Congress Primed to Curtail Activist Judges

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20, federal district court judges have unleashed a slew of injunctions to derail major portions of the president’s agenda, most infamously blocking the deportation of illegal alien gang members. Now, Congress may be ready to exercise its own authority to check this apparent abuse of power by the judiciary.

During a press conference earlier this week, Speaker Mike Johnson brandished Congress’ authority to “eliminate entire district courts” or cut funding in response to the judicial subterfuge of President Donald Trump’s constitutional powers. “Desperate times call for desperate measures and Congress is going to act,” Johnson stated.

“It violates separation of powers when a judge thinks that they can enjoin something that a president is doing, that the American people voted for,” Johnson continued.

The U.S. Constitution vests “all legislative powers” in Congress (Article I) and executive power in the president (Article II), while Article III confines courts to address specific “cases” and “controversies.” Nowhere does it empower a lone judge to modify or delay national policy for everyone.

Yet, from Portland to Fort Worth, judges have frozen Trump’s orders to fire probationary federal workers, slash DEI programs, end birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens, deport Venezuelan gang members, and cut federal funding to hospitals performing gender reassignment surgeries on minors.

In effect, after voters roundly rejected Democrat policies at the ballot box last November, activist judges are attempting to legislate from the bench, acting as a roadblock on implementation of Trump’s agenda.

This is unacceptable to the 77 million Americans who voted for Trump and his campaign promises. Speaker Johnson is right: it’s time for Congress to act against this usurpation of power by singular district judges.

Trump’s Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal in early March asking the Supreme Court to “restrict the scope” of district court judges’ ability to issue injunctions to only those before the court, rather than allowing judges to govern the whole nation from the bench. “Years of experience have shown that the Executive Branch cannot properly perform its functions if any judge anywhere can enjoin every presidential action everywhere,” Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote.

Harris characterized the surge in nationwide injunctions as an “epidemic” – and indeed it has been, but only when Trump is in office. “District courts have issued more universal injunctions and temporary restraining orders during February 2025 alone than through the first three years of the Biden Administration,” she wrote.

In other words, while nominally conservative jurists have respected the Constitution’s separation of powers, liberal judges have shown no such restraint.

Nationwide injunctions are a modern aberration, rarely used before Obama’s presidency. From 1963-1982, only 10 were issued. However, a Harvard Law Review study last year found that 67 percent of all injunctions ever issued over the past six decades were against President Trump in his first term, and 92 percent were imposed by Democrat appointed judges.

These judges aren’t checking power – they’re seizing it, transforming their courts into super-legislatures consisting of only their voice. By dictating national policy, they usurp the elected branches and the consent of the governed. The sheer amount of these contestable injunctions leveled against Trump smack of judicial bias and an intentional abuse of power.

Vice President JD Vance sees the stakes clearly. After Judge Engelmayer blocked DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data in February, Vance fired back on X: “If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation that would be illegal… Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Democrats now claiming that the Trump administration’s request for the Supreme Court to rein in district court judges’ ability to micromanage the president have no room to talk, either. Last October, Biden asked the Supreme Court to invalidate a district court’s universal injunction by arguing that “universal remedies are inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts.”

At the time, the Supreme Court declined to rule on the legality of universal injunctions. If the Judicial branch won’t reform and clarify the powers of district courts, then Congress should do it for them—and plenty of senators and representatives are lining up to do just that.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) recently introduced the No Rogue Rulings Act, a bill designed to rein in the power of federal district court judges to issue nationwide injunctions that obstruct presidential actions. This legislation, which has gained traction among conservative lawmakers, seeks to limit the scope of injunctions to the specific parties involved in a case or, at most, the judicial district in which the ruling is made. The bill was approved out of committee last week and is currently on a glide path to a vote on the House floor as early as the first week of April.

On the Senate side, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), introduced a bill to outright ban district courts from issuing nationwide injunctions. Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley joined Hawley in criticizing these injunctions as a tool of the activist left to paralyze conservative policies, pointing to the dramatic spike in such rulings during Trump’s first term as evidence of judicial weaponization.

Together, the House and Senate efforts signal a concerted strategy to dismantle a rogue judiciary’s abuse of power, ensuring that policymaking remains in the hands of elected representatives rather than activist judges.

Speaker Johnson is right that the latest rise in universal injunctions is part of a “dangerous trend” that has gone unaddressed for too long. Congress should rectify this posthaste, restoring Trump’s ability to execute national policy and accomplish what voters gave him a mandate to do.W.J. Lee has served in the White House, NASA, on multiple political campaigns, and in nearly all levels of government. In his free time, he enjoys the “three R’s” – reading, running, and writing