May It Displease the Court

Anti-Trump lawsuits are thrusting judicial power into the spotlight, provoking a showdown.

By  Kimberley A. Strassel   March 20, 2025

Injunction Junction

The only folks getting as much attention these days as Donald Trump and Elon Musk are the federal judges blocking Trump actions. The pitch reached a new level when the administration over the weekend seemed to ignore Judge James Boasberg’s oral order that it turn around planes deporting alleged gang members to El Salvador. The snub comes in the wake of a growing pile of court orders that freeze or undo Trump policy, provoking GOP calls for judicial impeachments or legislation restricting judicial power.

Republicans are steamed in particular that liberal judges are more aggressively issuing “nationwide” or “universal” injunctions—orders that bar the government from enforcing a law, regulation or policy against anyone, not just the specific parties to a case. Conservative scholars view them as judicial overreach, while liberals insist they are a necessary restraint on Trump power. The issue is rapidly reaching a head as the administration formally asks the Supreme Court to clarify injunctive power, while Republicans mobilize to take action in Congress. To dig in:

• The numbers: Universal injunctions are a relatively new thing—and mostly a Trump thing. Former Attorney General William Barr noted in 2019 that there were “only 27 nationwide injunctions in all of the 20th century.” While they’ve grown in the past 25 years, a 2024 Harvard Law Review article explains that the entirety of the George W. Bush and Barack Obama presidencies, as well as the first three years of Joe Biden’s, counted just 32 nationwide injunctions combined. By contrast, Trump was subject to 64 in his first term, while a recent DOJ filing says courts issued “15 universal injunctions (or temporary restraining orders) against the current Administration in February 2025 alone.” (There have since been more.) The Harvard articles notes that 92% of the first-term Trump injunctions were “issued by a judge appointed by a Democrat.”
• Pro: The Obama and Biden administrations both opposed injunctions against their own actions, but that’s long forgotten by Democrats and a media that now insist injunctions are a vital (potentially the “only”) check on the executive. Supporters also claim that universal injunctions reduce litigation and make it more efficient, though the current tidal wave of litigation against this administration (some of it duplicative) isn’t helping that position. Other liberal scholars argue that universal injunctions are the only way to provide relief to all those injured, including those who lack the resources to file litigation.
• Con: Conservatives argue judges lack the power to provide relief to individuals who are not party to a case—and point to the near absence of universal injunctions for most of the country’s history as evidence of a long-established view. That power allows one judge to dictate policy for the country, and to micromanage an elected executive branch. The practice also encourages “forum shopping” (note how many cases opposing Trump are being filed in blue states), and it shuts down debate across the circuits, sometimes forcing the Supreme Court to address an issue before it has been fully argued. While most conservative jurists hold these views and generally refrain from universal injunctions, not all do. All of the 14 national injunctions issued against Biden in his first three years came from judges appointed by a Republican.
• GOP meltdown: The Trump administration has largely abided by the orders and injunctions, working through the appeals process. (The deportations flap hinged instead on a dispute over whether the judge’s oral orders applied, or whether his reach extended into international airspace.) But Trump on Tuesday unloaded on Boasberg, calling him “crooked” and arguing he should be “impeached.” House Republicans are already filing impeachment resolutions against different judges—with encouragement from Musk— while Utah Sen. Mike Lee is pushing legislation that would restrict national injunction power to three-judge panels.
• High Court fiddling: Trump’s tirade against Boasberg prompted a rare response from Chief Justice John Roberts, who noted that “for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.” True, and wise; impeachment has been reserved for clear cases of judicial corruption. But the high court also deserves some criticism for failing to play any meaningful role in reining in injunction abuse—despite pleas from its own members. Justice Clarence Thomas in a 2018 concurrence warned that universal injunctions were becoming a scourge, and that the court was “dutybound” to adjudicate their authority. Justice Neil Gorsuch repeated that message in a 2020 concurrence, while Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Thomas, Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, recently issued a blistering excoriation of a judge’s restraining order concerning the payout of U.S. Agency for International Development funds.

The Department of Justice is now directly asking the Supreme Court to engage by staying recent universal injunctions against Trump’s birthright citizenship order. It pleads: “This Court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.” The court would do everybody a favor by finally issuing guidance on national injunctions, which might serve to short-circuit congressional action and cool temperatures. Though by waiting so long to address the question, any court ruling now will be viewed in the context of the current political uproar. Lesson: Tough issues rarely get easier to solve over time.

James Boasberg, Ordered Trump to return Illegal imigrents to US | Ana C. Reyes, Block banning transgender troops from military | Theodore Chuang, Ruled against Musk's authority on USAID cuts


Loren Ali Khan, Fed Funding | Deborah Boardman, birthright citizenship
John Coughenour. birthright citizenship


Paul Engelmayer, DOGE Injunction | Amy Berman Jackson, Ordered reinstatement Spec Counsel | Angel Kelley, Blocked cuts in Healthcare Funds


Royce Lamberth, blocked stopping transgender mens in women's facilities | Joseph Laplante, block exec order ending birthright citizenship | John McConnell, Block cut in federal funding USAID


Carl Nichols, Blocked halt in paid leave USAID workers | George O'Toole Jr , blocked plan encouraging USAID workers to resign with paid leave | Beryl Howell, Blocked Exec Order targeting law firm Perkins Coie

Trump is fighting a cartel of vile, corrupt and far-left judges trying to kill his campaign promises

By Miranda Devine  March 20, 2025

If you ever doubted that Washington’s corrupt cartel of Democratic law firms, judges, NGOs, and deep-state bureaucrats is a machine designed to thwart the Trump administration, just watch as judge after judge blocks the president’s ability to keep his campaign promises. 

It may not be brown paper bags changing hands, but this lawfare that defies the people’s will is every bit as corrupt. 

It will be up to the Supreme Court to define the limits of presidential authority, but Chief Justice John Roberts’ preemptive scolding of Trump for musing about judicial impeachment doesn’t bode well for the president. 

Trump won a resounding mandate in the November election, winning every swing state, the popular vote and both houses of Congress.

Democrats are rudderless, fighting each other and incapable of mounting an effective opposition. 

So they are depending on the federal courts to be the “last bulwark against Trump,” as the New York Times puts it, celebrating the fact that almost 600 federal judges in courtrooms from Rhode Island to Seattle can issue emergency rulings to “stop the White House in its tracks.” 

Politico has dubbed it the “court case presidency,” noting approvingly that “the courts have provided the only real opposition to Trump 2.0 so far.” 

And so they have.

According to Attorney General Pam Bondi, judges issued more than 14 injunctions against Trump administration actions in February alone, with 160 “resistance” lawsuits winding their way through the system. 

For example, we had Judge James Boasberg, an appointee of President Barack Obama, blocking the deportation of illegal alien criminals deemed a national security threat. 

Judge Ana Reyes — an appointee of President Joe Biden — blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from military service. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt weighed in at her press conference Wednesday, pointing out that “67% of all of the injunctions in this century have come against … President Donald Trump … and 92% of those have been from Democrat-appointed judges. This is a clear concerted effort by leftists who don’t like this president and who are trying to oppose or slow down his agenda.” 

The judge who has most angered Trump is Boasberg, chief judge of the notoriously left-leaning Washington, DC, District Court, who convened an emergency hearing Saturday to block the deportation of 251 dangerous illegal alien criminals, going so far as ordering that the planes be turned around in midair. 

Midair disaster attempt 

Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 Saturday to deport two planeloads of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, who he declared are “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion … and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States … at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.” 

The planes landed in El Salvador, which is being paid $6 million to detain the deportees for a year, as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on Biden’s disastrous illegal migration project. 

“One unelected federal judge [is] trying to control foreign policy,” Bondi railed Wednesday.

“There are 251 reasons why Americans are safer now because those people are out of this country.” 

But Boasberg has stepped up his pressure, demanding DOJ lawyers provide minute details of the flights — potentially to hold members of the administration in contempt and serve as the basis for a future impeachment of Trump. 

Trump lambasted Boasberg on Tuesday as a “radical left lunatic, a troublemaker and agitator,” and called for his impeachment.

Some Republican members of the House are moving to impeach the judge for what they say was a “lawless” order that endangered national security. 

“The judge in this case put the lives of every single person on those aircraft at risk,” White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told CNN. 

“Did he know how much fuel was in those planes? Did he know the flight conditions? Did he know the weather conditions? Did he know how many crew hours? Did he know the need for crew rest? Did he know any of that? No. This judge violated the law. He violated the Constitution … 

“These same district court judges didn’t do a damn thing to stop Joe Biden from flooding this nation with millions of illegal aliens. [They] didn’t issue any injunctions to save the lives of Jocelyn Nungaray or Laken Riley … How are you going to expel illegal alien invaders from our country who are raping [and] murdering little girls if each and every deportation has to be adjudicated by a district court judge?” 

The same lawfare that haunted Trump’s first term and dogged his four years in the wilderness is back with a vengeance. 

After the Russia hoax and two impeachments, Trump’s enemies used the courts to try to bankrupt him, throw him in prison and take him off the ballot. When all else failed, they tried to assassinate him. 

But the lawfare only made him stronger as the American people woke up to the ruse.

Now his mugshot has pride of place in a framed New York Post cover in a corridor off the Oval Office. 

Haven’t Democrats learned their lesson? 

“They can’t help themselves,” says attorney and legal commentator Mike Davis, who founded the Article III Project to push back on lawfare against conservatives.

“Dems are like fat kids at the all-you-can-eat buffet.” 

Davis wants Boasberg impeached and says even if the attempt isn’t successful, the process would be worth it to act as a deterrent to other activist judges. 

In her press conference Wednesday, Leavitt read off a list of dangerous criminal aliens captured in recent days by ICE agents around the country, who should be next on Trump’s deportation list, if only activist judges get out of the way. 

In San Francisco, ICE arrested a citizen of Guatemala convicted of sexual battery. In New Orleans, it nabbed an Ecuadoran citizen convicted of rape on Long Island.

In Dallas, another Mexican with convictions for assault with a firearm and “rape with a foreign object” was picked up.

Houston ICE arrested a Guatemalan convicted of indecent sexual contact with a child. 

“These are heinous criminal alien monsters who the previous administration allowed to flood into this country,” said Leavitt. 

Yes, and these are the monsters whom the Democratic lawfare machine is working overtime to keep in the country, in opposition to a president who is doing what he was elected to do. 

The Supreme Court needs to rein in the lawfare, or we won’t have a country.