Excess may be stopped – the County Orange register

Federal judges through the country emit “national injunctions” to prevent President Donald Trump from implementing policies that oppose the groups that pursue to block them.

In this last form of “writing” against Trump, various interest groups have been pursuing its administration since the day of the inauguration. The groups carefully chose their places and filed their prosecution when a judge was most likely to agree with their opinions.

The next step was to request a temporary prohibition order, or Tro, to immediately prevent the disputed policy. A TRO is good for about two weeks, but the groups can then request a preliminary injunction which potentially freezes the actions of the Trump administration until the trial reaches its possible conclusion.

It can take years. An entire presidency can be blocked in this way, which is of course the idea.

Until now, prosecution has been filed to force public spending, to restore employees related to their employment, to allow illegal immigrant gang members to stay in the United States, and even prevent anti-fraud work from the Social Security Administration DOGE team.

To date, more than 150 proceedings have been filed linked to part of the Trump administration policies or decisions. This is the last count of Courtwatch.news, a site that tries to follow all.

It is far from clear that the judges of the district court have in fact the power to issue “national injunctions” to block the policies of a president. But who has the power to stop them?

You might be surprised. The American government is not what seems to be on television.

Take the Congress, for example. It often resembles the weakest and most dysfunctional government branch. According to an average of the recent polls, 31% of Americans approve the use of the congress.

The presidency seems to be the most powerful branch, but is it? Not if federal judges can interrupt the policies of a president for years each time someone puts legal action.

Does that make the judiciary the most powerful branch? Sometimes it looks like this. We have often seen the national policy radically changed by anything more than the partial agreement of five of the nine judges appointed by the president who were in office when a president was opened.

However, this is not the agreement we have signed.

The agreement we have signed, the American Constitution, gives the Supreme Court any role in determining national policy and made the Congress the most powerful branch of the United States government.

Congress has control of federal spending and exclusive power to declare war. It is the only branch of the government that can remove and remove civil servants from other branches. This includes federal judges. Congress also has the power to create (or abolish) “lower courts” under the Supreme Court, and it has another power over the judicial power which could surprise you: the power to limit and regulate the jurisdiction on appeal from the Supreme Court. Congress can control the types of cases that judges are authorized to decide.

It is called the “exception clause” and it is in article III, article 2, clause 2: “The Supreme Court will have a jurisdiction on appeal, both in law and in fact, to such exceptions, and under the regulations that Congress must make.”

Congress therefore has the clear constitutional power to write regulations or exceptions to prevent “national injunctions” from bottled the presidency while civil lawsuits are on years.

“National injunctions” were used by both sides of the political spectrum. For example, when the United States Supreme Court canceled the ROE c. Wade in 2022, anti-abortion groups filed a complaint before an American district court to overthrow the FDA approval of Mifepristone, a medication used in medical abortions. A judge published a national stay which suspended the approval of the medication.

This prompted the Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Law, Erwin Chemerinsky, to write an editorial for the Los Angeles Times entitled “Why an Amarillo judge was able to decide if an American could use the abortion pill”. In this document, he argued that the litigants “should not be able to pick by hand a judge who can then issue a national injunction throwing the whole country into chaos”.

President Biden’s policies were arrested by 14 national injunctions at the end of his third year in power. Order against President Trump’s policies broke this record in less than three months.

Although it may appear, in particular for government employees, that Trump brings radical changes, he really has been restoring something that Americans have not seen in government for many decades: responsibility for voters.

The congress, the most responsible branch of the government with elections every two years, has gradually delegated a large part of its power to “independent” agencies in the executive power, agencies that do not respond to anyone. Why would Congress abandon power? Probably because the delegation of authority to inexplicable agencies allows legislators to escape responsibility and even to act shocked and indignant when the chickens come home to perch.

The executive power, on the other hand, was dominated by a permanent and immobile bureaucracy protected against the responsibility of the protections of the public service.

Federal judges have even greater protection against responsibility, protected as they are by meeting for life. Alexander Hamilton called the judicial power “the least dangerous branch” because it had “neither force nor, but simply the judgment”. He did not live to see the judges invent new powers for themselves – and not only the power to issue injunctions on a national scale. In a long series of “historic” cases overwhelming in the past 100 years, the judges of the Supreme Court have marked a role in developing policies, usurping the authorities of the State and local on the laws governing everything, of the begging to the police with rights to abortion.

The declaration of independence, now suspended from the oval office, declares that governments draw their “just powers from the consent of the governed”. The signed constitution is the embodiment of this consent.

Congress clearly has the power to prevent district judges from issuing national injunctions. The sooner the better.

Write Susan@susanshelley.com and follow it on x @susan_shelley

Originally published: April 5, 2025 at 7:30 am Pdt