16 Most Egregious Injunctions Barring Trump From Doing His Job
The Trump administration hit the ground running in January, quickly executing a multitude of initiatives related to closing the border, deporting illegals, culling the federal bureaucracy, stopping the abuse of federal dollars to fund far-left programs, and eradicating harmful ideologies like diversity, equity, and inclusion from federal purview.
All of these items, most of which were campaign promises upon which President Donald Trump was elected by the American people, have received a litany of criticism from far-left actors — which was to be expected.
However, what has emerged in weeks and months of Trump doing what he promised voters is a pattern of unelected federal judges standing in the way of exercising the will of the American people and handing win after win to the left through incessant district-level nationwide injunctions on federal actions.
While many of the judges are Democrat appointees, what has become clear is that no matter who appointed a judge — from Trump himself, to former Presidents Clinton, Bush, Obama, or Biden — these judges appear to believe they serve as some entrenched panel of oligarchs who really have the final say on what the president is and is not allowed to do.
Here are the 16 most egregious examples of their hubris:
Courts Protecting Illegal Immigrants And Terrorists
On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order suspending a refugee resettlement program and freezing funding for processing refugees. The order quickly brought lawsuits from open borders groups and others who sought to force the admission of about 12,000 refugees into the United States.
U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, an appointee of former President Joe Biden on the bench in Washington state, demanded earlier this month that those thousands of foreigners be settled in the country.
That demand came after a Ninth Circuit opinion that narrowed Whitehead’s earlier opinion, but later clarified that the large class of people who met certain criteria (namely those who had already been approved for processing) would be settled.
The Trump administration sought to only settle 160 refugees who had already booked flights prior to the executive order.
Whitehead, appearing to manifest his preferred political outcome, said the Trump administration’s read was “not just reading between the lines” but “hallucinating new text that simply is not there.”
“The Government is free, of course, to seek further clarification from the Ninth Circuit. But the Government is not free to disobey statutory and constitutional law — and the direct orders of this Court and the Ninth Circuit — while it seeks such clarification,” Whitehead wrote.
Ironically, Whitehead appears to simply bypass the president’s “broad statutory authority to ‘suspend the entry of … any class of aliens’ ‘[w]henever [he] finds that [their] entry … would be detrimental to the interests of the United States,’” found in 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f). Further, “‘By its terms, § 1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause’ and provides a ‘comprehensive delegation’ of authority,” as decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Trump v. Hawaii in 2018.
2. Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto v. HHS
In March, the Department of the Interior (DOI) terminated funding for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) program to pay for legal services for unaccompanied alien children (UAC). The termination required that nonprofits involved with the program stop their legal representation of the unaccompanied minors.
Many of those nonprofits then sued DOI, HHS, and ORR to block the termination of the funding, and the case was miraculously placed before Mexican-born U.S. District Court Judge Araceli Martinez-Olguin, a Biden appointee serving in the Northern District of California, who had previously worked as the managing attorney for Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto — the lead plaintiff.
The Trump administration filed a motion for Martinez-Olguin’s recusal, citing bias toward the plaintiffs and the fact that she “has made various statements critical of President Trump’s immigration agenda.” She denied the motion.
The Trump administration tried to appeal to the Ninth Circuit but was denied. Then, Martinez-Olguin issued an injunction forcing the Trump administration to continue to pay for the legal services, despite the fact that the program “does not create an enforceable right to government-funded representation, let alone compel the agency to maintain any particular scope of services or contractual relationship,” as the Trump administration pointed out.
In March, Trump signed a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) in order to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan terrorist gang Tren de Aragua. The next day, five Venezuelans set to be deported filed a lawsuit claiming the law does not give the president the authority to remove them from the country.
U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama who sits on the D.C. court, made all persons in the U.S. affected by the proclamation a class and attempted to stop their deportation through a temporary restraining order (TRO). Boasberg went so as far as to think he could order the return of planes carrying the alleged terrorists back to U.S. shores after they had left.
The Supreme Court vacated the TRO, saying that the plaintiffs needed to file habeas corpus petitions, requiring that they file in the judicial district where the person is detained, instead of D.C. The high court did not weigh into the claims under the AEA, but stated that the government was required to give anyone set to be deported ample notice of their removal in order to give them time to file a habeas complaint.
Multiple habeas petitions were filed, including in Texas, J.A.V. v. Trump, New York, G.F.F. v. Trump, and Colorado, D.B.U. v. Trump. U.S. District Judges Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., a Trump appointee serving in Texas, and Alvin Hellerstein, a Bill Clinton appointee serving in New York, and Charlotte Sweeney, a Biden appointee serving in Colorado, quickly signed restraining orders stopping the Trump administration from removing the designated foreign terrorists.
In February, DHS issued a directive to officers instructing that they review all cases of previously released illegals for re-detention and removal to a “third country” (defined as a country distinct from the individual’s actual country of origin).
Multiple illegals with final orders for removal sued DHS, challenging this practice of deportation without first providing them notice and the ability to contest the removal and provide a fear-based claim.
U.S. District Court Judge Brian E. Murphy, a Biden appointee serving in Massachusetts, granted an injunction to stop the removals of the illegals to third countries, despite the fact that federal law allows for removals of aliens to third countries.
While federal law does not generally allow the removal of aliens to countries where the alien might be put in danger, even if it is their country of origin, the government is not blocked from removing the aliens to alternate countries that might take them.
“Withholding of removal is country-specific protection; thus, even if an alien ultimately
succeeds on his withholding claim, he could potentially be removed to an alternate country,” the Trump administration’s filing reads. “A grant of withholding ‘only prohibits removal of the petitioner to the country of risk, but does not prohibit removal to a non-risk country’). Thus, the alien remains removable as an alien with a final order of removal.”
It goes on further:
Aliens subject to removal orders need not be removed to their native country. Generally, aliens ordered removed “may designate one country to which the alien wants to be removed,” and DHS “shall remove the alien to [that] country[.]” 8 U.S.C. § 1231(b)(2)(A).1 In certain circumstances, DHS will not remove the alien to their designated country, including where “the government of the country is not willing to accept the alien into the country.” Id. § 1231(b)(2)(C (iii). In such a case, the alien “shall” be removed to the alien’s country of nationality or citizenship, unless that country “is not willing to accept the alien[.]” Id. § 1231(b)(2)(D). If an alien cannot be removed to the country of designation or the country of nationality or citizenship, then the government may consider other options, including “[t]he country from which the alien was admitted to the United States,” “[t]he country in which the alien was born,” or “[t]he country in which the alien last resided[.]” Id. §§ 1231(b)(2)(E)(i), (iii)-(iv). Where removal to any of the countries listed in subparagraph (E) is “impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible,” then the alien may be removed to any “country whose government will accept the alien into that country.”
Murphy’s decision is on appeal in the First Circuit.
5. National TPS Alliance v. Noem
Three days before Trump was sworn into office, Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas extended a designation of Temporary Protective Status (TPS) for Venezuelans living in the United States. By Jan. 28, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem vacated the extension and subsequently terminated TPS for Venezuelans who had registered for it in 2023.
“In Secretary Noem’s assessment, her predecessor failed, among other things, to evaluate the key statutory question: whether permitting Venezuelan and Haitian nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is ‘contrary to the national interest,’” a Trump administration motion states.
National TPS Alliance, an organization representing those with TPS, and a group of Venezuelans turned around and sued the Trump administration, claiming the termination was based on racial bias — seemingly without any regard for being allowed into the U.S. is a privilege, not a right, of foreigners.
U.S. District Judge Edward M. Chen, an Obama appointee serving in California, issued a nationwide injunction on the Trump administration’s ability to remove the status, and an appeal to the Ninth Circuit was denied.
The Trump administration also filed a motion to dismiss, saying that the district court did not have the jurisdiction to rule because, among other reasons, Congress has “barred judicial review of TPS determinations.”
The Trump administration appealed the decision to the Supreme Court May 1.
Judges Think The President Isn’t Allowed To Be The Chief Executive
6. Maryland v. U.S. Department of Agriculture
Trump issued an executive order to “undertake preparations to initiate large-scale reductions in force (RIFs),” in an effort to significantly trim the fat of the federal bureaucracy, and in many ways remove some of the employees dedicated to undermining presidencies they do not agree with politically.
Multiple Democrat-run states sued because they were left to “pick up the pieces of the shattered federal workforce,” meaning they had an uptick in unemployment requests from persons whose jobs likely never should have existed in the first place.
The Trump administration had initially moved to fire a majority of the roughly 220,000 probationary employees in the federal government, but U.S. District Court Judge James Kelleher Bredar, an Obama appointee serving in Maryland, imposed a nationwide injunction on terminating the employees and ordered the agencies to rehire thousands of terminated employees.
In a 2-1 decision, an appeal to the Fourth Circuit issued a stay on Bredar’s decision and found that the Trump administration was likely to succeed in showing the plaintiff states lacked standing to sue, stating, “[t]he Supreme Court has stayed a similar preliminary injunction issued by the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.”
7. National Treasury Employees Union v. Trump
In March, Trump signed an executive order terminating the collective bargaining agreements of about two-thirds of federal employees, including several ones negotiated by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).
NTEU, the union suing to stop the order, complains that implementing the order will “[threaten] its very survival” and diminish its “clout and influence.”
The lawsuit is an affront to presidential authority to have control over federal employees, but U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman, a Clinton appointee serving in D.C., decided that the president did not have the power to prevent labor unions from forming in federal agencies, even if they harm the national interest, despite statutory authority to do so.
“The federal statute that governs bargaining with public-sector labor unions authorizes the President to exempt from its coverage ‘any agency or subdivision thereof’ if the President makes the determination that ‘the agency or subdivision has as a primary function intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or national security work,’ and that the provisions of the statute ‘cannot be applied to that agency or subdivision in a manner consistent with national security requirements and considerations,’” the Trump administration wrote in response to the suit.
The response cited former President Jimmy Carter’s exemptions of more than 45 agencies from unionizing and executive orders from other presidents doing the same depending on the “Nation’s changing needs.”
The case is currently before the D.C. Circuit Court on appeal.
The NTEU also sued the Trump administration for attempting to pause policy decision-making at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) after bureau acting director Russ Vought, who is also the director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), said the agency would not take “its next draw of unappropriated funding because it is not ‘reasonably necessary’ to carry out its duties.”
“The Bureau’s current balance of $711.6 million is in fact excessive in the current fiscal environment. This spigot, long contributing to CFPB’s unaccountability, is now being turned off,” Vought said. The Trump administration’s response in the lawsuit says that Vought was streamlining the actions of the bureau, not attempting to dismantle it as the lawsuit states.
“[Plaintiffs] seek injunctive relief that is breathtaking in scope,” the response states. “That relief would essentially place the CFPB in a judicially managed receivership, with its day-to-day decision-making across a universe of issues superintended by the Court, rather than by the officer designated by the President.”
Vought shut down multiple operations of the CFPB, but the labor union representing the bureau claimed that those shirked the statutory requirements set out by Congress, which the Trump administration denies, because Vought’s pauses “do not apply to agency activities “required by law.”
“Because the public has an interest in ensuring that an agency can carry out its statutory duties in line with the policy priorities of the democratically elected administration, the public interest and balance of the equities tip in Defendants’ favor,” it continues.
Nonetheless, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee serving in D.C., declared that the Trump administration “shall not delete, destroy, remove, or impair any data or other CFPB records covered by the Federal Records Act,” and “shall not terminate any CFPB employee, except for cause related to the specific employee’s performance or conduct.”
An appeal to the D.C. Circuit Court stayed Jackson’s injunction in part, “insofar as it prohibits defendants from terminating or issuing a notice of reduction in force to employees whom defendants have determined, after a particularized assessment, to be unnecessary to the performance of defendants’ statutory duties.”
After Vought issued a reduction-in-force to remove many of the CFPB employees, Jackson immediately got in the way, ordering that ““the Reduction in Force announced by Acting Director Vought on or about April 17, 2025 is SUSPENDED and it may NOT be implemented, effectuated, or completed in any way until this Court has ruled on plaintiffs’ motion to enforce the preliminary injunction.”
The Circuit rejected an appeal from the Trump administration.
9. New York v. Trump (S.D.N.Y.)
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was granted access to data in the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Financial Services (BFS) believed “necessary to perform their Presidentially-directed mandate of maximizing efficiency and productivity, including ensuring data and payment integrity with respect to the 1.2 billion transactions and over $5 trillion in outlays handled by BFS,” the Trump administration stated.
However, the attorneys general of 19 Democrat-run states filed a lawsuit allegedly because the government employees associated with DOGE were not authorized to access the data. Even though the employees were, in fact, designated as being able to access the data, the Democrat states do not like it.
The states are “impermissibly intruding into the Executive’s decisionmaking with respect to which Treasury Department employees are granted access to BFS systems and data, in order to provide oversight of the Department and to implement the Executive’s priorities,” the Trump administration states.
U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, a Biden appointee serving in New York, blocked the Treasury Department from allowing the DOGE employees from accessing the data and required the Trump administration to provide documentation that the DOGE employees had undergone proper hiring, reporting, training, vetting, and mitigation.
The Trump administration did so, and moved to vacate the preliminary injunction. Vargas has not yet weighed in, but the Trump administration also filed a status report anticipating an amended complaint from the states to come later in May.
On Jan. 27, OMB issued a memorandum saying all federal agencies “must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all Federal financial assistance, and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by” several executive orders, “including, but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, nongovernmental organizations, DEI, woke gender ideology, and the green new deal.”
The Democrat attorneys general of 22 states and D.C. filed a lawsuit to stop the pause of categorical funding freezes. OMB rescinded the memo due to an injunction placed on the funding freezes by the D.C. district court. OMB stated that the claims from the states are now moot and there is no longer need for relief.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on the same day said, “This is not a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo. Why? To end any confusion created by the court’s injunction. The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously implemented.”
U.S. District Court John James McConnell, Jr., an Obama appointee serving in Rhode Island, charged forward with the case, despite the revision, claiming “the alleged rescission of the OMB Directive was in name only and may have been issued simply to defeat the jurisdiction of the courts.”
McConnell also sought to force the Trump administration to spend the money it had planned to stop spending. That was then appealed to the First Circuit to stop McConnell’s injunction, which was denied.
Another request for an injunction was filed for a funding freeze at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and McConnell said that the FEMA freeze was not in compliance with the first injunction.
The lawsuit and stoppage of the funding freeze are a clear affront to executive authority, as explained by the Trump administration’s filing: “The President of the United States, along with the chief agency responsible for overseeing expenditures—the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) — plainly have authority to direct agencies to fully implement the President’s agenda, consistent with each individual agency’s underlying statutory authorities.”
“‘[T]he President’s power necessarily encompasses ‘general administrative control of those executing the laws,’ throughout the Executive Branch of government, of which he is the head,’” it continues, quoting another case. “‘The authority of the President to control and supervise executive policymaking is derived from the Constitution.’”
The Trump administration appealed the second order to the First Circuit.
11. Casa, Inc. v. Trump; New Jersey v. Trump; Washington v. Trump
Trump signed an executive order defining what it means to be “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States in the Fourteenth Amendment, pertaining to “birthright citizenship.” The order recognized that “birthright citizenship” for the children of illegal aliens does not exist, nor does it exist for aliens lawfully, but temporarily, in the United States.
“Text, history, and precedent support what common sense compels: the Constitution does not
harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to, inter alia: the children of those who
have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” a Trump administration filing notes.
Two organizations attempting to obtain citizenship for the children of illegals, Casa, Inc., and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, along with a group of pregnant illegal aliens, filed suit because their children would not be able to be used as anchor babies under Trump’s order.
U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman, a Biden appointee serving in Maryland, blocked Trump’s order, claiming it violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The case is similar to others from New Jersey and Washington. Boardman makes grandiose statements to the effect that the question of “birthright citizenship” has been asked and answered, and that further discussion on the matter cannot take place.
The Fourth Circuit denied appeal from the Trump administration, which then appealed to the Supreme Court.
“As was apparent from the time of its enactment, the Citizenship Clause’s use of the phrase ‘subjection to the jurisdiction’ of the United States contemplates something more than being subject to this country’s regulatory power,” the Trump administration argued. “It conveys that persons must be ‘completely subject to [the] political jurisdiction’ of the United States, i.e., that they have a ‘direct and immediate allegiance’ to this country, unqualified by an allegiance to any other foreign power. Just as that does not hold for diplomats or occupying enemies, it similarly does not hold for foreigners admitted temporarily or individuals here illegally.”
12. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition v. U.S. Department of State
On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order that included a 90-day pause on “foreign development assistance,” and the Secretary of State issued stop-work orders for United States Agency for International Development (USAID) foreign assistance grants.
USAID was revealed to have been a slush fund for some of the most absurd pet projects of successive administrations, as well as a work-around to overthrow governments across the world.
Two nonprofit organizations, AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition (AVAC) and Journalism Development Network (JDN), sued the Trump administration, claiming their work was harmed by the suspensions as they were forced to lay off staff and cut budgets and that the president did not have the authority to order them. They want the courts to hold that suspension of foreign aid is unlawful.
U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali, a Biden appointee serving in D.C., issued a temporary restraining order on narrower terms than requested, enjoining the blanket suspension of foreign aid funding, but not enjoining the enforcement of Trump’s order, personnel decisions, or termination of individual contracts.
The Trump administration appealed the case to the Supreme Court, which ruled 5-4 that the administration was required to pay out already appropriated foreign assistance funds. Subsequently, the district court ordered the administration pay about $2 billion for work performed before Feb. 13. Ali did not reject the State Department’s rejection of foreign aid contracts after that date.
In a stinging dissent, Justice Samuel Alito pointed to the ongoing judicial coup, saying, “Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this
Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”
You Are Hereby Ordered To Mutilate Children’s Genitals
13. PFLAG v. Trump
Trump signed a day-one executive order to stop the federal government from being able to use funds to promote gender ideology, and followed it with a Jan. 28 order directing federal agencies to block medical institutions receiving federal research and education grants, including schools and hospitals, from participating in the chemical castration and genital mutilation of children under the age of 19 who claim to be a different gender.
The second order also stopped all castration and mutilation activities for government-provided medical benefits and instructed OMB to tell private insurers that government plans were barred from covering such harmful interventions. It additionally created a private right of action against medical professionals for performing the mutilation.
Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), a gay activism organization, and other groups interested in mutilating children joined forces to sue.
U.S. District Judge Brendan Abell Hurson, a Biden appointee serving in Maryland, issued an injunction, blocking the Trump administration from protecting children from these often coerced medical interventions.
While the case is being appealed to the Fourth Circuit, the appeals court placed it in abeyance, pending the Supreme Court decision in United States v. Skrmetti.
Trump signed a Jan. 25 executive order banning persons claiming to be “transgender” from serving in the military, stating the Pentagon had been “afflicted with radical gender ideology to appease activists unconcerned with the requirements of military service like physical and mental health, selflessness, and unit cohesion.” Claiming to be a different gender constitutes a mental health delusion “incompatible with active duty.”
A group of service members claiming to be a different gender, as well as prospective enlistees, challenged the ban.
While U.S. District Court Judge Benjamin Hale Settle, a George W. Bush appointee who serves in Washington, blocked the order, and the Ninth Circuit rejected an appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the district court order while litigation proceeds.
Despite mental health issues being clearly documented in cases of gender dysphoria — which is inherently a mental health issue — Settle shockingly claimed, “The government has in turn provided no evidence supporting the conclusion that military readiness, unit cohesion, lethality, or any of the other touchstone phrases long used to exclude various groups from service have in fact been adversely impacted by open transgender service under the Austin Policy. The Court can only find that there is none.”
Moreover, as the Trump administration pointed out in its filing, judges do not have the power to direct military policy, as the president has the Article II power to do so.
15. Doe v. McHenry; Jones v. Trump; Kingdom v. Trump
In these three cases, groups of inmates claiming to be different genders sued the Trump administration to block a day-one executive order that sought to protect female inmates by stopping the practice of allowing men who claim to be females to be incarcerated in female prisons — leading to assault and rape, among other things.
The order required the Bureau of Prisons to transfer inmates to their proper prisons, aligned with their sex, and cease the transgender medical interventions that were being received using taxpayer dollars.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, an appointee of former President Ronald Reagan serving in D.C., blocked the federal government from being able to implement the order. The Trump administration is appealing to the D.C. Circuit.
Judges Believe DEI Indoctrination Is Essential
16. NADOHE v. Trump; California v. U.S. Department of Education
Trump signed two day-one executive orders, one to “[defend] women from gender ideology extremism and [restore] biological truth to the federal government,” and the other directing OMB and others to terminate DEI offices, programs, grants, and contracts in the federal government.
A third executive order from Jan. 21 overturned a 1965 order and required contractors to certify they are not running DEI-oriented operations that violate civil rights laws.
Multiple organizations, including the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) sued, claiming the first two orders were unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Adam B. Abelson, a Biden appointee serving in Maryland, granted an injunction, but the Fourth Circuit granted a stay of the injunction as litigation proceeds.
The California case saw eight states challenge the Department of Education’s decision to terminate $250 million in federal grants related to DEI.
While U.S. District Court Judge Myong J. Joun, a Biden appointee serving in Massachusetts, issued a temporary restraining order on the terminations, and the First Circuit denied an attempt by the Trump administration to appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of the restraining order pending appeal, stating that the district court did not likely have the jurisdiction to issue the order.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
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