Recently, a long-time friend expressed understandable frustration over the unprecedented and largely unlawful judicial warfare rogue federal judges are waging against President Donald Trump’s efforts to implement the reforms supported by the 77 million Americans who voted him into office.

But that same friend then said, “he has lost every case.” That’s a claim that is simply incorrect — although you wouldn’t know that from reading press accounts.

There have been no final decisions in any of this litigation, but the president has won a series of important victories in various courts. These victories obtain emergency stays of decidedly bad lower court decisions and nationwide injunctions — thus allowing Trump to continue to implement several of his challenged policies pending litigation.

The Legal Fight Continues

Attorney General Pam Bondi and Solicitor General John Sauer have been putting up a fierce fight. The more than 200 lawsuits filed against the administration guarantee that lawyers at the Department of Justice are working overtime to defend the constitutional authority and prerogatives of the president as the head of the executive branch.

Among the cases in which the Supremes sided with the administration to issue a stay is Trump v. Wilcox.

In that case, the president fired Gwynne Wilcox and Cathy Harris from the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, respectively. Both sued, claiming that the president lacked the authority to fire them, relying on a 90-year-old precedent (Humphrey’s Executor v. United States) that appears to be on life support. 

This case — which the administration is poised to win — is crucial to the president’s authority to effectively supervise the executive branch. 

A similar case is that of the also-fired Hampton Dellinger — the Biden-appointed head of the Office of Special Counsel. Dellinger won decisions from both a lower court and a court of appeals, which instructed he be reinstated, but he then dismissed his case when the DOJ filed an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court. Dellinger gave no reason, but it seems likely he was afraid to lose.

Trump Wins at SCOTUS and Lower Courts

Last week, the Supreme Court issued stays of lower court orders that prevented the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Social Security records and a second that required DOGE to provide internal information in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed against it (Social Security Administration v. AFSCME and DOGE v. CREW).

Trump has also obtained stays of lower court decisions on immigration — decisions that told him he couldn’t: terminate the “Temporary Protected Status” of Venezuelan nationals that allowed them to remain in the country legally (Noem v. National TPS Alliance); or revoke the mass parole granted by the Biden administration to half a million illegal aliens from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela (Noem v. Doe).

In the Tren de Aragua case, the Supreme Court dissolved temporary restraining orders from a lower court banning the administration from removing any aliens subject to the law nationwide. They affirmed that the challengers had also filed in the wrong jurisdiction and that their only possible avenue for relief was via a habeas corpus petition filed in the jurisdiction where they are being held (Trump v. J.G.G.). 

This wasn’t a complete victory for the administration, but it was still significant, snatching the case out of the hands of a federal judge who thought he had the power to override the president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

Trump has also obtained stays of injunctions that told him he couldn’t: fire 16,000 federal employees in six different departments and agencies — and that he instead had to reinstate them (OPM v. American Federation of Government Employes); or terminate millions of dollars in federal grants from the Department of Education (Department of Education v. California).  

The Supreme Court also stayed a nationwide injunction that blocked the Defense Department’s policy disqualifying from military service those suffering from gender dysphoria.

Trump Has Also Won in Courts of Appeal

In V.O.S. Selections v. Trump, the Federal Circuit stayed a Court of International Trade decision that had enjoined his implementation of various tariffs. 

The Fourth Circuit stayed an order telling the Trump administration it had to stop dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (Does v. Musk), as well as an order telling the administration it could not ban DEI propaganda and programs (National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education v. Trump).

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia stayed an injunction banning Kari Lake from terminating grants for or shutting down Voice of America and other agencies (Widakuswara v. Lake).

Believe it or not, challengers have also lost before federal trial court-level judges, such as in Baltimore v. Vought, where the court refused to stop Trump’s effort to defund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

According to the Associated Press’s tracker of lawsuits against the Trump administration’s executive orders, in almost 50 cases, courts have maintained executive orders and other directives.

Of course, none of this in any way compensates for the blatant judge-shopping or the collective wholesale interference in the president’s constitutional authority to run the executive branch and enforce the law.

But while the president and the DOJ slog through a sustained, vicious, vitally important fight, it’s important to realize that in many instances, they — and the American people — are winning over the naysayers, obstructionists, and saboteurs trying to wreck the president’s agenda.