However, there is one opposition area that has found purchase: Politicized judges have managed to gum up pursuing the will of the American people. A new round of lawfare against Trump and those who support him has been unleashed by government unions, nonprofits, NGOs and blue state Attorney Generals — institutions and individuals who have been sucking taxpayer money for personal gain for decades.
Lone activist judges in deep blue jurisdictions have been slapping national injunctions and restraining orders on Trump executive orders as fast as their paralegals can write them. Virtually none of them will stand on appeal as they often fail to cite even a single law or precedent.
For instance, a coalition of 19 Democrat Attorneys General led by — no surprise here — virulent anti-Trumper and New York Attorney General Letitia James sued Trump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and the Treasury Department to, as they claimed, “stop the unauthorized disclosure of Americans’ private information and sensitive data.”
In another non-surprise, they found a New York judge to rule in their favor. The evidence presented for which U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer issued his temporary restraining order was based on no laws or legal precedents, but on information from three dubious sources: a floor speech given by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, a social media post by Sen. Ron Wyden and an article in Wired magazine. That’s it, folks.
Basically, this was one dude’s opinion, like several other judges, thwarting the will of the American people through the President.
Although government-sponsored Politico paints the judges in a heroic light, even they admit this dynamic:
“As dozens of lawsuits challenging Trump’s early policies are rushing through several strategically chosen federal district courts around the country…these courts have emerged as the only institutions with the power and the will to check Trump’s onslaught. In some cases, judges are voicing distress and even visceral fury as they stand in Trump’s way.”
Visceral fury — pitching childish fits — is not exactly respectable jurisprudence and the rulings make that perfectly clear.
Here are some of the higher profile rulings, but new ones pop daily:
- U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, a Joe Biden appointee in Washington, D.C., and U.S. District Judge John McConnell, a Barack Obama appointee in Rhode Island, blocked Trump’s executive order pausing billions of dollars in federal spending until they could be reviewed.
- U.S. District Judge George O’Toole, a Bill Clinton appointee in Massachusetts, blocked the Trump program of offering generous buyouts to hundreds of thousands of federal workers in return for those workers resigning.
- U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Reagan appointee in Washington, D.C., blocked the implementation of Trump’s order to transfer transgender women inmates to men’s prisons. Unbelievable.
- U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee in Maryland, blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship order.
- U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Biden appointee in Washington, D.C., blocked Trump officials from disclosing the names of FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases.
One of several lessons we learned from Trump’s first term is that it is not hard for Democrats to find an activist leftist judge — there are about 700 federal judges, after all! — to halt presidential actions based on thin air, as Engelmayer did in New York last week. To the laymen, this is a wildly foolish and anti-democratic system and Constitutionally suspect.
If SCOTUS wants to do the country, the presidency and common sense some good, it needs to rule on whether these nation-wide injunctions, that cause a lot of confusion and inefficiency, are even Constitutional. To the normal American, they are pretty outrageous. Let’s clean up this mess to limit them going forward. It will even limit the Supreme Court’s workload.
@Rod_Thomson. Email him at rod@thomsonpr.com.
