SCOTUS must stop leftist judges' lawless sabotage of Trump agenda
President Trump campaigned on securing our border, deporting foreign terrorists and other international criminals, and reforming our federal government to make it work for real Americans in real America. Americans gave him a broad and decisive electoral mandate, and he is doing the unthinkable in Washington: Boldly and fearlessly delivering on his promises to American voters. And fast.
Since assuming office just over two months ago, President Trump has taken hundreds of executive actions. He is not stealing Congress’s legislative power under Article I, nor is he stealing the Supreme Court judicial power under Article III. President Trump is exercising core executive power under Article II. With the American people and Congress on his side, radical activist judges have issued absurd, illegal, and even dangerous injunctions to sabotage the duly-elected president and his Executive Branch team.
Two of the most egregious, lawless, and dangerous orders were handed down by Democrat activist judges.
U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Amir Hatem Mahdy Ali, a Biden appointee and foreign citizen who barely got jammed through confirmation in the lame-duck session after the Democrats’ electoral defeat, ordered the government to issue checks for nearly $2 billion in foreign aid over the president’s national-security review. This means the president, as the commander-in-chief and chief executive officer, cannot fulfill his constitutional duty to take care that our laws are faithfully executed. Judge Ali does not want President Trump to ensure we are not funding, for example, terrorists (like Hamas, for instance), who kill Americans under the guise of foreign aid (to Gaza, for instance).
Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined their three liberal colleagues and refused to stop this judicial sabotage of the presidency. This only emboldened other Democrat activist judges.
Three Saturdays ago, however, the judicial sabotage finally crossed the Rubicon. To combat designated foreign terrorist group Tren de Aragua, the brutal Venezuelan gang that has terrorized multiple American cities, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used statute that has been on the books for more than two centuries. He correctly declared that Tren de Aragua had invaded our country and engaged in violence in coordination with the socialist Venezuelan government. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele agreed to take custody of Tren de Aragua terrorists and house them in his country’s secure prisons, with the United States bearing the cost.
Unfortunately, like many recent ICE raids, news of this plan leaked to the press and the criminal-loving community. Leftist lawyers rushed to the Washington, D.C. courtroom of Obama-appointed federal Judge James Boasberg, who held an unprecedented Saturday emergency hearing even though he was not the emergency judge that weekend, pushing through an extraordinary and lawless order. Without going through the required procedures including discovery, Boasberg purported to certify a class of plaintiffs: all non-citizens subject to the proclamation. He then purported to enjoin their deportation, telling a Justice Department attorney that if planes were in the air, they must turn around.
Planes indeed were in the air, but they did not turn around. Instead, they landed in El Salvador. President Bukele even taunted Boasberg, posting, "Oopsie... Too late," followed by a laughing emoji. Boasberg’s order mandated that the United States bring back over 200 terrorists immediately—without the necessary security measures to offload them. The order directly interfered with an ongoing overseas operation, one that had been months in the making, and undermined the president’s ability to conduct foreign affairs with foreign leaders.
Boasberg’s actions were not judicial review; they were judicial sabotage. He publicized an ongoing military, intelligence, and law-enforcement operation to remove some of the most dangerous terrorists and international gang members from American soil. This reckless exposure put American and allied lives in grave danger. He lawlessly ordered the president to turn around planes full of terrorists, without any knowledge of fuel levels, security needs, or the required operational footprint to abort the mission and bring back over 200 hardened criminals to American soil. The operation had been carefully planned with El Salvador’s military, intelligence, and law enforcement awaiting these terrorists. Did Boasberg expect that same operational footprint to be suddenly available on U.S. soil to handle these terrorists?
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Moreover, Boasberg's order undermines the ability of the president to conduct foreign affairs with foreign leaders. Why would any foreign leader risk engaging in high-stakes operations with the president if they knew that an activist American judge could sabotage the operation, endanger lives, and publicly humiliate them? A federal judge in Texas (where the planes took off) might have the power to consider a habeas petition from El Salvador, but Boasberg most certainly does not have the power to expose and sabotage ongoing military operations.
The president’s response to this outlandish order is not a threat to the rule of law; it is the order itself that is dangerous and unlawful. The time to step back from the precipice is now, and wise judges must lead the way. As the commander-in-chief, the president had a constitutional duty to land those planes and get those terrorists the hell out of America.
In a 2-1 split decision, the DC Circuit declined to stay Boasberg’s lawless and dangerous order. Now Boasberg is even more emboldened, and he has set a show-cause hearing for this Thursday to determine whether to hold Trump officials in contempt of court.
The Trump Justice Department filed an emergency petition with the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Roberts ordered a briefing, and the Court will rule in the coming days. The stakes cannot get higher. If Roberts refuses to get his judicial house in order by reining in these judicial saboteurs, Congress will do it for him. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced bold reforms to the federal judiciary. Many others in the House and Senate will follow, including aggressive oversight, Supreme Court ethics reform, cutting the jurisdiction of the DC District Court, cutting funding, and many more much-needed forms. When the federal judiciary loses legitimacy, it loses everything.