In the opening three months of President Trump’s ambitious “flood the zone” second term, we have witnessed activist federal courts issue a tsunami of national injunctions against the executive branch. Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., recently described the third branch’s overzealous blocking of Trump’s executive orders as a “judicial coup d’etat.”
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports there had already been at least 17 national injunctions against the Trump administration between Inauguration Day and March 27 — on everything from the firing of federal workers to Trump’s executive orders taking on disastrous DEI policies. There have been more since.
D.C. Courts have been particularly unfriendly to Trump’s efforts to close the southern border his predecessor, President Joe Biden, pushed wide open. Efforts to use executive branch enforcement tools to deport even known violent criminals and terrorists have been routinely rebuffed by federal courts in the D.C. bubble. Chief among the Trump halters is Judge James E. “Jeb” Boasberg, an Obama-appointee who became Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court, District of Columbia, in 2023.
Over the Easter Weekend, a courage-deficient, seven-justice Supreme Court issued what dissenting Justice Samuel Alito described as a “middle of the night” ruling temporarily blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan illegal immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law,” Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote in his stinging dissent, adding that the majority’s decision to countenance the far left American Civil Liberties Union’s emergency appeal was “unprecedented” and “hastily and prematurely granted.”
The majority provided no explanation. Alito questioned whether the high court had jurisdiction to take the case.
“The only papers before this Court were those submitted by the applicants. The Court had not ordered or received a response by the Government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application. And the Court did not have the benefit of a Government response filed in any of the lower courts either,” Alito wrote.
‘Rogue Action’
Former federal prosecutor John O’Connor said leftist activist courts have driven an expanded interpretation of due process and constitutional rights for illegal aliens over the last couple of decades. On the latest edition of “The Federalist Radio Hour,” O’Connor said Chief Justice John Roberts’ spirit of “judicial restraint” and deference to the executive branch has for years permeated the federal court system. But that deference, particularly on illegal immigration and U.S. immigration law, has mostly taken a left turn.
The judicial double standard exploded following President Barack Obama’s 2012 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy. DACA, painted by Obama and his fellow leftists as “a pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants transported to the United States as children, was in fact a sweeping and deliberate act by the Democrat-led executive branch to circumvent existing immigration laws. Obama’s “Dreamers” policies were ultimately followed by an invasion of millions of illegal aliens that poured into the United States in the border-crushing Biden years.
Obama stretched the bounds of executive authority. There was no law from Congress. No constitutional sign off from the courts. The accomplice media certainly has given its warm endorsement of the Democratic Party flooding the U.S. with illegal immigrants. Biden magically issued orders granting hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant spouses of U.S. citizens protection from deportation, among other workarounds to immigration law. The Democrats and federal courts considered those moves a matter of executive discretion.
“Let’s assume the president does have the power to do that. Why can’t the next president use his discretion to take those people and remove them,” O’Connor, author of Postgate: How The Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate, and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism. The activist courts, O’Connor asserts, have created rights for illegal immigrants that don’t necessarily exist — often based on the duration of their illegal stay.
Federal courts ruling against Trump effectively are saying an executive can’t undo those rights through the same executive process his predecessors used.
“There’s something wrong with that,” O’Connor said. “That’s a tremendous bias in favor of what I would say is rogue action by an executive.”
“So the executive, in this case Trump, that is really trying to enforce the law and make sure we have an orderly immigration process, he’s now hamstrung because the courts are now sort of expanding the whole notion of due process and what rights (are granted to illegal aliens),” the former assistant U.S. attorney for Northern California, added.
‘Enough is Enough’
The Republican-controlled House is trying to check what members like Onder believe to be a constitutional crisis created by an overreaching judiciary. Earlier this month, the House on a party-line vote passed the No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 (NORRA) aimed at limiting the use of national injunctions. The bill, now before the Senate Judiciary Committee, basically bars U.S. district courts from issuing injunctive relief orders unless they apply to specific parties bringing a complaint.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the bill’s author, said activist federal judges on a daily basis are abusing their Article III powers, defying the Constitution and blocking Trump’s “executive authority to deport criminal illegal immigrants, reduce wasteful government spending, and strengthen our military.”
“Today, a majority of the House of Representatives declared that enough is enough,” Issa said in a press release following the vote.
Not a single Democrat voted for the bill.
“If you don’t like the injunctions, don’t do illegal, unconstitutional stuff. That is simple,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., said in voting against the No Rogue Rulings Act.
The far-left congresswoman has an interesting take on “unconstitutional stuff.” She, of course, cheered on Biden’s frequent skirting of congressional authority and the Constitution.
‘Injunctions as a Weapon’
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who introduced the Republican-led Senate’s version of the bill seeking to restrain nationwide injunctions, recently noted that both sides of the aisle have had trouble with consistency on the judicial issue.
“Most of us in this room have at various times supported or opposed universal injunctions. My fellow Republicans and I sometimes like them when there’s a Democratic president, and my Democratic colleagues probably like them right now, even though they criticized them a few months ago under President Biden,” Grassley said.
“We all have to agree to give up universal injunctions as a weapon against policies we disagree with,” Grassley added.
But the left’s resistance movement against its duly elected political nemesis has infected the federal courts, undercutting the majority of voters who voted for Trump and his agenda. A majority of Americans remain with Trump on immigration, according to the latest Echelon Insights poll.
O’Connor said the Supreme Court needs to rein in rogue rulings. He said the high court needs to lay down the law for the lower courts, provide guideposts as to how and when, if at all, a nationwide injunction should be issued.
“But now it’s Katy bar the door. A lower court judge can do anything he wants and he’s going to get his picture in the paper as being an anti-Trump guy,” the former federal prosecutor said. “Remember, in 2017 these judges were hailed as great heroes because they were resisting Trump, and the whole thing is a witch’s brew.”
Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.
