to ignore court rulings that they find inconvenient or that they see as hostile to their takeover agenda.”

There is a long history of bad blood between Trump and judges who have stood in his way. He has never been afraid to insult them when he feels angry, even when they have power over his life.

As the case went before Merchan, Trump said that the judge was “biased and conflicted.” He also went after the daughter of the judge.

It’s not clear if Trump will again insult judges by name, but in an interview, a government official said that nothing is off the table.

The guy said, “You’ll have to wait and see.”

The judges are now more of a threat to Trump’s policy plan than the Democrats in Congress. That might not be a mistake.

During Joe Biden’s presidency, Democrats tried to fill the courts with judges they liked, just like presidents of both parties do when they are in charge.

By the time Biden left office, 235 of his judicial choices had been approved by the Senate, which was run by Democrats. This was one more than Trump had been able to do in his first term.

The Democratic leader in the Senate, Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), talked about the scores in a letter to his colleagues on Monday.

Schumer wrote that the courts are the first line of defense against the illegal actions of this government. “In the past four years, Senate Democrats rebuilt the federal judiciary in a way that will go down in history.”

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court issued an emergency order last week that briefly blocked Musk and his colleagues at Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing the Treasury Department’s private payment systems. These systems contain sensitive information like social security numbers.

Because of this, Musk wrote on X, his social media site, that the judge is “protecting corruption” and “needs to be impeached NOW!”

A Trump administration adviser said they were upset that the courts were getting too involved in the executive office.

“This judge clearly doesn’t give an s— about the law, so what are we supposed to do — wait until we have a 2/3 majority in the Senate to impeach and remove?” The officer was talking about the steps needed to remove a judge from office. “The unconstitutional innovation here is coming from the judiciary, not from the executive branch.”

A temporary restraining order was also given last week by District Judge Carl Nichols, stopping the U.S. Agency for International Development from putting more than 2,000 workers on paid leave.

Aid groups say that the plan to cut back on USAID has already had “deadly consequences.”

On Monday, U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. put a brief hold on the Trump administration’s plan to offer buyouts to a lot of federal workers. This was a big issue for Trump at the start of his campaign because he wanted to cut the number of people working for the government. An administration source told NBC News that as of Monday, 60,000 federal workers had agreed to the deal.

Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after the decision, “I don’t know how you can lose a case like that.” He also said, “I got elected on making government better, more efficient, and smaller, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Court decisions that stopped leaders from achieving their goals also caused them a lot of trouble. After he was re-elected in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt reportedly tried to add more judges to the Supreme Court to weaken the power of the people who were stopping his New Deal reforms. The plan did not work.

Critics said that if Trump disobeyed a court decision, it would go far beyond Roosevelt’s failed plan to pack the courts with more judges and would go against the very idea of the rule of law.

In an interview, Matthew Platkin, the attorney general of New Jersey and one of the plaintiffs in the spending freeze lawsuit, said, “JD Vance did go to law school, but I don’t think he paid any attention because you learn on the first day of law school that courts make the law of this country.”

The American Bar Association said in a statement on Monday that the Trump administration’s plans to change the government were careless.

“In the past two weeks, more than a dozen lawsuits have been filed saying that the actions of the administration go against the Constitution and US laws and the rule of law.” The piece of writing said, “The list gets longer every day.”

“These actions have made people who were hurt have to go to court to get help. The courts protect people from these violations.” We back our courts, which are giving these cases the attention they need right away.

Also, Steve Bannon, who was Trump’s top strategist in the White House during his first term, warned people.

Trump’s MAGA movement leader and host of the podcast “War Room,” Bannon, called Judge McConnell “a hack.” He also said Trump should follow the order while he fights.

Last year, Bannon was jailed for contempt of Congress. “My natural inclination and the facts merit that President Trump should definitely defy it, and the front line of his executives should be ready to actually go to prison on contempt charges,” he said.

Bannon suggests Trump should use expedited appeal and emergency docket in Supreme Court to win on facts, as judges like John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett may not reward Trump for going against the lower court.