We are in the midst of a judicial coup. In the past three months, there have been at least 79 nationwide injunctions issued by lower courts against the legal orders issued by President Trump. That's more than half the total number of nationwide injunctions ever issued.
Furthermore, these injunctions can ignore and overrule rulings on the same issue made by other district judges. If 50 district judges rule that a presidential order is constitutional, and the 51st district judge rules that it isn't, that single district judge can overrule and violate the separation of powers not only of the president and Congress, but also of the rest of the judiciary.
Just in the past couple of weeks, a federal judge blocked President Trump from firing federal probationary workers. Bosses and managers in every company in America, including unionized companies, have the right to fire probationary workers at any time for any reason. But Judge James K. Bredar unilaterally declared that President Trump cannot. In the same vein, District Judge Anthony Trenga blocked President Trump from firing 19 CIA and DNI employees.
District Judges Benjamin Settle and Ana Reyes, handling different cases on opposite sides of the country, both blocked Trump's transgender military ban.
Boston Municipal Court Judge Mark Summerville declared an ICE agent in contempt for taking an illegal into custody during the latter's criminal trial (for charges of falsifying information on a government document, a charge the judge dismissed). Judge Summerville then ordered the local district attorney's office to investigate the ICE agent.
District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the American government to somehow force the return of an MS-13 gang leader from a prison in El Salvador. The judge said he must be returned before this upcoming Monday before midnight. (Or?)
District Judge Edward Chen blocked President Trump from revoking deportation protections from Venezuelan illegals, decrying Trump's order as racist and blathering on about the "social and economic contributions" of the 350,000 illegals flooding the labor market and straining social services, as if their economic impact (even if it were positive) should have any bearing whatsoever of the constitutionality of Trump's order.
As Bonchie over at RedState pointed out, this case is particularly egregious in that Judge Chen disregarded the ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which had previously ruled that the Temporary Protection Status (which Judge Chen ordered reinstated) is not subject to judicial review. This is the appeals court under whose jurisdiction Judge Chen operates. So, he basically just told his supervisors that they're wrong, he's right, and they can go pound sand.
And of course there is District Judge Boasberg, who infamously ordered planes carrying foreign terrorists to turn around midair and return them to American soil, where they'd be freed to rape, murder, and vote Democrat. Any common-sense reading of the Alien Enemies Act clearly demonstrates that President Trump is well within his rights in deporting foreign terrorists and gang members. But Boasberg singlehandedly and arbitrarily claimed authority to negate the law.
Boasberg's blatant disregard of the law and his usurpation of executive authority led to calls from conservative circles, Congress, and the president himself for Boasberg's impeachment.
But shortly after these calls for impeachment, Chief Justice John Roberts issued an unprecedented statement denouncing such an approach. Roberts' statement read, "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."
Justice Roberts is not so dumb as to confuse "disagreement concerning a judicial decision" with a blatant usurpation of authority and the willful violation of the separation of powers as enumerated in the U. S. Constitution. Roberts' intention is to protect and expand the unchecked power of the judiciary at the expense of the other co-equal branches of government.
The abuse of legislative and executive power regularly leads to censure, party expulsion, and impeachment. The abuse of judicial power suffers from no such checks, limitations, or consequences. And when such constitutionally documented remedies are pondered by members of the supposedly coequal branches, Justice Roberts harangues them for their audacity.
Justice Roberts is also not so dumb as to not realize exactly what the Left is doing. It's obvious to everyone that they're trying to jam Trump up in the red tape of a judicial bureaucratic nightmare to slow down or stop his agenda. It doesn't matter if every single case reaches the Supreme Court and every single case results in the Supreme Court siding with Trump. Such a process can take months or years to adjudicate each case. That's the point. The process is the punishment, and the Left is using it as an unconstitutional veto. They're hoping to string Trump along until the midterms, where they hope to regain control of Congress and launch a few dozen or so impeachment proceedings against him (about which Roberts will make zero statements about the abuse of impeachment powers).
His defense of the integrity of the court system, or against the abuse of impeachment, is quite selective. Did he speak out during the first two sham impeachments against President Trump? Did he speak out when President Biden brazenly ignored and defied the Supreme Court ruling on student debt? On a side note, John, any progress on that internal investigation as to which justice's aide leaked the Dobbs decision to the press?
To the extent that Justice Robert concedes that there is a blatant judicial coup being attempted in real time at district level (for which there have been no consequences and, hence, no incentives to refrain from such abuse, which has clearly accelerated in recent weeks), the legal and constitutional solution must be wide ranging and comprehensive.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court has a very cowardly history of shirking its duty to answer the daunting constitutional questions at hand in favor of ruling as narrowly as possible, and strictly on the incidentals of the particular case before it. On other words, they prefer to "punt" rather than shoulder the responsibility they seemed so eager to do at their Senate confirmation hearings.
Case in point is Jack Phillips, the Christian bakery owner who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding and was penalized by the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Phillips' favor. But their ruling was based on the discriminatory behavior of the Commission, not on the question of Phillips' religious rights.
Predictably, he was promptly sued again and again by activists looking to ruin him. The cases were dropped by the Colorado Supreme Court, but again, on procedural grounds rather than on the issue of free speech. To date, Phillips' rights have never been defended by any court, and he is in the very same predicament now as he was before his Supreme Court "victory."
All because SCOTUS ignored the glaring, overriding constitutional question at hand.
If SCOTUS handles these present nationwide injunctions in this same manner—getting into the weeds about procedure and jurisdiction and timelines and all the rest—then as soon as a specific ruling is made about a specific procedure, the plaintiffs will do to Trump what they did to Phillips. They'll simply tweak whatever the "procedure" in question was to fit the SCOTUS ruling and litigate for another nationwide injunction under the same hack judge.
For this abuse to stop, SCOTUS needs to address both the legitimacy of nationwide injunctions, as well as the constitutional rights of the executive and legislative branches to ignore rulings by rogue judges operating far beyond their purviews.
Suppose a rogue judge ordered the New York Times and the Washington Post to cease operations based on that judge's twisted understanding of the First Amendment. Would Justice Roberts tell everyone to calm down and go through the appeals process? Would these newspapers be expected to abide by the ruling for the months and years it would take to reach the Supreme Court?
If police across the country started entering whatever homes they wanted to conduct warrantless searches, and a rogue judge passed a nationwide injunction giving them legal cover to do so, would Justice Roberts expect this abuse to continue while the appeals courts heard the cases? Would American citizens be expected to submit to warrantless searches at the whim of the authorities until SCOTUS finally got around to reviewing them?
Justice Roberts, you have judges ordering how the executive is to administer the military. You have justices acting as de facto air traffic controllers, demanding the executive branch order aircraft maneuvers over other nations' airspace without any regard or knowledge of the safety and logistics thereof. You have judges handcuffing executive action based not on the constitutionality of said action, but on how that particular judge thinks its economic impact would be. You have judges ordering district attorneys' offices to launch investigations. You have judges ordering our government to tell other governments what to do.
Unfortunately, Justice Roberts doesn't seem to think these district judges should have any restraints on their injunctions whatsoever. In a ruling yesterday, the Trump administration won its first SCOTUS victory against one of these unconstitutional injunctions. In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS removed the lower court's injunction blocking Trump from freezing $65 million in DEI funding for public schools.
Though we narrowly won this round, guess which justice sided with the leftist wing of the court?
John Roberts.
Expect a lot more of that from him in the upcoming cases. And that means the court's constitutionalists must remain united. Both Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett need to be reminded of their duty to uphold the Constitution, not to try to appear "fair" and "even-handed" to a mob of Marxists who want them dead.
Our court system would embarrass the Soviets. If Roberts and SCOTUS don't fix this problem quickly and permanently, they are going to lose their credibility with conservatives. And, lest they need reminding, conservatives are the only ones who still consider them credible.
And once that support evaporates, there will remain no political pressure for any future administration, neither Republican nor Democrat, to respect or adhere to their decisions. Last month, I was all gung ho about supporting due process and giving the system a chance to self-correct. Today, I'm rapidly reaching the point where I believe Trump should simply start ignoring these orders, not from a desire to consolidate power, but from a desire to disperse consolidated power. And I don't think I'm alone in thinking this.
Choose your words carefully, John. They may prove the undoing of all you hold dear.
Editor's Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump's agenda to make America great again.
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