Shawn Fleetwood writes for the Federalist about the continuing role of rogue judges.
When Democrats’ lawfare failed to keep Donald Trump out of the White House, the party of “democracy” turned to the last available lever of power they possessed to stop Orange Man Bad: the lower judiciary.
Through the art of judge-shopping, left-wing activists and groups have spent the past year strategically filing lawsuits in districts dominated by Democrat and liberal Republican appointees to challenge virtually every aspect of Trump’s agenda. And with little convincing rationale, many of these rogue judges have eagerly issued overreaching orders blocking the president from enacting it.
The latest example of this phenomenon came on Friday, when a three-judge panel comprised mostly of Democrat appointees rejected (2-1) a request by the Trump administration to pause a ruling by D.C. District Judge Ana Reyes. In her order, the Biden-appointed Reyes blocked the government from revoking Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for more than 350,000 Haitian nationals residing in the United States under the program.
Reyes is known for previously donating to Democrat candidates and causes prior to becoming a judge. Since Trump’s return to office, she’s also attempted to block the president’s policy barring gender dysphoric individuals from military service.
On its face, Reyes’ injunction and the D.C. Circuit panel’s temporary affirmation of it are par for the course for the judicial activist crowd. But a closer examination of the situation shows how truly egregious leftists’ judicial coup has become.
As Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan observed, the U.S. Supreme Court has already given the thumbs up to the Trump administration’s revocation of TPS for foreign nationals throughout the past year. Not once, but twice. On both occasions, the justices granted emergency requests to temporarily stay lower court injunctions barring the government from axing TPS designations for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans.
