Having failed in seemingly endless lawfare attempts to remove President Trump from office through impeachment during his first term, convict him of crimes to make him ineligible to run for a second, even imprison and bankrupt him, Democrats continue also to file a record number of U.S. District Court "universal injunctions" attempting to block his policy decisions as our nation's top executive official even following a landslide election win.
These nationwide presidential injunctions have now become a favorite tool for obstructing popular Trump agendas, comprising more than two-thirds of all presidential injunctions issues over the past 25 years. More were issued during the past two months than three former presidents faced throughout their entire terms.
Unlike court injunction orders of vacatur, cases where a judge's ruling is binding only on the agency to which it is directed, sweeping nationwide injunctions, as the name implies, are being used by lower court judges not only to decide cases before them, but also to derail executive policies nationwide.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, many of these judges appear to have politically cherry-picked leanings.
A Harvard Law Review tally published in 2024 noted that of the 64 injunctions during Trump's first Republican administration, 92.2% were issued by judges appointed by Democrats, while all of 14 slapped on Biden came from Republican-appointed judges.
Of the 69 District Court judges presiding over cases so far involving Trump's current administration, 21 were appointed by Republican presidents: two by Ronald Reagan, one by George H.W. Bush, eight by George W. Bush, and 10 by Trump himself, with the other 48 appointed by Democrats: seven by Bill Clinton, 20 by Obama, and 21 by Biden.
One form of injunction, a temporary restraining order, or a "TRO", immediately blocks an action for 14 days to allow more time for consideration, often before it is too late to prevent "irreparable harm."
Obama appointee U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg famously handed down a TRO around the time that the Trump administration proceeded to deport hundreds of illegal migrant gang members, including Venezuelan nationals subject to the Alien Enemies Act, to El Salvador.
Then, after the planes were already en route, Boasberg also issued a bench ruling ordering that they be returned to the U.S.
After at least one of those planes touched down later that evening, El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele responded to Judge Boasberg in a post on X, stating "Oopsie, too late."
As White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Fox News, "A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil."
Another TRO issued by U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali , a Biden appointee, required the Trump administration to pay out $2 billion appropriated by Congress and owed by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to grant recipients and foreign aid contractors.
Since it didn't deal with current contracts or ongoing payments, the Supreme Court, which upheld Ali's ruling, 5-4, had little room to intervene.
U.S. District Court Judge Theodore Chuang, an Obama appointee, found that Elon Musk's DOGE efforts to dismantle USAID altogether "on an accelerated basis" likely violated the U.S. Constitution "in multiple ways," ordering partial restoration of the agency's functions, including reinstatement of personnel access to email and payment systems.
Nevertheless, regardless of what a U.S. District judge may rule, Article III of the Constitution tasks the judicial branch with resolving "cases" and "controversies" before them, not making policy.
After all, it's not just Republicans who have expressed alarm regarding such far-overreaching lower court decisions.
Two-hundred forty Democratic lawmakers, including Sens. Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin, in 2023 submitted a friend-of-the-court brief warning of the "perilous consequences" resulting from a district judge's move to block the abortion pill mifepristone, and even liberal Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan expressed dismay.
Encouragingly, a coalition of 19 Republican senators led by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa has filed a bill called the Judicial Relief Clarification Act that would amend the Administrative Procedure Act and the Declaratory Judgment Act to ban judges from issuing nationwide injunctions in the absence of a class action.
Separately, Republican Congressman Darrell Issa of California spoke in support of his similar bill — the No Rogue Rulings Act — which is under consideration by the House Judiciary Committee.
Rep. Issa explains, "The federal judiciary isn't interpreting the law, it is impeding the presidency. It is in fact not co-equal, but [is] holding itself to be superior."
As Sen. Grassley correctly observes: "The obvious solution is to limit district courts to resolving the cases only between the parties before them. If the Supreme Court won't act to rein in the lower courts, Congress must."
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture and the graduate space architecture program. His latest of 12 books is "Architectures Beyond Boxes and Boundaries: My Life By Design" (2022). Read Larry Bell's Reports — More Here.
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