Trump’s Bold Move Against ‘Activist Judges’ – Will It Backfire?

President Donald Trump is once again tangling with the judiciary, this time over a federal judge’s order to stop his administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.

The ruling, issued by District Judge James Boasberg, sought to stop Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to transfer about 250 suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang to a high-security prison in El Salvador. Rather than submit, Trump demanded Boasberg’s impeachment and nevertheless went ahead with the deportations, igniting another conflict between the executive and judicial branches.

The chief justice, John Roberts, criticized Trump’s attack, saying impeachment is not an appropriate remedy to a judicial decision. A handful of Republican lawmakers echoed his concerns, cautioning against potential retribution against federal judges. The questions of whether the president is actually crossing a constitutional line or whether he is simply reacting to a judiciary that has grossly overstepped its bounds as a check on executive authority.

The Biden administration established a precedent of ignoring adverse judicial rulings in politically advantageous situations. In 2021, Biden extended a national eviction moratorium even after the Supreme Court had already warned that doing so was unconstitutional. The administration forged ahead, aware it would take a while for courts to invalidate the policy. The same pattern unfolded around Biden’s plan to forgive student loan debt, which lower courts and the Supreme Court rejected. Instead of going along with the ruling, Biden switched gears, issuing a revised version of the policy through another legal device.

Unlike with Trump, Biden was not subjected to nearly the same level of criticism for defying court orders. His administration defended its maneuvers as testing legal limits, while Trump’s response to judicial overreach is presented this time as an attack on democracy. The distinction also raises questions about whether courts are holding Democrats to one standard and Republicans to another.

Federal courts have begun using injunctions and emergency decisions to block the conservative agenda. Trump’s travel ban was blocked for years, despite clear statutory authorization to impose it, before being upheld by the Supreme Court. In the Biden era, courts were more restrained in blocking executive actions, so policies that might have faced judicial review — such as mass parole of migrants and selective penalties for violating immigration laws— proceeded without limits.

The larger question is whether the judiciary is functioning as a dispassionate referee or as a political check on Republican administrations. With courts often issuing nationwide injunctions and halting executive orders, the move to forge ahead with his policies in the face of legal challenges represents a change in approach by Trump. If Biden’s presidency ignored court decisions and suffered no real consequences, Trump might not see any reason to voluntarily back down when a judge stays his orders.

Congress can enact the necessary reforms to rein in judicial overreach by, for instance, delimiting the jurisdiction of certain courts, or reforming the rules about nationwide injunctions. But in the absence of action from the legislature, Trump seems to be testing whether the judiciary will treat him differently than his predecessor. With activist judges increasingly setting policy from the bench, the balance of power between branches of government has become a fundamental issue of his presidency.

Please leave your opinions / comments on these stories below, we appreciate your perspective!