Ousted From Power By Voters, Dems Turn To Activist Judges To Defy Trump
Lower federal court judges have no constitutional authority to govern by injunction and undermine the executive branch.
Lower federal court judges have no constitutional authority to govern by injunction and undermine the executive branch.
thefederalist.com
11 Feb 2025 ~~ By John Daniel Davidson
What’s happening right now is that Democrats, having been thrown out of power by American voters in a landslide victory for Trump, have decided they’re going to deploy a widely-used tactic from Trump’s first term to thwart the president’s agenda: use the federal judiciary. Under the false pretext that the lower federal courts are part of a “coequal branch of government” with the executive, they’re aiming to shut down Trump’s reform efforts with a fusillade of preliminary injunctions.
In recent days dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration by Democrat attorneys general and various left-wing groups. These groups have carefully selected their venues, ensuring the lawsuits come before rabidly anti-Trump activist judges. So far, the tactic seems to be working. As of this past weekend, eight different rulings from the federal bench have temporarily halted the president’s executive orders.
Federal judges in Democrat-majority districts have issued preliminary injunctions blocking Trump’s executive actions to end birthright citizenship, reform and downsize the United States Agency for International Development, and offer buyouts to federal bureaucrats. A federal judge this past weekend blocked Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and all other political appointees in the Trump administration —
including the Treasury secretary and his deputies — from accessing payment data at the Treasury Department.
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The problem is, as my colleague Sean Davis
noted recently on X, federal judges have no actual authority to do this. They can’t decide on their own who the president can talk to or what data he can access. They can’t bind the president at all. According to the U.S. Constitution they’re “inferior” courts and therefore don’t have any authority over the executive branch. Yes, the three branches of the federal government are coequal, but the only part of the federal judiciary that’s equal to the presidency is the Supreme Court, not all the federal district courts scattered across the country.
~Snip~
It’s long past time to settle this. The American people overwhelmingly elected Trump precisely because they wanted to see his agenda for America enacted. Lower court federal judges, whom no one voted for, have no right to assert their will over and against the will of the American people. The sooner the Supreme Court takes this up and settles the obvious question, the sooner Democrat lawfare against Trump’s agenda will come to an end. Instead of relying on activist judges, Democrats might then have to figure out how to compete at the ballot box — something they are obviously loath to do.
Commentary:
Since Neo-Marxist Democrats have muddied our judicial system with activist judges more than willing to do the Democrat's bidding.
Since we no longer have a legal justice system, red state AG’s should make this a complete clown show. Texas is very much in line with what Trump has done, and Paxton should be filing lawsuits over every one of these “decisions.” I have read he is investigating a couple schools in the Dallas area who are hiding their transvestite athletes.
A solution to deter Democrats shopping for politicized district court judges to get injunctions against their political opposition is to require an application for Temporary Restraining Order against the government or federal legislation be heard by 5 district judges nationally chosen by blind pool. Such legal arguments can be made in one 'Zoom' presentation to the 5 judges. That would stymie forum shopping and we would see less apps for TROs if the Democrat legal, operatives could not stack the deck with one of their judges
