In recent weeks, unelected federal judges have issued dozens of orders blocking President Donald Trump from enforcing myriad policies. The injunctions stem from more than 146 legal challenges, so far, to the administration’s actions.
Current Court Orders
According to White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, federal judges have issued a stunning 30 injunctions stopping the executive branch from enforcing its policies since President Donald Trump was inaugurated on January 20.
“We are now up to roughly 30 injunctions in the last 8 weeks, on top of 64 in term 1,” Miller wrote on X.
This is in comparison to the 14 nationwide injunctions issued against former President Joe Biden in his entire first term; 12 issued against former President Barack Obama in two terms; and 6 issued against former President George W. Bush over his eight years as president.
Since January 20, 2025, judges have issued orders:
Blocking the Pentagon from excluding “transgender” troops from the U.S. military.
Ordering the Trump administration to return hundreds of members of Tren de Aragua, a designated foreign terrorist organization, to American soil.
Prohibiting the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Food and Drug Administration from removing webpages promoting “gender ideology” and stopping the agencies from scrubbing the term “pregnant people” from their websites.
Blocking President Trump’s order defunding medical institutions that provide harmful and damaging transgender drugs and surgeries to children and teens.
Blocking DOGE’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Ordering USAID to distribute $2 billion in payments to various nonprofit groups and businesses.
Mandating the executive branch rehire thousands of fired federal workers.
Prohibiting the Trump administration from shutting down Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
Blocking an executive order ending “birthright citizenship” for the children of illegal aliens.
Stopping all Social Security employees from “working on the DOGE agenda” at the direction of the president of the United States.
Mandating the U.S. Department of Justice house men in women’s prisons and provide them with feminizing hormones.
Forcing the Environmental Protection Agency to provide money to Citibank for “climate programs.”
The Problems with Nationwide Injunctions
The practice of federal district judges – and there are roughly 700 of them – issuing what are called “nationwide injunctions” is a recent development in American history.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the term refers to lower federal courts issuing an “injunction against the government that prevents the government from implementing a challenged law, regulation, or other policy with respect to all persons and entities, even those not before the court in the litigation” (emphasis in original).
In effect, this grants federal courts “veto” power over executive branch policies.
However, it’s not clear that, under the Constitution, federal district judges even have the power to enjoin government policies nationwide.
In January 2020, Justice Neil Gorsuch, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, issued a concurring opinion in which he questioned the practice of lower courts issuing, what he jokingly deemed “cosmic” injunctions.
“Whether framed as injunctions of ‘nationwide,’ ‘universal,’ or ‘cosmic’ scope, these orders share the same basic flaw – they direct how the defendant must act towards persons who are not parties to the case,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, adding,
The justice observed that universal injunctions “have little basis in traditional equitable practice” and they “hardly seem an innovation we should rush to embrace.” “By their nature,” he observed, “universal injunctions tend to force judges into making rushed, high-stakes, low-information decisions.”
Additionally, Justice Gorsuch lamented that such power in the hands of the judiciary encourages “forum shopping,” where left-wing activist legal groups file suit in the most liberal places in the country (e.g., Washington, D.C., California, and New York) where they are likely to get their case before a likeminded judge.
“There is a nearly boundless opportunity to shop for a friendly forum to secure a win nationwide,” Justice Gorsuch wrote, adding,
“What in this gamesmanship and chaos can we be proud of?” the justice asked rhetorically.
In a separate opinion in 2024, Justice Gorsuch opined that universal injunctions allow “district courts … to govern an entire State or even the whole Nation from their courtrooms.”
In Trump v. Hawaii, decided in 2017, Justice Clarence Thomas noted that universal injunctions “are legally and historically dubious.”
And in a recent dissent in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, Justice Alito, joined by Justices Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, lamented that nationwide injunctions defy “‘foundational’ limits on equitable jurisdiction.”
Indeed, a system in which a single unelected federal judge can dictate nationwide policy to the executive branch – contravening the will of 78 million voters – is surely not one our Founding Fathers envisioned.
Stay tuned for part two to learn more about potential solutions to the problem of nationwide injunctions.
Related articles and resources:
Biden-Appointed Judge Blocks Trump Ban on ‘Transgender’ Service Members
Trump Victory Likely Cements Conservative Supreme Court for Decades to Come
‘Supreme Court Reform’ is Code for Putting More Liberals on the Bench
Photo from Getty Images.
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