The resistance of district judges to the Trump administration has sometimes been justified, sometimes excessive, and sometimes downright lawless and dangerous. Tonight’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Kennedy (the very caption of which reeks with irony in a Massachusetts courtroom) is the latter. Judge Indira Talwani, a 2013 Barack Obama appointee, ordered that the executive branch must defy a federal law — the “One Big Beautiful Bill” enacted by Congress on Thursday and signed on Friday — and “shall take all steps necessary to ensure that Medicaid funding continues to be disbursed in the customary manner and timeframes to Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its members; Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts; and Planned Parenthood Association of Utah.”

You got that right: A single federal judge is ordering that public monies be spent after the Congress of the United States specifically passed a law declining to spend them. You can’t argue with the judge’s reasoning, because there isn’t any; the case was only filed today, and the order is not accompanied by an opinion. It’s just a raw exercise of power.

The complaint alleges that the OBBB is a bill of attainder punishing Planned Parenthood, which is ridiculous; Congress has without legal controversy in the past decided whom and what to fund and defund. In the 1880s, it was common to debate bills (sometimes enacted, sometimes not, often vetoed by Grover Cleveland) to fund pensions for particular Union veterans. If Congress decides that a particular government contractor shall be used or not used, that is within its plenary and nearly absolute powers. The complaint also asserts that defunding is a violation of the equal protection clause and retaliation under the First Amendment. But the bar for attacking the motives of Congress is impossibly high. At bottom, this lawsuit is grounded in the notion that Planned Parenthood and the cause of abortion are immune from the usual forces of law, and of democracy (the Planned Parenthood brief cites a dozen cases with its own name in the caption but doesn’t even cite the leading Supreme Court case on legislative retaliation), but the Supreme Court just rejected that in a case involving states defunding the nation’s largest abortion provider from Medicaid.

The executive branch must comply with the rule of law and the orders of courts. But this is the most direct provocation yet to the limits of the power of a single district judge to order the breaking of laws duly enacted by Congress in ways designed to be irreparable even if the executive branch later wins on appeal — thus placing Judge Talwani not only against the people’s Congress and the president and the basic human right to life, but also against the exercise of judicial power by the First Circuit and the Supreme Court. If Congress lacks the power to decide when not to spend taxpayer money, it may as well disband. The administration is well within its rights to refuse to disburse any funds unless and until it has exhausted all avenues of appeal. In doing so, it will be defending not only the prerogatives of its own branch but of Congress and the Supreme Court.