Six questions Trump and conservatives can no longer dodge in ’26



For conservatives, January 2025 felt like an auspicious moment to be alive. Donald Trump sat atop the world with a bully pulpit larger than any media outlet and the power to drive virtually any narrative he chose. Yet instead of using that power, we spent the year arguing over the power the GOP supposedly lacked.

Almost no legislation was passed. Many of the most transformational policies Trump enacted through executive action now sit mired in the courts.

Where is our Mamdani?

Fast-forward to January 2026. The economy looks grim. Democrats are crushing Republicans in special elections. It feels like a different universe.

Republicans tend to operate on a familiar two-year cycle. After a victory, the first year involves explaining why campaign promises cannot be fulfilled. The second year, ending in November elections, turns into defensive posturing: As disappointed as voters may be, they must remember that Democrats represent instant political death.

The implication stays constant. Voters must dutifully back the GOP, ignore the fact that Republicans currently hold power, and politely bypass the primary process out of fear of weakening resistance to Democrats.

As we enter the new year, we have reached the “rally around the GOP to stop the Democrats” phase of the cycle once again.

But reality intrudes. No matter how faithfully the base rallies, Republicans will likely lose in November because of the economy. Absent a dramatic national reset, Democrats will retake the House, probably with a substantial majority.

That makes the present moment decisive. With trifecta control still intact for now, Republicans must use what power they have to improve daily life, enact changes harder to undo, and reinforce red-state America so the coming blue wave does not obliterate the remaining red firewall.

Whether Republicans break free from their familiar cycle of election-failure theater comes down to the answers to these six questions.

1. Will the red firewall hold?

Republicans will likely lose the House and surrender residual power in battleground states such as Georgia and Arizona. Independents have abandoned the GOP, and that trend will accelerate as economic conditions worsen.

The question is whether Republicans will give their voters something worth turning out for. Base turnout alone will not flip purple territory, but it could stop the bleeding deep into red states and keep races such as the Iowa and Ohio governorships out of reach.

This past year made clear that Republicans are losing races they never should have had to defend. A deeper economic downturn would push that line even farther.

2. How toxic do AI data centers become — and will Republicans notice?

By the end of 2025, opposition to data centers surged across ideological lines. Communities worry about water use, power strain, housing values, and secondary effects.

Democrats have begun embracing that resistance as Trump elevates data centers and tech interests as pillars of his economic agenda. Will this issue fracture Republicans’ coalition or even force a break with Trump?

3. What will Republicans do with health care?

Democrats engineered a trap that forces Republicans to address health care, the single largest driver of deficits, inflation, and household pain.

Obamacare made unsubsidized insurance unaffordable for most Americans. Democrats then timed the expiration of expanded subsidies to land on Trump’s watch, ensuring that voters blame him rather than the law’s architects.

Anything Trump does — or refuses to do — will be pinned on him. That reality argues for pushing a genuinely free-market repeal-and-replace that lowers costs. History suggests that outcome remains unlikely. I’m not holding my breath, anyway.

4. Will Trump finally ignore a lawless court?

Could a powerless judge issue a ruling so egregious that it would prompt Trump to defy it at long last?

I am not holding my breath on that one, either.

RELATED: The courts are running the country — and Trump is letting it happen

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5. Will Trump clear the decks on his promises dating back to 2015?

Democrats will likely control one or both chambers for the remainder of Trump’s term. Regardless of strategy, they probably win the midterms.

That means Trump has nothing to lose by executing fully on his original agenda now. Immigration moratoria, judicial reform, welfare devolution, bans on the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Antifa — these changes should be forced through every “must-pass” bill available.

An all-out approach carries policy upside and political clarity.

6. Will Trump stop making bad primary endorsements?

This year’s primaries matter far more than the general election. They will determine whether red states have leaders willing to defend their prerogatives when Democrats reclaim federal power.

If Trump continues endorsing lackluster governors and candidates such as Byron Donalds in Florida, Greg Abbott in Texas, and Brad Little in Idaho, conservatives will have nowhere to retreat when figures like Zohran Mamdani dominate national politics.

RELATED: Trump’s agenda faces a midterm kill switch in 2026

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Mamdani’s takeover of New York and his appointment of Ramzi Kassem — a 9/11 al-Qaeda defense lawyer — as chief counsel drew outrage on the right. At his inauguration, Mamdani declared, “We’ll replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

Rather than merely lamenting how Marxists consolidate power in deep-blue America, conservatives should let that example ignite action where they actually govern. If the left can floor the gas pedal in its strongholds, why can’t we?

Where is our Mamdani?

This moment demands urgency. GOP power has become a “use it or lose it” proposition. Trump must finally become the right-wing disruptor his supporters were promised.

If he cannot — or will not — then Republicans deserve to go the way of the Whigs.

The courts are running the country — and Trump is letting it happen



One of the most consequential developments of 2025 has received far less scrutiny than it deserves: the steady surrender of executive authority to an unelected judiciary.

President Trump was elected to faithfully execute the laws of the United States, yet his administration increasingly behaves as if federal judges hold final authority over every major policy decision — including those squarely within the president’s constitutional and statutory powers.

Judicial supremacy thrives on abdication. It advances because presidents comply, lawmakers defer, and voters are told this arrangement is normal.

By backing down whenever district courts issue sweeping injunctions, the administration is reinforcing a dangerous precedent: that no executive action is legitimate until the judiciary permits it. That assumption has no basis in the Constitution, but it is rapidly becoming the governing norm.

The problem became unmistakable when federal judges began granting standing to abstract plaintiffs challenging Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to protect ICE agents under attack. Many assumed such cases would collapse on appeal. Instead, the Supreme Court last week declined to lift an injunction blocking the Guard’s deployment in Illinois, signaling that the judiciary now claims authority to second-guess core commander-in-chief decisions.

Over the dissent of Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch, the court allowed the Seventh Circuit’s decision to stand. That ruling held that violent attacks on ICE agents in Chicago did not amount to a “danger of rebellion” sufficient to justify Guard deployment and did not “significantly impede” the execution of federal immigration law.

That conclusion alone should alarm anyone who still believes in separation of powers.

No individual plaintiff alleged personal injury by a Guardsman. No constitutional rights were violated. The plaintiff was the state of Illinois itself, objecting to a political determination made by the president under statutory authority granted by Congress. Courts are not empowered to adjudicate such abstract disputes over executive judgment.

Even if judges disagree with the president’s assessment of the threat environment, their opinion carries no greater constitutional weight than his. The commander in chief is charged with executing the laws and protecting federal personnel. Courts are not.

If judges can decide who has standing, define the scope of their own authority, and then determine the limits of executive power, constitutional separation of powers collapses entirely. What remains is not judicial review but judicial supremacy.

And that is precisely what we are witnessing.

Courts now routinely insert themselves into immigration enforcement, national security decisions, tariff policy, federal grants, personnel disputes, and even the content of government websites. The unelected, life-tenured branch increasingly functions as a super-legislature and shadow executive, vetoing or mandating policy at will.

RELATED: Judges break the law to stop Trump from enforcing it

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What, then, remains for the people acting through elections?

If judges control immigration, spending, enforcement priorities, and foreign policy, why bother holding congressional or presidential elections at all? The Constitution’s framers never intended courts to serve as the ultimate policymakers. They were designed to be the weakest branch, confined to resolving concrete cases involving actual injuries.

Trump’s defenders often argue that patience and compliance will eventually produce favorable rulings. That belief is not only naïve — it is destructive.

For every narrow win Trump secures on appeal, the so-called institutionalist bloc on the court — Chief Justice John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — uses it to justify adverse outcomes elsewhere. Worse, because lower courts enjoin nearly every significant action, the administration rarely reaches the Supreme Court on clean constitutional grounds. The damage is done long before review occurs.

Consider the clearest example of all: the power of the purse.

Congress passed a budget reconciliation bill explicitly defunding Planned Parenthood. The bill cleared both chambers and was signed into law. Under the Constitution, appropriations decisions belong exclusively to Congress.

Yet multiple federal judges have enjoined that provision, effectively ordering the executive branch to continue sending taxpayer dollars to abortion providers in defiance of enacted law. Courts have not merely interpreted the statute; they have overridden it.

That raises an unavoidable question: Does the president have a duty to enforce the laws of Congress — or to obey judicial demands that contradict them?

Continuing to fund Planned Parenthood after Congress prohibited it is not neutrality. It is executive acquiescence to judicial nullification of legislative power.

The same pattern appears elsewhere.

Security clearances fall squarely within executive authority, yet the first Muslim federal judge recently attempted to block the president from denying clearance to a politically connected lawyer. Immigration, long recognized as a sovereign prerogative, has been transformed by courts into a maze of invented rights for noncitizens — including a supposed First Amendment right to remain in the country while promoting Hamas.

States fare no better. When West Virginia sought to ban artificial dyes from its food supply, an Obama-appointed federal judge intervened. When states enact laws complementing federal immigration enforcement, courts strike them down. But sanctuary laws that obstruct federal authority often receive judicial protection.

Heads, illegal aliens win. Tails, the people lose.

RELATED: The imperial judiciary strikes back

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What we are witnessing is adverse possession — squatter’s rights — of constitutional power. As Congress passes fewer laws and the executive hesitates to assert its authority, courts eagerly fill the vacuum. In 2025, Congress enacted fewer laws than in any year since at least 1989. Meanwhile, judges effectively “passed” nationwide policies affecting millions of Americans.

This did not happen overnight. Judicial supremacy thrives on abdication. It advances because presidents comply, lawmakers defer, and voters are told this arrangement is normal.

It is not.

Trump cannot comply his way out of this crisis. No president can. A system in which courts claim final authority over every function of government is incompatible with republican self-rule.

The Constitution does not enforce itself. Separation of powers exists only if each branch is willing to defend its role.

Right now, the presidency is failing that test.

Who checks the judges? No one — and that’s the problem.



One would think a federal judge trying to block the president from deploying the National Guard to protect federal agents would mark the breaking point for judicial supremacism. Yet the Trump administration still behaves as if the Supreme Court can rescue it from judicial overreach. It cannot. You can’t comply your way out of judicial tyranny, appoint your way past it, or count on the high court to stop it. The judiciary must be delegitimized completely.

Congress passed by overwhelming margins a law banning Chinese-owned TikTok in the United States. President Trump ignored it. He ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to keep the app online, and no one in Washington blinked. The president defied a duly enacted law, extended TikTok’s life beyond the 90-day limit, and still allows just under 20% Chinese ownership. Yet the same Washington class insists that any judge can command the president on immigration, national security, or even his use of the National Guard — and that such rulings are the word of God.

The proper response is not to plead for Supreme Court review — it’s to ignore such rulings outright.

Late Saturday night, U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a Trump appointee, ruled that the president lacked authority to deploy the Oregon National Guard to Portland to protect ICE facilities. The same judiciary that called a few hours of chaos on Jan. 6, 2021, an “insurrection” now dismisses eight months of rioting, doxxing, and targeted attacks on ICE agents as “lawful protest.”

On Sunday, Immergut extended her injunction to every state’s National Guard units, even those like Texas, whose governors had granted Trump permission to federalize.

The merits of her decision aren’t the core issue. The problem is structural: Federal courts claim abstract standing to decide national-security questions that belong to elected branches. Judicial power was never meant to work this way.

If a citizen suffers injury, he can seek damages in court. But no judge has constitutional authority to referee political disputes as if she were deciding some sort of civil case between Microsoft and Amazon. The proper response is not to plead for Supreme Court review — it’s to ignore such rulings outright.

If the judiciary holds the final say in every political or constitutional conflict, checks and balances collapse. When judges alone define their own powers and the limits of the other branches, we cease to be a republic and become an unelected oligarchy. Abraham Lincoln, citing Thomas Jefferson, warned that once a free people submits absolutely to any department of government, liberty is lost.

When one branch violates the Constitution, the others — and the people — must push back. The founders never vested final authority in any single branch, least of all the one insulated from elections. Presidents come and go; judges remain for decades, accountable to no voter.

I don’t like that Trump sets tariff rates and hands out exemptions by executive order. He even granted Qatar de facto NATO protection without Senate approval. Those moves deserve political resistance — but not judicial vetoes. Questions of national policy belong to voters and legislators, not to courts hunting for imaginary plaintiffs.

Immergut granted standing to Oregon and Portland to challenge Trump’s finding of a “violent domestic insurrection,” claiming there were only four clashes with federal officers in the prior month. Even if that number were correct, no judge has the power to second-guess an executive’s determination of an uprising. Governments cannot sue one another over political facts. We are either a constitutional republic or a dictatorship of robes.

The founders understood this. James Madison originally proposed that the Supreme Court share a “council of revision” with the president to veto legislation. Once the Constitution created an independent executive with its own veto, no serious thinker imagined adding a judicial one. In 1789, Madison made clear that while courts interpret law in specific cases, no branch “draws from the Constitution greater powers than another in marking out the limits of the several departments.”

RELATED: Americans didn’t elect a Boston judge president

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When branches clash, each uses its own powers to persuade the public. Madison wrote that differences between the legislative and executive “may be an inconvenience not entirely to be avoided.” That friction, he said, reflects the “concurrent right to expound the Constitution.” In other words, conflict is not a crisis — it’s republican government at work.

Today’s judicial supremacy replaces that rough balance with North Korean-style obedience to unelected authority. What’s next? Will judges write the 2026 federal budget while the president and Senate argue?

Waiting for the Supreme Court to reverse rogue lower-court rulings is a fool’s errand. As Justice Samuel Alito warned in Trump v. CASA, class-action suits and nationwide injunctions make such limits meaningless. Even if the high court eventually reverses Immergut, the administration will have wasted precious time and capital — while worse precedents, like birthright citizenship rulings, remain untouched.

How far must this usurpation go before the executive reasserts its authority? Until the presidency and Congress together reject the judiciary’s false supremacy, the United States will remain trapped in a system unworthy of a free people.

Peter Navarro’s book is a warning: If they can jail me, they can jail you



Blaze News readers know the script: agencies weaponized, media complicit, ordinary people crushed in the gears. “I Went to Prison So You Won’t Have To” follows that script with raw detail and a court docket.

Peter Navarro, once a senior economic adviser to President Trump, begins his account with a boarding-gate arrest worthy of a thriller: five armed agents, leg irons, and a cell once used for John Hinckley. He ends with a defiant claim — that a man can emerge unbroken after 120 days in what he calls a “lawfare gulag.”

The new gulag is not only a place. It is a habit. Navarro’s account shows how to break it.

Navarro doesn’t argue that America has become the USSR. His point is sharper: Bureaucratic impunity and political prosecutions can turn any free nation into a maze of petty tyrannies.

Kafka behind razor wire

The book’s middle chapters read like Kafka with a side of commissary ramen. Navarro describes a prison “camp” wrapped in razor wire, a dentist prescribing sunscreen the commissary didn’t sell, and commissary prices triple those at Target. He recounts a sudden Special Investigative Services raid that smashed showers, flooded the dorm, and locked inmates down. A First Step Act loophole denied him time credits because his sentence included no supervised release.

Absurdities pile up, but the lesson is deadly serious. Systems that multiply rules and shrug at conflicts breed injustice.

Executive privilege on trial

Navarro anchors his refusal to testify in claims of executive privilege and Department of Justice-recognized testimonial immunity for senior presidential advisers. He dismisses the Jan. 6 committee as a political theater project designed to “expose for exposure’s sake.” A White House letter, he says, purported to waive a predecessor’s privilege — something he insists an incumbent president should not have the power to do.

Skeptics may doubt Navarro’s reading. But the incentive structure he highlights cannot be ignored. If an incumbent president can extinguish a former president’s privilege at will, and if Congress can punish disputes it should legislate, then the machinery exists to criminalize losing an election.

That is not a conspiracy theory — it is a theory of incentives. And it is what Navarro says happened to him after the Biden administration took power.

Survival notes

Blaze News readers will recognize the moral of Navarro’s ordeal. He refused to plead the Fifth — not because it wouldn’t have helped, but because, as he writes, he would not validate a process he viewed as punitive. He catalogs the system’s manipulations: “Potemkin” cleanups before the media arrived, choreographed delays that wiped out visiting hours, petty flexes of power designed to make people small.

RELATED: The ‘normie conquest’: Millions just joined the right overnight

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Americans long believed political imprisonment couldn’t happen here. Navarro insists it already has.

Why the book matters

Why should “I Went To Prison So You Won’t Have To” sit on every Blaze News reader’s shelf? Because it doubles as a manual. It maps how citizens can be dragged through the gears: investigations framed as oversight but prosecuted like warfare, constitutional disputes treated as crimes, prison terms leveraged as warnings to Trump and the MAGA movement.

The book’s title is both a promise and a dare. Learn the tactics. Resist them peacefully, locally, lawfully. Read it. Argue with it. Mark the pages that disturb you. And above all — stay awake.

The new gulag is not only a place. It is a habit. Navarro’s account shows how to break it.

The Atlantic: Why, Yes, The Point Of Lawfare Is To Overturn Any Elections Republicans Win

The Atlantic reports the avalanche of leftist lawsuits are cut-and-paste operations designed to overturn election results Democrats don't like.

Why pro-life Americans can’t trust the courts any more



Americans love to blame politicians — and often with good reason. But the real power in this country doesn’t rest with the people we elect. It rests with the ones we don’t. Unelected judges now govern America. They don’t interpret laws. They rewrite them.

Activist judges have become the unelected elite now running our country, handing down rulings that override the will of voters, defy elected legislatures, and erase laws they don’t like.

One state is trying to protect life; the other is trying to shield those who end it. And a single judge gets to pick which law counts.

They employ manipulative language to justify their overreach. If you don’t comply, blood is on your hands. Whether it’s the environment, vaccine mandates, border control, or abortion access, the refrain is always the same: Submit to the ruling, or people will die.

The irony couldn’t be more blatant.

In many cases involving abortion policy, it is in fact judges’ rulings that cost lives — lives of the unborn babies impacted by their rogue, dangerous decisions.

Take the recent case in Tennessee, where a federal judge blocked a law that protected minors from being trafficked across state lines for secret abortions. The law didn’t punish women. It didn’t outlaw abortion. It simply required parental involvement, something the majority of Americans support. But for activist judges, parental rights are optional if abortion is the end goal.

In New York, another judge defied federal authority and openly refused to cooperate with Texas law enforcement to hold a doctor accountable for illegally prescribing abortion pills. One state is trying to protect life; the other is trying to shield those who end it. And a single judge gets to pick which law counts.

Meanwhile, a federal judge overturned efforts to defund Planned Parenthood nationwide, even after Congress passed clear budget restrictions. The elected branches — chosen by the people — made a decision. But it didn’t matter. The judge didn’t like it, so the ruling class overruled the people and prioritized its holy grail: abortion.

Judicial activism has turned the courts into abortion war rooms. Judges now see themselves not as interpreters of law but as defenders of an ideology that elevates abortion above the democratic process. Their rulings don’t reflect any laws. They reflect a commitment to abortion at any cost.

It’s not just dangerous. It’s undemocratic.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court is beginning to push back. In a recent ruling, the court clarified that district judges cannot issue nationwide injunctions and block federal policies. It’s a necessary and overdue correction. But it’s only the beginning.

RELATED: Judicial activism strikes again in 14th Amendment decision

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The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and gave power back to the people. In many states across the country, Americans responded by electing leaders and passing laws to protect the unborn. But today, activist judges are overriding those efforts, blocking pro-life laws and shielding abortionists from accountability.

We need judges who apply the law, not rewrite it. Until that happens, every unborn child, every woman in danger of being exploited by the abortion industry, and every citizen fighting for life will remain at the mercy of unelected rulers.

The Dobbs decision was only the beginning. Now we must press forward to ensure that the will of the people is honored and the most vulnerable among us are finally protected.

Americans didn’t elect a Boston judge president



How much longer will Congress and the executive branch keep bowing to rogue judges?

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston ordered the federal government to continue reimbursing Planned Parenthood under Medicaid. She warned that cutting funding could cause women to “suffer adverse health consequences,” face more unintended pregnancies, and go without treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

The federal judiciary was never intended to wield this kind of unchecked power.

Congress had already voted to end the funding. The law is on the books. It went through the full legislative process and was signed by the president. But Judge Talwani believes her opinion overrides all of that. She not only reinterpreted the law, she ordered the appropriation of funds to a private abortion business.

That crosses a major constitutional line.

Judges don’t have the power of the purse. They can’t spend money. They can’t fund private organizations. Only Congress can do that. Yet that core principle of the separation of powers now seems optional. We are left with a system where unelected judges act as legislators, executives, and arbiters — and no one challenges them.

Too many conservatives hesitate to confront this reality. They’ll cheer when Trump ignores Congress on TikTok but wring their hands when he considers defying an unlawful court ruling. But judicial opinions don’t carry binding force simply because a judge wrote them. Presidents and lawmakers swear the same oath to the Constitution as judges do. They don’t swear loyalty to the judiciary.

If a court orders the government to fund Planned Parenthood in direct defiance of a law passed by Congress, and the executive branch complies, then we no longer have a functioning constitutional system. We have a judiciary with a veto power over the other branches.

This didn’t start with Talwani’s ruling, and it won’t end here. Judges now routinely issue sweeping decisions that affect the entire country, despite a recent Supreme Court ruling that supposedly reined in nationwide injunctions. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito warned that lower courts would continue to defy precedent unless checked. They were right.

The time for deference is over. If Trump continues to honor every lawless edict from every federal judge, he only encourages more of the same. He entrenches the notion that judges make law and everyone else must obey.

RELATED: Democrats created this court monster — now it’s eating them

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Imagine Congress passes and Trump signs a reconciliation bill that strips federal courts of jurisdiction over immigration enforcement or Planned Parenthood funding. Under Judge Talwani’s logic, the courts could simply declare the law unconstitutional and order the executive branch to act against it — up to and including spending money Congress never appropriated. That’s not judicial review. That’s a judge acting like a one-woman super-legislature with a gavel and a god complex. Where does it end?

It never ends. Earlier this month, a judge in California ruled that ICE cannot carry out “roving” immigration enforcement in parts of the state’s Central Valley. The ruling lacked any constitutional basis. The judge simply decided too many illegal immigrants were being arrested and declared the enforcement itself a violation of rights — despite no evidence that a single American citizen had been wrongfully detained.

Rather than overturn the decision, the Ninth Circuit grilled government attorneys about whether ICE had an arrest quota. The implication was clear: Immigration enforcement itself is now suspect.

The federal judiciary was never intended to wield this kind of unchecked power. Congress holds the purse strings. The executive enforces the law. Judges interpret the law in individual cases. That’s the constitutional design.

Abraham Lincoln, in his fifth debate with Stephen Douglas in 1858, warned against treating court opinions as absolute. If citizens and lawmakers accept every ruling without question, Lincoln said, they prepare themselves to accept the next decision “without any inquiry.”

That mindset leads to tyranny. Not suddenly, but step by step.

The judiciary was supposed to be the weakest branch. It was designed that way. It has no army. It has no budget. Its legitimacy depends on its restraint. When judges cast that aside, the other branches must respond.

Otherwise, we will find ourselves governed not by the Constitution but by the whims of unelected lawyers with lifetime tenure.

If Trump does not confront the courts, we will be obliged to implement any rule from any judge who shares the same beliefs as Ilhan Omar or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’d hate to see what the next decision looks like.

Will the Supreme Court rein in rogue judges — or rubber-stamp them?



Nationwide injunctions — once unknown in American legal tradition — have exploded in popularity, driven by single federal district court judges eager to block policies enacted by the political branches. Supreme Court justices appointed by presidents of both parties have raised alarms about the trend.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett have criticized these injunctions in written opinions. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Elena Kagan have raised similar concerns in public comments. In the 2018 Trump v. Hawaii decision, Thomas called them “legally and historically dubious.” Speaking at a Ninth Circuit judicial conference, Kagan reportedly remarked, “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”

The question before the court is fundamental: Do elections matter, or do lower-court judges run the country?

Solicitors general from both parties have also objected. Joe Biden’s solicitor general, Elizabeth Prelogar, warned last year that nationwide injunctions cause “substantial disruption” to executive functions. Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris earlier this year called them an “epidemic.”

The Supreme Court will now decide whether these bipartisan objections reflect genuine constitutional concerns — or partisan convenience. Take Mary McCord, for example. A former Obama White House official and adviser to the January 6 Committee, she co-signed the respondents’ brief defending the nationwide injunctions in this case. But would she have supported them when courts used them against her own administration?

The Supreme Court will hear arguments Thursday in Trump v. CASA, Inc., along with the related cases Trump v. Washington and Trump v. New Jersey. At issue is the Trump administration’s “modest request” to limit the scope of nationwide injunctions issued by district judges in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Washington state. These injunctions blocked enforcement of the president’s day one executive order on birthright citizenship, even before courts ruled on the legal merits.

(Full disclosure: I submitted a brief in the case on behalf of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, urging the court to restore the original meaning of the 14th Amendment — one that excludes both temporary visitors and illegal immigrants from automatic citizenship.)

The case against universal injunctions follows directly from the Constitution. Article III, Section 2 limits judicial power to “cases or controversies,” designed to resolve disputes between parties, not to dictate national policy. Nationwide injunctions go well beyond the plaintiffs and defendants involved.

Article III, Section 1 vests judicial authority in the Supreme Court and “such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish.” District courts possess geographically defined jurisdictions. A single federal judge in, say, Maryland or Washington state was never meant to issue rulings that bind the entire country.

Nationwide injunctions routinely disrupt government operations. Different district courts can issue conflicting injunctions, creating legal chaos and making compliance virtually impossible. That’s exactly what happened in 2022 after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas issued a nationwide injunction blocking the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, a common abortion drug. Just hours later, Judge Thomas Rice in the Eastern District of Washington issued a competing order — this one prohibiting the FDA from altering its approval of the same drug in half the country.

RELATED: Injunction dysfunction or tyrant disruption? Trump-era judicial paralysis explained

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These injunctions also fuel rampant forum-shopping. Predictably, left-leaning jurisdictions like Massachusetts, Maryland, and Washington state produced most of the nationwide injunctions during the Trump presidency — just as Texas courts served that role under Obama and Biden. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kagan have both warned about this manipulation. Members of Congress, legal scholars, the American Bar Association, and even the Judicial Conference of the United States have proposed random judge assignments for cases that could result in nationwide injunctions.

Such reforms might reduce forum-shopping, but they do not fix the underlying constitutional defects.

If the court agrees with the Department of Justice and narrows the injunctions to the actual parties in the case, it must still define who counts as a party. Will that include only the named plaintiffs? Or will it extend to entire state populations listed as plaintiffs — or worse, activist groups claiming to represent all their members?

If the court accepts either of the latter definitions, it effectively reauthorizes nationwide injunctions under a different name. That outcome seems unlikely. The court will likely stop short of endorsing such a sweeping expansion of lower-court power and instead point to the existing class-action mechanism already embedded in federal rules.

Whatever the court decides, the consequences will ripple through the hundreds of lawsuits filed against the president’s executive actions. At stake is nothing less than the legitimacy of the last election — and whether unelected district judges can override the policies chosen by the American people. The question before the court is fundamental: Do elections matter, or do lower-court judges run the country?

Memo to Democrats: ‘Oversight’ isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card



Democrats and their media allies now argue that members of Congress hold a newly invented constitutional right to storm U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facilities. Their claim? Elected office grants them authority to resist arrest, trespass on federal property, and even assault law enforcement — all in the name of “oversight.”

This claim fails both legally and morally. The members involved should face prosecution for any crimes they committed, along with disciplinary action in the House of Representatives. For too long, the political class has treated immigration enforcement as a mere policy disagreement — as if wanting laws enforced and wanting them ignored were morally equivalent. In doing so, the left has normalized the historically abnormal: mass illegal immigration and the sabotage of our deportation systems. It’s time to treat these actions for what they are — criminal subversion of U.S. law.

No one gets to use 'oversight' as a pretext for criminal behavior.

Start with what happened last week in Newark, New Jersey. The instigators included New Jersey Democratic Reps. LaMonica McIver, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and Rob Menendez Jr., along with Newark Mayor Ras Baraka. Baraka was arrested for trespassing and defying multiple warnings to leave the premises. According to Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, body camera footage shows “members of Congress assaulting our ICE enforcement officers, including body-slamming a female ICE officer.” DHS plans to release the video soon.

The Democrats have mounted two defenses. First, they claim victimhood — insisting they broke no laws. That argument will not survive video evidence.

Second, they assert an absolute right to enter ICE facilities without warning under their oversight authority. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), ranking member of the Homeland Security Committee, defended the stunt by denouncing ICE as “Trump’s stormtroopers” and promising “more oversight — and more unannounced visits.”

Thompson and others cite an appropriations law that says, “Nothing in this section may be construed to require a Member of Congress to provide prior notice of the intent to enter a facility ... for the purpose of conducting oversight.”

That phrase — “conducting oversight” — is the entire ballgame.

The fact is, oversight powers do not belong to individual members of Congress. They belong to the full House, delegated through formal committees led by majority-party chairmen. Minority members cannot issue subpoenas or demand access on their own. Without authorization from Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the Democrats on the Homeland Security Committee had no legal basis to enter — let alone rush — a secure ICE facility.

ICE’s past policy of accommodating visits reflects executive discretion, not any congressional right. No one gets to use “oversight” as a pretext for criminal behavior. Even with proper authorization, no member of Congress holds the right to use force to conduct an inspection. This is a political argument masquerading as a legal one.

U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba has indicated she will proceed with prosecution. Her decision should rest solely on the facts — not the convenient legal fiction of “oversight amnesty.” As Bennie Thompson himself once said when chairing the January 6 select committee, “No one is above the law.”

Congress should not let this incident pass without consequences. While expulsion may prove unlikely due to the two-thirds vote requirement, the House can and should remove these members from their committee assignments. Rep. McIver currently sits on the Homeland Security Committee, where Secretary Kristi Noem is scheduled to testify this week. Let her watch from the hallway.

John Roberts doesn’t deserve your deference



The first 100 days of Trump’s presidency marked a well-earned honeymoon. But the next 100 days will test whether the marriage can survive — especially with unruly offspring like judicial overreach and intra-MAGA infighting threatening the union.

Take Chief Justice John Roberts, for example. In a recent interview, he claimed the judiciary is “independent” from the other branches, yet also insisted it has the authority to “strike down” both laws and executive actions. So which is it? Are judges independent arbiters — or unaccountable gods?

Every movement walks a fine line between selling its soul and learning to take ‘yes’ for an answer.

Roberts may not understand what “independent” actually means. How can the judiciary call itself independent when it relies entirely on the other two branches for its power? Judges don’t appoint or confirm themselves. They don’t fund their own operations. They can’t enforce their own rulings or impose new policies. They act only through the political structures that created them.

‘Neither force nor will’

The judiciary is, by design, the most dependent of the three branches. The Constitution’s framers structured it that way to protect the rights they believed came from God, not government. Want proof? Run a full-text search of the Constitution for “strike down” or “struck down.” Those words don’t appear — because that power was never explicitly granted or even implied. Read Federalist 78 and 81. Hamilton makes it plain.

He also made clear that courts have no authority to tax, spend, or raise armies. Why did he highlight those powers? Because they are the most sweeping and dangerous. Governments that can conscript citizens and debase the currency can do real harm. But the political branches exercise those powers — and voters can hold them accountable. The judiciary, with its lifetime appointments, cannot be removed when it abuses its role. That’s why, as Hamilton wrote, courts were designed to possess “neither force nor will.”

Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier shows exactly what’s at stake. He’s openly defying a federal judge’s order on immigration. So why hasn’t anyone arrested him for contempt? Who would enforce the order? The U.S. Marshals? Not without Trump’s OK. Local sheriffs? Only if Gov. Ron DeSantis agrees.

The chief justice is betting you won’t notice. He’s counting on your silence while the courts expand their own power unchecked. But a republic cannot survive if one branch decides its own jurisdiction. Power flows where it’s permitted to go. And the so-called moral majority — the people John Adams believed would hold the republic together — have surrendered too many battles to keep “We the People” alive in more than name. We’ve never truly been a nation of laws. We’ve always been a nation of political will.

Maligning MAHA?

That political will must now be exercised — boldly — against both the judiciary and the emerging fractures inside the “Make America Healthy Again” movement. While it’s true that MAGA 2.0 wouldn’t exist without MAHA, the movement faces internal risks just as dangerous as external enemies. If MAHA lets infighting fester, it will rot from the inside — just as Anthony Fauci’s unchecked power eroded trust during COVID.

I first heard of Casey Means through Joe Rogan and Tucker Carlson. Now, I’m being asked to believe — by MAHA stalwarts I deeply respect — that Trump’s nominee for surgeon general is some kind of psyop designed to block real accountability. Seriously? If Rogan and Carlson are now launch platforms for deep-state mind control, then it might be time to pack it in and let the judges run wild. Eat, drink, and brace for booster number 666.

When you’ve lived on the margins as long as the MAHA crowd has, it’s natural to view new arrivals — alleged “bandwagon jumpers” like Means and her brother Callie — with suspicion. But every successful team needs bandwagon fans. Have you ever noticed how stadiums only fill when a team wins? That’s no coincidence. MAHA has gained traction and credibility, and now people want in. That’s a good thing. But if MAHA wants to become the new status quo, it must learn to govern.

Every movement walks a fine line between selling its soul and learning to take “yes” for an answer.

At some point, you have to move past the constant sense of betrayal and start making real compromises. That’s how things get done. Whether in marriage, business, or politics — risk always comes with meaning. It’s just math.

Pulling the COVID shot off the market would take guts. So will getting a Republican Congress to accept its mandate from the people, rather than punting to unelected judges while cashing in on K Street.

The next 100 days must restore order. The path forward looks clear. What’s uncertain is whether we have the courage and conviction to walk it. Were we made to be ruled by John Roberts and Anthony Fauci? Or will we step up and govern like citizens? Yes, governing is hard. But letting medical and judicial “experts” run our lives is far worse.

Right?