I have little to add to what Dan McLaughlin already wrote tonight about the utterly lawless, mind-bogglingly outrageous ruling just now handed down by a federal judge in the District Court of Massachusetts in Planned Parenthood of Massachusetts v. Kennedy. The ruling purports to grant a nationwide temporary restraining order invalidating the provision in the One Big Beautiful Bill — just passed by Congress and signed into law — that cancels Planned Parenthood’s federal funding. The district court judge is thus commanding — purely on her own recognizance, with no legal theory to justify her ruling or explanation for Planned Parenthood’s likelihood of success on the merits — the United States to continue funding Planned Parenthood against its express legislative will.

There is nothing to debate about the legal merits of the issue. The plaintiffs offer a farcical “bill of attainder” argument that flunks the most basic principles of constitutional law: Bills of attainder apply only to a notional situation (common in the Founders’ era) where Congress seeks to inflict legal or monetary penalties upon a disfavored person or party — specifically fines or confiscation of property. Needless to say, the recent budget bill addresses something quite different: funding that Congress once voted specifically to give to Planned Parenthood, and has now voted to cut off. It is the most basic axiom of the legislative branch that it — not the executive branch and certainly not the judiciary — has the “power of the purse” and can undo any such funding decisions at will. (Congress could, in theory, vote to defund the Department of Defense tomorrow if it wanted to – provided it had the numbers to override the president’s veto.)  Does Judge Talwani seriously believe that she can singlehandedly override the United States Congress’s legislative will and force them to spend money against their will?

I doubt it. That Judge Talwani failed to offer even the barest of justification for a ruling that is 100 percent certain to be overturned tells you everything you need to know about her real motivation: This is the progressive judiciary using injunctions and TROs as part of lawfare and “resistance” against Trump, on behalf of their most sacred totem of all: Planned Parenthood. Protest, delay, lawless rulings — it is any weapon to hand right now for lawyers and like-minded judges such as this. (The speed with which Talwani heard Planned Parenthood’s case, filed only this afternoon, and issued a ruling suggests a cozy working relationship between the plantiffs and the court.)

I share both Charlie Cooke’s agreement with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in Trump v. Casa — closing the well-exploited lawfare tool of “nationwide injunctions” used to endlessly delay and block Trump’s flurry of executive orders — and his trepidation about the potential development of an “imperial presidency” downstream of such a ruling. I consider the ruling in Casa to be a moral hazard myself, and Trump is infamously not known for his ability or inclination to avoid moral hazard when it comes to the wielding of his political power. But I can tell you this much: If you really want to hasten America’s collapse into truly imperial presidency, then rulings like this — transparently political rulings designed only to delay, rulings that profane the very concept of functioning constitutional law — are the quickest way to get there.