DC insider annihilates Trump’s bogus claim about judges

In a Thursday, May 29 post on X, formerly Twitter, President Donald Trump's White House adviser, Stephen Miller, angrily wrote, "We are living under a judicial tyranny." Miller's post was in response to a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling that blocks — at least temporarily — most of the tariffs Trump is imposing on the United States' trading partners.

But Miller isn't the only MAGA Republican who is using the phrase "judicial tyranny" to attack federal judges who are blocking Trump's executive orders. Trump and his MAGA allies, from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Vice President JD Vance, claim that federal courts are failing to respect the president's executive powers — and Trump's critics are responding that in fact, the courts are playing the role they are supposed to play in the United States' system of checks and balances.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 30, attorney Paul Rosenzweig — a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official — lays out the flaws and contradictions of the "judicial tyranny" arguments coming from Trump and his MAGA allies.

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"Trump wants you to think that he is the victim of district court judges gone crazy enjoining his actions," Rosenzweig explains. "To make that case, he also wants you to think that what is happening to him is the same thing that happened to (former President Joe) Biden's policies — district court judges interfering with executive prerogative. But that's just not the case. And diving into the facts makes it clear that this argument really isn't about universal injunctions — cases where a district court judge grants interim equitable relief that applies across the entire country."

Rosenzweig continues, " The argument is really about forum-shopping and judicial gerrymandering…. The facts on the ground are that the universal injunctions against Trump are truly universal. As of today, more than 20 different federal district court judges have issued injunctive relief in at least 180 different cases. And the number goes up with every passing day. There is no good evidence that Trump's opponents are forum-shopping — bringing cases before courts where there is the greatest expectation of having judges who will rule in their favor."

MAGA Republicans, Rosenzweig stresses, have a long history of seeking "universal injunctions" against Democratic policies they don't like — including far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

"By March 2023," the former DHS official observes, "Paxton's office had filed 28 lawsuits against the Biden Administration in federal district courts in Texas; of those, 18 were filed in single-judge divisions, including Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's division and a single-judge division held by another Trump appointee, Judge Drew Tipton…. In a world in which we could have confidence in the good faith of an administration and a presumption as to its regularity of operation, universal injunctions would be a little-used safety-valve check on executive authority. But today, we live in a different world — one where MAGA gamesmanship and judicial forum-shopping were instrumental in frustrating various Biden initiatives."

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Rosenzweig adds, "Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it seems quite possible that the Court will depower judicial opposition in the service of conservative policy."

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Paul Rosenzweig's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.