It’s hard to call something a democracy when the people vote, the lawmakers spend, and then a judge steps in years later to say, “Never mind, the bureaucracy wins.”
That’s what happened last week, and President Donald Trump is catching it on the chin again for following the law.
A federal judge in Seattle ordered the Trump administration to resume payments from a Biden-era electric vehicle (EV) fund, part of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, to a group of blue-leaning states and the District of Columbia.
Approximately $3.3 billion, allocated initially in 2021, was set aside to install charging stations nationwide. Trump froze it, and the courts unfroze it. And now, the gears churn forward whether the public wants electric cars or not.
While some Americans are still debating EVs, the left isn’t.
And that, more than anything, tells you what’s broken.
Funding the Fantasy While Trump Tries to Brake
The states that sued included Washington, New York, and California, as well as others that were already fully committed to a gasless, plug-dependent future, and they didn’t like waiting.
The Trump administration wanted a review of where those dollars were headed and whether the infrastructure was even viable without forcing compliance on families who still owned gas-powered trucks.
They were met with a judicial injunction.
The court said the pause violated congressional intent, with the kicker: Trump followed the ruling without throwing a tantrum or holding a press conference and didn't execute an end-run around it. The judge ruled, and the president complied.
What did the media say? Trump is out of control and held back by the judiciary.
Let’s call it something else: governing in good faith.
Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, head full of pudding, ignored Supreme Court orders on at least three major national policies. There were no breathless op-eds or indictments. Just quiet shrugs and editorials about “persistence.”
We’ll come back to that.
The EV Trojan Horse Rolls Again
When Congress allocated billions to the IRA, it sold it as an “investment” in the future. What they didn’t explain was how these EV grants would become the structural backbone of federal pressure campaigns.
Accepting this money means more than just building charging ports. States must adhere to guidelines so stuffed with climate doctrine, demographic equity metrics, and bureaucratic reporting that you’d think the chargers were made of paper-pushing.
It's not a grift; it's a leash.
Gas stations never came with political strings, but charging stations do.
And now, with one ruling, the leash has been tightened. President Trump paused to check the knot. The judge snapped it back into place.
You still have freedom of choice. You just won’t have any practical way to act on it.
Courts Only Swing One Way
There’s a reason people don’t trust the judicial branch anymore. When Trump froze federal DEI funding, paused NIH grants that promoted surgical gender experiments on minors, or questioned COVID-era handouts from the previous administration, he faced injunction after injunction. Every bureaucratic sacred cow came with its own legal protection order.
But when Biden got slapped by the Supreme Court for canceling student debt? He did it again, using a different agency.
When the eviction moratorium was struck down? Biden extended it anyway.
When the courts gutted the vaccine mandates? He reissued guidance using federal contractors.
But when Trump delays funds for a program he believes is anti-consumer and possibly unlawful under new policy guidelines, he’s blocked immediately. And called a dictator.
Funny how that works.
Trump Listens, Biden Bulldozes
The left loves painting Trump as a tyrant. That script runs regardless of his actions. But when the court said, “You can’t block this money,” Trump didn’t rewrite the law or claim a divine mandate. He obeyed the judicial process despite knowing full well what these EV funds would do to energy freedom and vehicle choice across the country.
Meanwhile, Biden’s DOJ has spent years ignoring both congressional oversight and Supreme Court precedent. And that’s when he isn’t outsourcing decisions to unelected boards, agencies, and czars with no electoral accountability.
Trump works within the system and gets smeared. Biden circumvents the system and gets praise for being “tenacious.”
Apparently, respecting the Constitution is only admirable when a Democrat does it poorly.
They’re Not Just Charging Stations
What this fund release confirms is something deeper: the courts are no longer neutral arbiters. They’ve become partners in progressivism. Instead of protecting constitutional limits, they reinforce government expansion by elevating technocrats over citizens. They bless mandates disguised as market shifts.
The EV charger network is a perfect example.
These aren’t just tools to fuel cars. They’re federal markers, footprints of control, telling Americans: This is where you're allowed to go; how you’re allowed to get there. This is what your freedom looks like now.
Want to drive cross-country in your 2012 Camry? Good luck. Repair shops will vanish. Gas stations will be fewer, and charging lots will dominate. And they’ll run on rules set by Washington, not Wisconsin.
You don’t need a federal ban to eliminate gas-powered vehicles. You just need to make everything else impossible.
The Deep Swamp Always Wins
President Trump tried to slow down the swamp’s latest expansion. The bureaucracy howled. The states lawyered up. And the bench delivered another blow. The ruling didn’t just restore funding. It restored momentum for a movement Americans never asked for.
And still, Trump played by the rules.
Compare that to Biden, whose entire presidency was an exercise in ignoring rulings and daring the system to stop him. He governed like he was owed obedience, not permission.
Trump governs like every action must pass legal muster, even when the law is being twisted into a pretzel by activists in robes.
The contrast is unmistakable.
Final Thoughts
The next time a pundit screams about Trump being a threat to democracy, ask them how many court orders he’s ignored. Ask them how many laws he rewrote without authority. Ask them whether he defied the highest court in the land and bragged about it.
They won’t have an answer.
The real story here isn’t Trump freezing EV funding; it’s that he respected a judicial slapdown he fundamentally disagreed with.
Biden wouldn’t have. He’d have reshuffled the agency, renamed the program, and signed the check anyway.
That’s not “saving democracy.” That’s rebranding tyranny.
And somewhere in D.C., a brand-new charging station just got funded with your money and your silence.
