The biggest obstacle for President Donald Trump during the current administration has been the nationwide injunctions levied on virtually every executive order he has issued.
The controversy surrounding those injunctions was finally resolved by the Supreme Court, but now lower courts are defying the SCOTUS order and continuing to issue them.
It just happened again, and it is bringing Trump’s immigration program to a grinding halt.
Generally speaking, nationwide injunctions are permissible by lower courts when the issue at hand can impact the entire nation, not just one individual case.
Historically, there were few nationwide injunctions placed against presidential administrations, that is, until the first Trump administration.
As an example, from 1963 to 2023, there were only 127 nationwide injunctions imposed, with the majority of those taking place between 2001 and 2023 (92). Of those, 64 were levied against the first Trump administration.
Of the 64 injunctions placed, 92.2% of them were issued by Democrat-appointed judges.
Trump has already had more than 20 nationwide injunctions placed against his executive orders during the first six months of the administration, on pace to shatter the record from his first term.
If this keeps up, Trump could wind up with several hundred injunctions when all is said and done, so it was no surprise to see him take the issue to the Supreme Court.
The Court ruled in Trump’s favor (Trump v CASA), trying to dial back the power of the lower courts to issue these injunctions, saying the relief should be tailored specifically to the plaintiffs in the case before the court.
Unfortunately, lower courts are defying the Supreme Court order.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb, a Joe Biden appointee, just went against that SCOTUS ruling, and Cobb is far from the first judge to have done so.
The Cobb ruling will block the Trump administration from facilitating the “expedited removal” of illegal immigrants nationwide. The White House responded, “Judge Cobb is flagrantly ignoring the United States Supreme Court, which upheld expedited removals of illegal aliens by a 7-2 majority. This ruling is lawless and won’t stand.”
Solicitor General D. John Sauer has addressed this issue with the Supreme Court in June, stating, “The district court’s ruling of last night is a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the Executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” and I am sure he will have something to say about Cobb’s ruling.
There are actually several recent rulings in which Trump has been hit with additional nationwide injunctions, in direct defiance of the previous Supreme Court decision. The Trump administration should be filing judicial complaints in every one of these cases to build a file in an effort to have all these judges removed from the bench. Trump talks about activist judges, and this is a perfect example of the manner inw hich these judges are abusing their power rather than respecting the rule of law.
