Donald Trump was never supposed to become president. When he miraculously did in 2016, the permanent Washington bureaucracy refitted the Hillary Clinton campaign’s smear that Trump was a Russian asset to handicap his presidency and hinder his ability to carry out the mandate voters had elected him to accomplish.
He really wasn’t supposed to become president twice. When he did — defying attempts to kill, imprison, and bankrupt him — he came into the White House more battle-hardened and prepared to deal swiftly with America’s enemies than before. The people who were threatened by his popular agenda needed a new way to stop him.
The old methods wouldn’t work: media hoaxes bounced off of him, and there was no path to impeach him. So they found a new strategy: running to sympathetic federal judges in sympathetic districts and asking them to put sweeping, unprecedented holds on the president’s ability to govern. The judges, so far, have been happy to comply.
Both times, the goal has been the same: to thwart Donald Trump’s presidency.
An ‘Insurance Policy’
In the first 64 days of his second term, Trump has faced more than 130 lawsuits challenging his actions as president. With a few outliers, most of them have to do with a handful of recurring topics: the president’s ability to fire employees of the executive branch, his ability to suspend or limit spending by the executive agencies he oversees, his ability to repel illegally present threats to national security, and his ability to ensure military readiness via medical standards for entry into the armed forces.
In the past two months, judges have granted anti-Trump plaintiffs more than half a dozen temporary restraining orders (TROs), emergency orders that are generally unappealable and are only supposed to be used when irreparable harm is imminent. Lower court judges have issued TROs against the Trump administration in cases ranging from the administration’s efforts to deport suspected gang members present in the country illegally (J.G.G. v. Trump) to its prohibitions on people with gender dysphoria serving in the military (Ireland v. Hegseth) to something as trivial as the removal of webpages from government agencies (Doctors for America v. OPM).
Lower court judges have been even more willing to issue preliminary injunctions blocking Trump and his cabinet from carrying out their constitutional duties. These injunctions, in which a judge with a limited geographical jurisdiction binds the ability of the U.S. president with the stroke of a pen, totaled 15 in February alone, according to acting solicitor general Sarah Harris. That’s more than Bush, Obama, or Biden were dealt in their entire respective presidencies.
If every federal district judge in America issued a preliminary injunction against the Trump administration, it would total roughly 700 lower court orders hamstringing the president from doing his job.
It is impossible for an executive to carry out the popular mandate of his voters — never mind his constitutionally required duties — while held hostage by dozens of antagonistic plaintiffs and the judges who accommodate them. Many of the orders handed down against the administration by these judges have been broadened to apply far beyond the parties in the lawsuit: for example, D.C. District Court Judge Ana Reyes enjoining the Trump administration from expelling any service members with gender identity disorder across the entire military, not just from expelling plaintiff Nicolas Talbott in Talbott v. Trump.
Thanks to willing judges and a Supreme Court that has so far been unwilling to step in, anti-Trump plaintiffs have quickly learned that their best chance at stopping his agenda is to obtain injunctions and TROs from friendly judges. Having failed to stop him at the ballot box, in criminal lawfare courtrooms, or in a field in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump’s enemies have a new strategy for an old goal: obstructing his ability to govern now that he’s in the White House.
To use an analogy favored by former FBI agent Peter Strzok of Russiagate infamy, the lawsuits are an “insurance policy” meant to kneecap Trump the executive after failing to kneecap Trump the candidate. Just as the Russia hoax morphed from campaign strategy to obstruction strategy, so has anti-Trump lawfare.
Russia Hoax Redux
For all its damage, the Russia collusion hoax was a clarifying event. It became obvious throughout the course of the hoax’s lifetime that the people running it, from Congress to the intelligence agencies to the corporate press, should not be trusted.
Like the Russia hoax, the constitutional crisis set in motion by overeager lower court judges trying to limit the federal executive’s ability to carry out its constitutional function is a clarifying event. To grant 700 judges veto power over the president of the United States relegates the president to a figurehead with no real authority over the bureaucracy he supposedly oversees. To put an end to the sweeping injunctions would let Trump fulfill his campaign promises to drain the swamp, against the vested interests of many Washington residents.
Unlike the Russia hoax, it seems unlikely that the injunction blitz will be able to continue obstructing Trump’s agenda for years into his second term. The Supreme Court can step in and put an end to the “judicial hubris” of the lower courts, and it’s past time for the court to do so.
Until it does, emboldened plaintiffs and judges will continue their strategy to undermine the president. And like the Russia hoax, the longer it goes on, the more damage it does to the country.
Elle Purnell is the elections editor at The Federalist. Her work has been featured by Fox Business, RealClearPolitics, the Tampa Bay Times, and the Independent Women’s Forum. She received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @_ellepurnell.
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