Meet The Left-Wing Organization Influencing Federal Judges On Science Litigation
A Federalist inquiry into the Federal Judicial Center uncovered the influence of a left-wing advocacy group in a manual advising judges.A Federalist inquiry into the Federal Judicial Center uncovered the influence of a left-wing advocacy group in a manual advising judges.23 State AGs Probe Federal Judicial Center’s Distribution Of ‘Biased’ Climate Guide To Judges
'Rather than offering the federal judiciary an objective guide to scientific principles, the chapter functions as an ex parte brief for one side of ongoing litigation.'New Docs Reinforce The Newest DC District Judge Is A Legal Hack Skilled In Abusing Power
The amazingly named Sparkle Sooknanan was rewarded with judicial robes for helping violate the law and Constitution.Media, 29 Federal Judges Freak Out Over Rude Words In Dissent Attacking Trans Child Abuse
Federal courts have done the worst damage to themselves with a century of outrageous and abusive rulings like this one from the Ninth Circuit.Paranoid Judges Weaponized Disability Law To Mask Kids During Covid
The false claim that ADA mask mandates transform a building from a death trap to a safe environment remains a viable argument in court.America has immigration laws — just not in these courtrooms
If Donald Trump put on a black robe tomorrow and issued an opinion in an intellectual property dispute between two tech companies, no one would treat it as binding law. So why are we expected to treat judicial policymaking on immigration and national security as untouchable — especially when lower courts now openly defy higher courts?
One of the most damaging misconceptions in American government holds that the Supreme Court is “supreme” over the political branches in all things. At most, its supremacy runs within the judicial hierarchy: It can overrule lower federal courts. The same goes for the courts of appeals, which are supposed to bind district courts within their circuits.
If lower courts refuse deference to their judicial bosses, why should the president keep extending deference to either level when the law is on his side?
That system, however, increasingly operates as a one-way ratchet for left-wing political outcomes.
On February 6, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals finally reaffirmed a basic legal principle: Illegal aliens seeking admission are not entitled to enter the country, demand release, and then litigate their way into residency while living freely inside the United States. The court upheld long-standing precedent and the plain text of U.S. immigration law, which requires detention of inadmissible aliens pending disposition of their cases.
Congress enacted that provision in 1996 for an obvious reason: to prevent people from entering illegally, receiving a notice to appear, and then disappearing into the interior.
Unlike American criminals who are entitled to bond hearings, illegal aliens are not being prosecuted for a crime. They can always voluntarily depart and live freely in their home countries. Being detained is a consequence of their initial invasion and their desire to litigate their way into our country.
Then came the district courts.
Just three days after the Fifth Circuit’s ruling, Judge Kathleen Cardone, an El Paso-based George W. Bush appointee, ordered the release of aliens in five cases on the theory that they had “established roots” in the United States. What, then, was the point of the Fifth Circuit ruling? Cardone claimed in one case that it “has no bearing on this Court’s determination of whether [the petitioner] is being detained in violation of his constitutional right to procedural due process.”
Likewise, on February 9, Judge David Briones, an El Paso-based Clinton appointee, reached a similar conclusion. “The Court reiterates its original holding that noncitizens who have ‘established connections’ in the United States by virtue of living in the country for a substantial period acquire a liberty interest in being free from government detention without due process of law,” Briones wrote — about an illegal alien who entered the country in 2024.
Pause there.
The Fifth Circuit had just ruled that detention is mandated by statute even in cases involving aliens who entered long ago (including plaintiffs from 2001 and 2009). Yet a district judge somehow concluded that ruling does not apply to someone who crossed illegally in 2024. Worse, how can a district judge claim the Fifth Circuit did not account for the “constitutional” question when the appeals court’s ruling necessarily presumes ICE’s conduct is constitutional?
RELATED: The Fifth Circuit cracks down on the asylum excuse factory
These judges are cherry-picking language from select Supreme Court opinions about aliens with “established ties” while ignoring the far stronger body of law recognizing that illegal entrants have no right to remain in the country against the national will. The idea that someone can break into the country, evade enforcement long enough to create “ties,” and then use that evasion as a legal shield makes a mockery of popular sovereignty and of the Declaration’s first principles.
This also demonstrates, again, why the Trump administration cannot comply its way out of judicial supremacism. Even when it wins in higher courts, lower-court judges can repackage the same result in a new case and keep obstructing enforcement. Why should Trump defer reflexively to congressionally created judges who refuse to defer even to their own superiors within the judiciary?
That point came into focus in Ninth Circuit Judge Lawrence VanDyke’s dissent from his court’s decision to halt the deportation of a Peruvian family while the appeal proceeds. Referring to the Ninth Circuit as a “wackadoo” court, VanDyke described what he said has become an automatic practice: granting stays of removal even when Supreme Court immigration precedent clearly points the other way.
In effect, he argued, the court uses procedural orders and an ever-expanding shadow docket to nullify precedent without formally issuing rulings that openly defy it.
Because of the circuit’s heavy caseload, VanDyke wrote, judges adopted a “convenient, but unwritten, practice” of granting preliminary relief in the form of administrative stays pending review. Those stays often remain in place until the merits are decided. The result, he said, is a system that “disregard[s] Supreme Court precedent and award[s] automatic, extended stays of removal in utterly meritless immigration appeals.”
Defenders of the Ninth Circuit might say the court is overloaded and must rely on lengthy interim stays. VanDyke’s point, however, is that this indulgence appears uniquely generous in deportation cases. As he put it, the Ninth Circuit’s internal dialogue sounds like “a judicial Oprah Winfrey, confused by her own popularity.”
His satirical version of the court’s approach was devastating:
We are… ("You get a stay!")… sincerely shocked… ("You get a stay!")… by the… ("You get a stay!")… number of… ("You get a stay!")… utterly… ("You get a stay!")… meritless… ("You get a stay!")… immigration petitions… ("You get a stay! And you get a stay! And you get a stay!")… that are filed… ("You get a stay!")… in our court. ("Everyone gets a stay!").
That is the point. When it comes to many liberal judges — who still dominate too many panels — law is often just a vehicle for politics. They will reach the result they want by whatever procedural route is available. You cannot simply “out-appeal” a judiciary willing to ignore controlling law while pretending not to.
RELATED: We escaped King George. Why do we bow to King Judge?
A Politico review of thousands of ICE detention cases found that at least 360 judges rejected ICE’s broader detention policies in more than 3,000 cases, while just 27 judges backed those policies in about 130 cases. The overwhelming pattern is plain: Judges are sidelining the text of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Supreme Court’s plenary power doctrine, which affirms broad executive authority over the detention and removal of illegal aliens.
No Supreme Court ruling, by itself, will stop judges committed to creative procedural sabotage.
Lawlessness begets lawlessness. It is grimly fitting that in an era when invaders are encouraged to dictate terms to citizens, inferior courts now side with them while dictating terms to superior courts.
If lower courts refuse deference to their judicial bosses, why should the president keep extending deference to either level when the law is on his side?
Biden-Appointed Judge Has No Idea What Easy Words Like ‘Shall’ Mean
Judge Dana Douglas argues that because the government previously declined to enforce a law, it is now prohibited from doing so.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
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
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.
Today's top stories
www.theblaze.com
www.theblaze.com
www.theblaze.com
thefederalist.com
thefederalist.com
www.theblaze.com