As Donald Trump fulfills his campaign promises through Executive Orders (EOs) and unleashing Elon Musk and DOGE on the federal government to cut fraud, waste and abuse, shrink the bloated federal workforce, end males playing in female sports, end DEI hirings and restore merit-based hiring, end the LGBTQ and Marxist indoctrination of children in public schools, and so much more, activist judges in liberal districts are lining up to stop him.

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We’re starting to see a familiar pattern. President Trump issues an executive order. The Left melts down. They shop for a judge and file a lawsuit in his court. The judge then issues a nationwide injunction stopping the EO. Trump appeals.

As of this writing, more than 80 cases challenging a range of Trump’s actions have been filed by Democrat Attorney Generals, federal employee unions and leftist organizations. The White House argue the judges are “usurping executive power” and vows to fight back aggressively.

A Flurry of Nationwide Injunctions

Here are a few examples of how local unelected liberal district judges have issued nationwide rulings blocking Trumps’s executive orders and limiting his presidential authority:

USAID: After DOGE uncovered billions in wasteful spending at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which was primarily pushing the LGBTQ agenda in foreign countries, President Trump ordered a 90-day freeze on USAID spending. He also ordered AID to reduce its 10,000+ international and domestic staffers to 611.

On February 25, a district judge in D.C., Judge Amir H. Ali, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to resume two billion dollars in USAID payments by midnight of the 26. Trump appealed to the Supreme Court and last week the Court, in a 5-4 decision, declined to hear the president’s appeal and ordered Judge Ali to “clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill to ensure compliance.”

Federal workers also filed suit to stop the firings of USAID employees. Judge Carl Nichols in D.C., a Trump appointee, initially issued a temporary injunction against the workers being placed on administrative leave but declined to extend it opening the door for the dismantling of USAID.

Funding Freezes: President Trump issued EO’s to pause federal grants and loans to the states and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in order for the department heads of the executive branch to conduct a review of how the money was being distributed, uncover any fraud or waste, and ensure the spending complies with the president’s other executive orders.

A federal judge in D.C., Judge Loren Alikhan, a Biden appointee blocked the funding freeze, as did Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, an Obama appointee. Judge McConnell has given $60,000 in donations to Democrat candidates.

Judge Alikhan contributed to Biden’s reelection campaign and was a strong advocate of banning outdoor religious services during the pandemic. She also received bipartisan opposition to her judgeship nomination in 2023 in which then-V.P. Harris cast the tie-breaking vote.

Firing Employees: On February 27, a federal judge in San Francisco, Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee, ruled that the mass firings of probationary federal employees was “most likely’ unlawful and the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) had “no authority whatsoever to hire and fire employees” in any other department but its own. But the OPM had simply asked agencies to review and determine whether employees on probation were fit for continued employment. Probationary employees were hired less than a year ago and have no guarantee of continued employment. An evidentiary hearing is set for March 13 in front of Judge Alsup to determine the “legal boundaries” of federal hiring and firing authority.

But in Baltimore, a second judge, Judge James Bredar, an Obama appointee, also ordered the firings halted for at least two weeks and the terminated employees in six federal agencies to be immediately reinstated.

Access to Treasury Payment Records – Judge Jeanette Vargas of New York, a Biden appointee, barred DOGE access to the Treasury Department’s payment records. These records account for roughly $5 trillion of government payments. The Government Accountability Office estimates that up to 10% or $500 billion is lost to fraud. The judge is giving the Trump administration until March 24 to file a report ensuring any sensitive information will be protected before she rules. She was once a law clerk for Justice Sonya Sotomayor.

DEI Funding and Hiring: President Trump ordered the end to federal funding of DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) programs, eliminating DEI programs and DEI hiring throughout the federal government, as well as an end to all DEI grants or contracts unless grantees and federal contractors certify they do not promote DEI programs that violate antidiscrimination laws. Judge Adam Abelson of Maryland, a Biden appointee, blocked the White House from requiring private-sector grantees and contractors to end their DEI practices.

Trump appealed arguing he was ending DEI programs that violated federal civil rights law, such as hiring based on race or gender. On Friday, a three-judge panel of the 4^th Circuit Appeal Court lifted Abelson’s nationwide ban admitting Trump is likely to succeed in his appeal. Two of the judges were Obama appointees praised DEI, while the third judge, a Trump appointee, Judge Allisson Jones Rushing wrote:

“We must not lose sight of the boundaries of our constitutional role and the imperative of judicial impartiality. Any individual judge’s view on whether certain Executive action is good policy is not only irrelevant to fulfilling our duty to adjudicate cases and controversies according to the law, it is an impermissible consideration.” This new ruling lasts until the full bench of judges will hear and rule on the case.

Federal Funding of Trans Treatments: Two district judges, Judge Lauren King of Washington state, a Biden appointee, and Judge Geroge O’Toole of Massachusetts, a Clinton appointee, temporarily restrained the Trump administration from stopping the federal funding of trans treatments through federally run insurance programs, including Medicaid and TRICARE for military families.

All of these issues and many more regarding presidential authority to run the Executive branch will most likely end up at the Supreme Court where hopefully the justices will uphold the president’s authority as established by Article II, Section 1 of the Constitution: The executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.

The Supreme Court is already deliberating if state bans against trans treatments for minors and boys playing in girls’ sports are legal in U.S. v Skrmetti.

Illegal Criminal Deportations: In perhaps the most controversial judicial overreach yet, DC Chief Judge James Broasberg, an Obama appointee, ordered planes carrying 238 Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members to return to the U.S. “Make sure it’s complied with immediately,” Broasberg added. The planes were on their way to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center and Honduras.

Trump had invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to remove the criminals without a hearing. Trump had declared the gang on February 5 a foreign terrorist organization, along with MS-13 and the Mexican drug cartels. But by the time the order came down, the flights were off the coast of Mexico and would not be returned as the judge’s order carried no authority over international waters. Tren de Aragua gangs are currently active in 19 U.S. states. The judge set a hearing for Friday to consider if Trump’s use of the Act was legal.

What is judicial review?

You may be asking, as I have, how can one judge in one district shut down a presidential executive order for the entire nation. How can one unelected judge have so much power? I’m no constitutional lawyer but here’s a brief answer to these questions.

The Constitution established three equal branches of government – the Executive (president overseeing a bureaucracy), the Legislative (Congress) and the Judicial (Supreme Court and lower courts).

The three equal branches are designed to have checks and balances over one another. For instance, presidents appoint federal judges with the approval of Congress. The judiciary reviews the constitutionality of the laws passed by Congress and signed by the President, as well as conducting reviews of the lawfulness of the day-to-day actions of various agencies.

In the past 25 years, with the rise of presidential Executive Orders, individual U.S. judges have exercised their judicial review by issuing sweeping nationwide injunctions blocking these orders. This often leads to an appeal to the federal appeals court and finally to the Supreme Court if the Justices decide to rule on the case.

This practice of one judge issuing a national injunction is found nowhere in the Constitution or in the Judiciary Act of 1789. So is it constitutional or political?

With the advent of Donald Trump this controversial practice is on the rise. For example, judges issued only six nationwide injunctions in the Bush administration; twelve during the Obama administration; 64 issued in Trump’s first term (that’s half of the injunctions issued in the past 60 years!), then dropping to fourteen in Biden’s term.

The judiciary (especially liberal judges) has become very comfortable over the past decade with the robust exercise of judicially overseeing the executive branch. With Congress becoming more polarized since 2000, they’re able to accomplish less in a bipartisan manner. Presidents then are pushing the boundaries of what they can do with as Obama said, “a phone and a pen.” Judges too have become more partisan, ruling more from their political viewpoints than the law.

Harvard Law Review has concluded that nationwide injunctions are becoming more common and are “overwhelmingly issued by judges appointed by a president of the opposite party.” This leads to the concern of “judge shopping” where plaintiffs look for a friendly partisan judge to rule the way they want them to, instead of on the merits of the case. This partisan trend is undermining the confidence of the public and undermining the rule of law.

Are they really following the facts, the law and the constitution in determining the merits of the case… or their liberal ideology?

The Supreme Court could end the practice of one local judge issuing a national injunction. In fact, Justice Clarence Thomas has criticized nationwide injunctions declaring “if their popularity continues, this Court must address their legality.” Justice Neil Gorsuch also believes the Supreme Court should deal with nationwide injunctions stating, “This Court must, at some point, confront these important objections to this increasingly widespread practice.” But so far, the Court has never definitely ruled on this practice.

Congress could also end national injunctions through legislation, and bills doing so have been drafted but have gone nowhere, most likely because nationwide injunctions are attractive to the party that doesn’t control the presidency. Neither side wants to end it while the other side is in power.

The Judicial Conference could also issue reforms. Ideas proposed include requiring random assignment of cases seeking nationwide injunctions or assigning injunction cases to three-judge panels instead of a single judge.

Media Cries “Constitutional Crisis”

As the legacy media screams “constitutional crisis” over the president’s actions, a cabal of partisan district and appellate judges are using (or abusing) their authority to block Trump’s agenda,

According to a recent Harris-Harvard poll, the president’s actions are popular with Americans. For instance:

• 81% support deporting criminal illegal immigrants
• 76% support a “full-scale effort to find and eliminate fraud and waste in government”
• 69% support keeping men out of women’s sports
• 68% support the government declaring there are only two genders
• 65% support ending race-based hiring in government
• 63% support “freezing and re-evaluating all foreign aid expenditures and the department that handled them”
• 59% support cutting government spending already approved by Congress

Many in the Trump administration are calling out these partisan judges and their national injunctions for judicial overreach. Many legal experts say it’s an abuse of judicial power for one judge—unelected and unaccountable to the voters—to block a presidential initiative.

But supporters defend injunctions as essential guard rails against presidential overreach. I guess opinions depend on what political party holds the White House, instead of what the Constitution says.

The media appears to be hoping President Trump will declare he’s NOT going to abide by a liberal judge’s ruling rousing the drumbeat for impeachment. Now that could be fairly described as a constitutional crisis. (Funny how the media did not call “crisis” when Biden ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling that his student loan forgiveness scheme was unconstitutional and continued to forgive student loans anyway.)

So far the White House is not taking the media bait, but instead has emphatically stated that it will comply with these overreaching local rulings by activist judges.

While the Left may celebrate these current judicial victories in liberal courts, the president has pledged to “continue to seek every legal remedy to ultimately overturn these radical injunctions.” That means the Supreme Court with its’ constitutional conservative majority may be inclined to uphold Article II of the Constitution and end national injunctions.

Perhaps Stephen Miller, Deputy White House Chief of Staff, summed it up best at a recent press conference:

“A president is elected by the whole American people. He’s the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation. Judges are appointed. Members of Congress are elected at the district or state level. The Constitution’s Article 2 has a clause known as the vesting clause and it says the executive power shall be vested in a president singular. The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. That president then appoints staff to then impose that democratic will onto the government.

The existential threat to democracy is the unelected bureaucracy of lifetime tenured civil servants who believe they answer to no one… who believe they can do whatever they want without consequence… who believe they can set their own agenda no matter what Americans vote for.

Let’s Pray in the Name of Jesus

Pray that the eyes, ears and hearts of state attorney generals, legislators. governors and partisan judges will be open to God’s wisdom and plans and they will not fight against the President’s lawful executive orders to:

• uncover corruption, fraud and spending abuses in our government, and remove the Marxist agenda in all branches and agencies of government
• protect our children against the Leftist indoctrination being taught in schools, and against the harm of gender ideology,
• remove criminal illegals from our country

He thwarts the plans of the crafty, so that their hands achieve no success. He catches the wise in their craftiness, and the schemes of the wily are swept away. (Job 5:12 NIV)

Pray for wisdom and discernment to appellate judges and Supreme Court Justices who will hear these appeals and they will rule according to God’s will.

Devise your strategy, but it will be thwarted; propose your plan, but it will not stand, for God is with us (Isaiah 8:10 NIV).

Pray that God’s laws and righteousness will prevail.

But the plans of the Lord stand firm forever, the purposes of his heart through all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, the people he chose for his inheritance. (Psalm 33.11-12 NIV)

Share this article to inform believers and mobilize them in prayer against these unconstitutional injunctions!

Belinda Brewster analyzes cultural, political, and world events from a biblical worldview. Belinda’s passion is to equip, support, and encourage parents and grandparents who are courageously battling against the spiritual and cultural forces impacting children and grandchildren. Photo Credit: The White House/Flickr.