XPost: alt.politics.usa.congress, alt.activism, alt.politics.usa.republican XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, sac.politics
Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, federal
district court judges have unleashed a slew of injunctions to derail major portions of the president’s agenda, most infamously blocking the
deportation of illegal alien gang members. Now, Congress may be ready to exercise its own authority to check this apparent abuse of power by the judiciary.
During a press conference earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson
brandished Congress’ authority to “eliminate entire district courts” or
cut funding in response to the judicial subterfuge of President Donald
Trump’s constitutional powers. “Desperate times call for desperate
measures and Congress is going to act,” Johnson stated.
“It violates separation of powers when a judge thinks that they can enjoin something that a president is doing, that the American people voted for,” Johnson continued.
The U.S. Constitution vests “all legislative powers” in Congress (Article
I) and executive power in the president (Article II), while Article III confines courts to address specific “cases” and “controversies.” Nowhere
does it empower a lone judge to modify or delay national policy for
everyone.
Yet, from Portland to Fort Worth, judges have frozen Trump’s orders to
fire probationary federal workers, slash DEI programs, end birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens, deport Venezuelan gang
members, and cut federal funding to hospitals performing gender
reassignment surgeries on minors.
In effect, after voters roundly rejected Democrat policies at the ballot
box last November, activist judges are attempting to legislate from the
bench, acting as a roadblock on implementation of Trump’s agenda.
This is unacceptable to the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump and
his campaign promises. Speaker Johnson is right: it’s time for Congress to
act against this usurpation of power by singular district judges.
Trump’s Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal in early March
asking the Supreme Court to “restrict the scope” of district court judges’ ability to issue injunctions to only those before the court, rather than allowing judges to govern the whole nation from the bench. “Years of
experience have shown that the Executive Branch cannot properly perform
its functions if any judge anywhere can enjoin every presidential action everywhere,” Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote.
Harris characterized the surge in nationwide injunctions as an “epidemic”
– and indeed it has been, but only when Trump is in office. “District
courts have issued more universal injunctions and temporary restraining
orders during February 2025 alone than through the first three years of
the Biden Administration,” she wrote.
In other words, while nominally conservative jurists have respected the Constitution’s separation of powers, liberal judges have shown no such restraint.
Nationwide injunctions are a modern aberration, rarely used before Obama’s presidency. From 1963-1982, only 10 were issued. However, a Harvard Law
Review study last year found that 67 percent of all injunctions ever
issued over the past six decades were against President Trump in his first term, and 92 percent were imposed by Democrat appointed judges.
These judges aren’t checking power – they’re seizing it, transforming
their courts into super-legislatures consisting of only their voice. By dictating national policy, they usurp the elected branches and the consent
of the governed. The sheer amount of these contestable injunctions leveled against Trump smack of judicial bias and an intentional abuse of power.
Vice President JD Vance sees the stakes clearly. After Judge Engelmayer
blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data in February, Vance
fired back on X: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a
military operation that would be illegal… Judges aren’t allowed to control
the executive’s legitimate power.”
Democrats now claiming that the Trump administration’s request for the
Supreme Court to rein in district court judges’ ability to micromanage the president have no room to talk, either. Last October, Biden asked the
Supreme Court to invalidate a district court’s universal injunction by
arguing that “universal remedies are inconsistent with longstanding limits
on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts.”
At the time, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the legality of
universal injunctions. If the Judicial branch won’t reform and clarify the powers of district courts, then Congress should do it for them—and plenty
of senators and representatives are lining up to do just that.
Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) recently introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act, a
bill designed to rein in the power of federal district court judges to
issue nationwide injunctions that obstruct presidential actions. This legislation, which has gained traction among conservative lawmakers, seeks
to limit the scope of injunctions to the specific parties involved in a
case or, at most, the judicial district in which the ruling is made. The
bill was approved out of committee last week and is currently on a glide
path to a vote on the House floor as early as the first week of April.
On the Senate side, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), introduced a bill to
outright ban district courts from issuing nationwide injunctions.
Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley joined
Hawley in criticizing these injunctions as a tool of the activist left to paralyze conservative policies, pointing to the dramatic spike in such
rulings during Trump’s first term as evidence of judicial weaponization.
Together, the House and Senate efforts signal a concerted strategy to
dismantle a rogue judiciary’s abuse of power, ensuring that policymaking remains in the hands of elected representatives rather than activist
judges.
https://amac.us/newsline/society/congress-primed-to-curtail-activist-
judges/
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