When Democrats’ lawfare failed to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, the party of “democracy” turned to the last available lever of power they possessed to stop Orange Man Bad: the lower judiciary.
Through the art of judge-shopping, left-wing activists and groups have spent the past year strategically filing lawsuits in districts dominated by Democrat and liberal Republican appointees to challenge virtually every aspect of Trump’s agenda. And with little convincing rationale, many of these rogue judges have eagerly issued overreaching orders blocking the president from enacting it.
The latest example of this phenomenon came on Friday, when a three-judge panel comprised mostly of Democrat appointees rejected (2-1) a request by the Trump administration to pause a ruling by D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes. In her order, the Biden-appointed Reyes blocked the government from revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals residing in the United States under the program.
Reyes is known for previously donating to Democrat candidates and causes prior to becoming a judge. Since Trump’s return to office, she’s also attempted to block the president’s policy barring gender dysphoric individuals from military service.
On its face, Reyes’ injunction and the D.C. Circuit panel’s temporary affirmation of it are par for the course for the judicial activist crowd. But a closer examination of the situation shows how truly egregious leftists’ judicial coup has become.
As Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan observed, the U.S. Supreme Court has already given the thumbs up to the Trump administration’s revocation of TPS for foreign nationals throughout the past year. Not once, but twice. On both occasions, the justices granted emergency requests to temporarily stay lower court injunctions barring the government from axing TPS designations for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
Critics will argue that, because these decisions came from the high court’s emergency docket and did not include lengthy legal explanations, there is no precedent for the lower courts to abide by. But any logical person would conclude that if the Supreme Court agrees — even temporarily — that the president can terminate TPS for one group of foreign nationals, then such a standard should be applied by lower courts to the administration’s axing of TPS for other groups of foreign nationals in similar cases.
Justice Neil Gorsuch all but said as much in a separate case dealing with Trump’s efforts to curtail DEI throughout the federal government. Noting rogue judges’ repeated attempts to sidestep the Supreme Court’s guidance on the issue, the justice wrote, “All these interventions should have been unnecessary, but together they underscore a basic tenet of our judicial system: Whatever their own views, judges are duty-bound to respect ‘the hierarchy of the federal court system created by the Constitution and Congress.’”
Put another way, lower courts are not free to defy SCOTUS.
But let’s take the Supreme Court out of the equation and examine Reyes’ justification for blocking Trump’s revocation of TPS for Haitians.
As described by the hoax-peddling New York Times, the Biden appointee “noted that the Trump administration had rescinded the designation for 12 countries since last year without conducting individualized analyses, which she said backed the plaintiffs’ claims that stripping Haitians of the status had been preordained” [emphasis added]. She also “concluded that the Trump administration’s decision was motivated by racial or national origin animus, citing statements by senior government officials about Haitian and other nonwhite immigrants.”
So, under Reyes’ logic (if one can even call it that), President Biden can unilaterally issue a blanket extension of TPS for hundreds of thousands of Haitian nationals, but Trump must undertake thorough and rigorous “individualized analyses” before he can revoke it. And to top it all off, the Biden appointee not-so-subtly accused the administration’s actions of being racially motivated.
That’s not sound argumentation from a judge. It’s a political rant coated in legal language from a hyper left-wing activist who has no respect for the oath she took to “faithfully and impartially” administer justice in accordance with the Constitution.
But Reyes is not alone in her conduct. There are dozens of Ana Reyeses in district courts across the country who are happily putting America’s founding document through the paper shredder to give their political allies the outcomes they want.
Within the past few weeks alone, Democrat-appointed judges have issued orders blocking the Trump administration from enacting new immigration reforms, halting the deportation of illegal aliens to so-called “third countries,” and nuking a natural gas and oil project in Wyoming that was authorized by the federal government.
Actions like these demonstrate how the judiciary has usurped basic separation of powers and extended its authority beyond what the Constitution prescribes. What was once viewed to be the weakest branch has arguably become the most powerful.
[READ: NYT Accidentally Confesses There’s A Left-Wing Judicial Coup Against Trump]
And yet, the primary reason this judicial tyranny has continued to persist is the lack of pushback from the other two branches.
Despite holding majorities in both chambers of Congress and oversight of the lower judiciary, elected Republicans have declined to punish activist judges and districts for their appalling conduct. Trump and his administration have also shirked away from confronting such insubordination.
If members of the judiciary are usurping their authority and violating the Constitution, that does not require the other branches to play along. If anything, they have an obligation to reject such tyranny and uphold America’s founding document.
Thus far, that hasn’t happened. And until it does, the country will continue to be ruled by an unelected cabal of lawyers in black robes, the Constitution be damned.
