“Legal Challenges Mount as Judges Push Back against Trump’s Policies”
By Tom Hals
In Wilmington, Delaware, U.S. President Donald Trump’s rapid succession of orders, including cuts to foreign aid, troop deployments to the border, and pardons for violent offenders, has faced minimal opposition in Congress. However, federal judges are now signaling a looming confrontation over the rule of law. At a recent hearing, U.S. District Judge John Coughenour in Seattle temporarily halted one of Trump’s controversial policies, the end of birthright citizenship, emphasizing the importance of upholding the rule of law.
The judiciary is stepping in as a critical check on Trump’s expansive policy decisions at a time when other oversight mechanisms are lacking. Judges have issued temporary injunctions blocking various administration actions, such as freezing federal grants, dismantling foreign aid programs, and changing transgender policy. These legal challenges have raised concerns among constitutional scholars about the president’s authority to bypass established procedures, leading to calls for intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court, which now leans conservative.
Trump’s flurry of executive orders, numbering over 60 as of Sunday, has sparked debate over his constitutional powers, with critics warning against overreach and violations of established norms. While some Republicans have supported his government restructuring efforts, concerns have been raised about the disregard for Congress’ spending authority and the erosion of checks and balances. Despite this, the Department of Justice has remained silent, with its leadership under scrutiny for targeting officials investigating the Capitol insurrection.
As legal battles intensify, a coalition of Democratic state attorneys general, advocacy groups, and unions have filed numerous lawsuits challenging Trump’s actions. The legal landscape is evolving, setting the stage for a potential showdown over executive authority and constitutional boundaries.
Several initial victories have been recorded. Yet, temporary orders have mostly blocked Trump’s policies. In the upcoming weeks, judges and appeals courts will be compelled to address critical questions that could potentially bind the president to long-standing norms and laws or further expand his power. For instance, Coughenour’s order has been appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which is one level below the Supreme Court. The appeals court will deliberate on whether the Seattle judge was accurate in determining that it was “blatantly unconstitutional” for Trump to restrict citizenship to U.S.-born children with at least one American parent or a parent with permanent legal residence.
The rewriting of the law is at stake here, as Trump’s policy would essentially alter the existing law by depriving U.S.-born children of parents who are temporary foreign workers, tourists, students, and notably, those residing in the country illegally, of their citizenship rights. Trump’s directives are giving rise to cases that conservative legal advocates have been eager to present before the Supreme Court. Some conservative legal scholars have posited that a president should possess sole authority over the entire executive branch, including independent agencies and boards that Congress has placed beyond the executive branch’s jurisdiction.
This theory may soon face scrutiny, as Trump recently dismissed an independent member of the U.S. labor board responsible for enforcing workers’ rights, a move that appears unprecedented and seemingly violates a law prohibiting presidential removals, thereby sparking a lawsuit. Legal clashes between Trump and his adversaries are also escalating over laws that forbid a president from spending less on a program than what Congress mandates, laws preventing the removal of inspectors general, and laws safeguarding private government information from external entities such as Musk, who is actively searching through agencies’ systems to uncover instances of waste.
Court cases have the potential to drag on for years. By the time policies like terminating foreign humanitarian aid are deemed illegal, the damage inflicted on projects dependent on that funding, such as hospitals in refugee camps or mine clearance operations in war zones, may be irreversible. “The courts play a crucial role, but they alone cannot save us,” remarked Dan Urman, a professor at Northeastern University School of Law specializing in public policy. “Ultimately, it could culminate in the courts reshaping the law, boosting executive power, shifting the goalposts to grant the president more authority.”
