Here’s a question no serious constitutional scholar should ever have to entertain: Does the President of the United States get to decide who serves in his own executive branch? For more than two centuries, the answer was so obvious nobody bothered to debate it. The President nominates U.S. Attorneys, the Senate confirms them, and they serve at the pleasure of the chief executive. That bedrock arrangement survived every political storm this country has weathered – right up until a single federal judge in Washington state decided he knew better.

An Obama-appointed district judge recently ordered the Trump administration to reinstate a Democrat-connected attorney the President had already fired. Not just reinstate him – restore his back pay, hand him the keys to the office, and grant him full authority over federal prosecutions in Western Washington. The judge then refused to pause his own ruling while the government appealed, essentially daring the administration to do something about it. Somebody did.

From The Post Millennial:

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Sunday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that would have reinstated a Seattle US attorney fired by President Donald Trump.

The appeals court granted the Trump administration an administrative stay in the case involving Roger Rogoff, who was appointed US Attorney for the Western District of Washington by federal judges in July.

The Ninth Circuit – not exactly a courthouse conservatives circle on their calendars with hope – stepped in and froze the lower court’s order. Credit where it’s due. But a temporary freeze is just that: temporary. The appeals court needs to go further and make this block permanent.

A Democrat pedigree from start to finish

The backstory here is almost too convenient to be accidental. Roger Rogoff didn’t wander into this fight by chance. Governor Jay Inslee, a Democrat, first appointed him to the King County Superior Court back in 2013. Inslee liked what he saw and tapped Rogoff again in 2022 to run the state’s new office of independent investigations. When federal judges in Western Washington needed to fill a U.S. Attorney vacancy, Rogoff was their unanimous pick. Noticing a pattern yet?

That vacancy existed by design. Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat, publicly vowed to use the blue-slip process to block the administration’s preferred candidate, Neil Floyd, who had already been serving as the district’s top federal prosecutor since October 2025. Murray’s obstruction ran out the 120-day statutory clock for the Attorney General’s interim appointment, which triggered a provision allowing district courts to appoint their own selection. The judges then installed a reliable Democratic ally.

The timeline tells you everything. Rogoff was sworn in at the Seattle courthouse at 7:40 a.m. on July 15. The White House fired him by email at 8:24 a.m. Forty-four minutes. He then sued the President and the Justice Department, claiming Trump had no authority to remove him.

The law is not ambiguous

Here’s the thing – the relevant statute reads like it was written to prevent exactly this kind of stunt. Federal law states that “each United States attorney is subject to removal by the President.” Not some. Not only those the President personally nominated. Each one. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was characteristically blunt: “District court judges can appoint a temporary U.S. Attorney, and POTUS can fire them.”

The Justice Department argued that Judge Stanley Bastian’s ruling “improperly prevents the president from removing an official who exercises executive power on behalf of the federal government.” That’s not creative lawyering. It’s a plain reading of both the statute and Article II of the Constitution. Bastian, apparently unmoved, not only reinstated Rogoff but refused to stay his own order pending appeal – leaving the DOJ scrambling to the Ninth Circuit for emergency relief.

A temporary stay solves nothing

The Ninth Circuit was right to hit pause, even while stressing it was merely preserving the status quo and not weighing in on the merits. Fine. But an administrative stay just postpones the constitutional collision. The appeals court must rule definitively that the President retains removal authority over every U.S. Attorney, regardless of how they were appointed.

Consider what happens if Rogoff’s theory survives. Any alliance of district judges and obstructionist senators could install handpicked prosecutors over the objections of a sitting president. The executive branch would be staffed by judicial decree. That’s not a republic. That’s rule by the robed.

This dispute was never really about one attorney’s office in Seattle. It’s about whether the constitutional architecture that has governed this nation for nearly 250 years still means what it says. The Ninth Circuit has a rare opportunity to affirm that it does – and Americans who care about the separation of powers should be paying close attention. In the meantime, the Senate should stop dragging its feet and confirm Pete Serrano.

Key Takeaways

• The Ninth Circuit rightly froze a judge’s order reinstating a Democrat-allied prosecutor fired by Trump.
• Federal law plainly states every U.S. Attorney is subject to presidential removal.
• Democrat obstruction deliberately engineered this vacancy so friendly judges could fill the seat.
• A temporary stay is not enough – the appeals court must make this block permanent.

Sources: The Post Millennial, Lynnwood Times