While mainstream news outlets, cable networks and social media obsess over Elon Musk’s latest antics, they have neglected a far more important story — the Trump administration is accumulating a significant catalogue of appeals court and SCOTUS victories. Last Friday alone three more wins were added to the list. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the White House may exclude AP from its press pool while the SCOTUS stayed a district court order requiring DOGE to heed a FOIA request and ruled that it can access Social Security records.
The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as another win.
These rulings follow a spate of similar wins last month. On May 30, the Supreme Court stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t revoke former President Biden’s parole of 532,000 non-citizens. On May 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed a U.S. Trade Court ruling that President Trump’s tariffs are unlawful. On May 22, SCOTUS stayed a district court order reinstating two Biden administration officials fired by Trump. Moreover, on May 19, SCOTUS stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem could not end the protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan non-citizens.
The seven cases noted above do not exhaust the list of the Trump administration’s wins. During April the administration won two Supreme Court cases. On April 17, Justice Elena Kagan declined to stay a deportation order involving four Mexican nationals without referring the case to the full court. On April 8, SCOTUS stayed a district court order to reinstate 16,000 fired federal employees. On April 7, the Court vacated a district court order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. All of which led the editors of the Wall Street Journal to conclude that the Supreme Court had sent a message to the district courts:
President Trump is exercising executive power in aggressive and often novel ways, and opponents are suing to stop him. But in a trio of recent orders, the Supreme Court has sent lower-court judges an important reminder that they must still respect judicial rules and procedures. A 5-4 majority handed Mr. Trump a partial victory Monday by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act.
This last ruling turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Trump administration, however. On May 16, the Court effectively reversed itself — inspiring Justice Alito to issue a blistering dissent: “Literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief … without hearing from the opposing party … this Court should follow established procedures.” The good news, in addition to the Trump wins listed above, is that there are six more cases on the Court’s “Emergency Docket,” half of which offer invitations for definitive rulings on nationwide injunctions issued by district courts.
Trump’s EO on Birthright Citizenship Forcing the Court’s Hand
By far the best vehicle for such a ruling is Trump v. CASA, which revolves around the following issue: “Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.” In order to get to birthright citizenship, the Court must deal with the proliferation of nationwide injunctions. The following exchange during oral arguments between Solicitor General John Sauer and Justice Clarence Thomas is instructive:
JUSTICE THOMAS: So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?
GENERAL SAUER: That’s exactly correct. And, in fact, those were very limited — very rare even in the 1960s. It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers against Earth Island Institute. We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.
Justice Thomas, exercising his gift for cutting through the red herrings, straw men, and false dichotomies that constitute the stock and trade of leftist lawyers, put his finger on a core problem facing the Court in Trump v. CASA. Nor is he the only justice with reservations about universal injunctions. Justice Elena Kagan, for example, has publicly expressed her concerns as follows: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.” She was right in 2022, when she said that. It will be hard to reverse herself in 2025.
The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as another win — and a big one. If so, the judicial insurrection that we have been watching will have been permanently put down. That certainly doesn’t mean the Democrats and their accomplices in the corporate “news” media will end their assault on the Trump administration and the Constitution. Nonetheless, they will have been deprived of one of the most powerful weapons in their arsenal. And, by that time, Elon Musk will have divined the difference between money and power.
READ MORE from David Catron: