Who should have more power: the president of the United States, or a federal district judge — one of nearly 700 — in a courthouse anywhere in the nation?
The answer is obvious, and pure common sense.
The president is elected by millions, empowered by the US Constitution to ensure “the laws be faithfully executed,” conduct foreign policy and command the nation’s armed forces.
Most district court judges get there because they know somebody who knows somebody in the president’s party.
Their role on the bench is generally limited to deciding the case before them based on existing law.
Yet across the country, highly partisan district judges are using legal ploys to bulldoze Trump, stymie his agenda — and set national, even international, policy.
In dozens of cases since Jan. 20, federal district judges — the lowest on the ladder — have issued nationwide injunctions halting Trump’s suspension of foreign aid, his deportation of Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members, his layoffs and spending cuts in federal departments and agencies, his prohibitions on discriminatory diversity programs in higher education and government hiring, and more.
On Tuesday, US District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington, DC, issued a nationwide injunction barring the Pentagon from enforcing Trump’s Jan. 27 executive order excluding transgender individuals from the military. Reyes said she foresees a “heated public debate” and appeals.
But Emperor Reyes is taking it upon herself to decide the issue for the entire nation, in defiance of the commander-in-chief who actually heads the military — before any evidence is heard.
She is freezing in place a policy the president opposes, for all the months and years it may take for the lawsuit to be decided and for appeals to be made, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court.
Ridiculous.
The misuse of national injunctions by politically motivated federal judges is not an entirely new problem, nor is it 100% one-sided.
During Trump’s first term, they were used 64 times to delay his initiatives.
They were also used 14 times against the Biden administration, per a Harvard Law Review survey.
All the more reason the Supreme Court should crack down without delay.
Justice Elena Kagan has sharply criticized this abuse.
“It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years it takes to go through the normal process,” she told a Northwestern University Law School audience in 2022.
During the first Trump administration, Kagan observed, activist groups “used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years they go to Texas” — “shopping” for a judge willing to issue a national injunction in line with the plaintiff’s wishes.
Her comments came as a district judge for the Northern District of Texas imposed a nationwide injunction ordering the Food and Drug Administration to withdraw its approval of mifepristone, an abortion drug.
How can a single judge in a small courthouse in Amarillo have such power?
Angry abortion activists demanded.
Good question.
Until the Supreme Court acts, Trump is caught in an arduous game of whack-a-mole, pleading with federal appeals courts all over the nation to overturn the endless injunctions and get his stalled policy initiatives up and running again.
It’s one victory at a time: Last week, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit lifted the freeze on Trump’s executive order ending discriminatory DEI rules in government contracting, grant-making and hiring.
But lefty district court judges are still waging lawfare against Trump — and the high court isn’t doing its job.
On March 5, a divided Supreme Court turned down Trump’s request to lift a district court order compelling the State Department and the US Agency for International Development to pay $2 billion in foreign aid, in defiance of the president’s policies.
Justice Samuel Alito issued a blistering dissent.
“Does a single district-court judge . . . have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” he thundered.
“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No’.”
Trump’s Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris is undeterred.
On March 13, she made an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, warning these injunctions have reached “epidemic proportions.”
This brand of lawfare “stops the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions,” she argued.
Harris made her request within the context of the birthright-citizenship cases now before the court — yet another Trump choice that’s been judicially handcuffed.
But the court needs to do more than weigh in on Trump’s policies on children born to illegal residents.
It’s time — past time — to restrain these district court judges who act like kings.
Harris called it a “modest” request, but in fact the progress of Trump’s entire agenda — and the hopes of Americans who voted for him — depend on it.
As Harris told the court, “Enough is enough.”
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
