By John Daniel Davidson, The Federalist, February 11, 2025
John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pagan America: the Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.
Lower federal court judges have no constitutional authority to govern by injunction and undermine the executive branch.
What’s happening right now is that Democrats, having been thrown out of power by American voters in a landslide victory for Trump, have decided they’re going to deploy a widely-used tactic from Trump’s first term to thwart the president’s agenda: use the federal judiciary. Under the false pretext that the lower federal courts are part of a “coequal branch of government” with the executive, they’re aiming to shut down Trump’s reform efforts with a fusillade of preliminary injunctions.
In recent days dozens of lawsuits have been filed against the Trump administration by Democrat attorneys general and various left-wing groups. These groups have carefully selected their venues, ensuring the lawsuits come before rabidly anti-Trump activist judges. So far, the tactic seems to be working. As of this past weekend, eight different rulings from the federal bench have temporarily halted the president’s executive orders. …