Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) dropped a bombshell last week about what the Biden administration knew — and covered up — about the dangers of the COVID shot. His roundtable featured Dr. Peter McCullough, arguably the country’s leading cardiologist and a frequent guest on my show since the pandemic fell upon the land in 2020.
Let’s talk about what they exposed — starting with VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. VAERS came out of the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which gave pharmaceutical companies legal immunity for vaccine-related injuries. In exchange, the government created a “self-reporting” database where anyone could report adverse events. But good luck using it. The interface often crashed or timed out, forced users to restart from scratch, and made tracking real harms nearly impossible.
Far too many Americans can only see COVID in the rearview mirror now, when they should still be seeing it in their nightmares and demanding severe justice.
That wasn’t a bug. It was the point.
A Harvard Medical Review study concluded more than 25 years ago that VAERS undercounted adverse events by a factor of 100. The CDC knew it. During COVID, instead of fixing VAERS, the CDC quietly built a separate system — V-safe — to track mRNA shot outcomes. It compiled peer-to-peer data from over 10 million Americans. The CDC buried those results until Del Bigtree and the Informed Consent Action Network forced the release through a lawsuit.
What did V-safe show? Eight percent of people who got the COVID jab suffered an adverse event requiring medical attention — from checkups to death. That’s not a rounding error. That’s a scandal. The United States has pulled vaccines from the market for far smaller complication rates. Meanwhile, the Biden administration forced this shot on everyone — including healthy kids — while knowing it was more dangerous to them than the virus itself.
Remember the wall-to-wall propaganda campaigns pushing the jab? Did any of them warn you about the 8% of recipients who suffered serious side effects? No. Were you offered a real choice based on your age, health status, or risk profile? Or were you coerced — by a toxic blend of government, corporations, and media lies — into rolling up your sleeve?
We all know the answer.
That’s not just manipulation. That’s a crime. The CDC’s own data from the height of the pandemic showed that only 2% of COVID cases required hospitalization. Yet polls showed Democrats believed the number was 25%. That disconnect didn’t happen by accident. It was manufactured. A psychological operation convinced Americans that the shot was the only way out, even though the jab carried a four times greater risk of harm than the virus itself — before even factoring in age or comorbidities.
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Younger, healthier Americans faced almost no threat from COVID. They weren’t told that either. They had to find out on shows like mine.
By spring 2022, the final infection fatality rate was in. Just 0.5% for the elderly. For children and teens (ages 0-19)? A microscopic 0.003%. But the government shut down schools, crushed businesses, and destroyed lives — all while pushing an experimental shot with exponentially higher risks.
No one but MSNBC viewers would have lined up for this poison if they’d known the truth. But platforms like YouTube, the largest video site on the planet, actively censored anyone who tried to sound the alarm. That included me — and brave doctors like McCullough — who were banned for speaking plainly about early treatments and adverse events.
Instead, they stuck ventilators down people’s throats while TikTok nurses danced for clout.
So will anyone ever pay for this disaster before the spike proteins strike midnight? Or are exploding hearts, turbo cancers, and collapsing fertility rates just the price we pay for compliance?
Far too many Americans can only see COVID in the rearview mirror now, when they should still be seeing it in their nightmares and demanding severe justice.
With accountability and spending restraint more urgent than ever, Congress should shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for good. Eliminating the CFPB would mark a decisive move to protect taxpayers from another bloated, unaccountable government agency. If Republicans, Congress, and President Donald Trump want to keep their promise to rein in Washington’s runaway bureaucracy, they must ensure this agency stays dead — and buried for good.
The CFPB’s unchecked growth and regulatory overreach have raised red flags for years. Born out of the 2008 financial crisis, the agency operates with minimal oversight and has long avoided serious scrutiny. Its expanding budget and vague authority continue to spark legitimate questions about fiscal responsibility and constitutional limits. Closing down the CFPB would end a failed bureaucratic experiment and send a clear message: Every federal agency answers to the taxpayers. No exceptions.
Consumers deserve clear, commonsense policies — especially after years of market confusion driven by the CFPB’s heavy hand.
The CFPB was built to operate independently, beyond the reach of Congress or the president. Lawmakers granted it broad, vague authority — allowing unelected bureaucrats to meddle freely in the U.S. economy. Beyond its track record of economic failure, the CFPB’s structure flatly contradicts the American model of representative government.
President Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk, acted quickly. They made high-impact decisions to show Americans they were serious about cutting waste, reducing overreach, and eliminating redundancy across the federal bureaucracy. When the CFPB came up for its DOGE review, the administration halted its operations and dismissed hundreds of staff.
That move triggered criticism from the usual quarters, but consumers and lawmakers should look deeper. Ending the CFPB isn’t just about cost-cutting. It signaled a broader plan to streamline the federal government and promote efficiency across every agency.
Still, even the DOGE can’t finish the job without Congress. Only Congress can repeal the statute that established the CFPB — and only Congress can shut the agency down for good. Lawmakers must do so.
The CFPB currently controls its own funding, bypassing the regular appropriations process and evading critical checks and balances. Reclaiming those dollars would help reduce the deficit, and redistributing the CFPB’s limited useful functions to other agencies would ensure continued consumer protections under proper oversight.
The Federal Reserve and other agencies already handle key aspects of financial regulation and could easily absorb the CFPB’s remaining duties. Congress must finally draw the line: no more duplicative mandates, no more unchecked authority, and no more mission creep. If consumer protections matter — and they do — then Congress must deliver them through a structure that answers to the people.
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Fortunately, the CFPB has begun scaling back some of its overreach. Earlier this month, the agency dropped its lawsuit against Credit Acceptance Corporation, an auto lender. That move signals a step in the right direction — away from regulatory overreach and toward a more balanced role in the economy.
Every unnecessary enforcement action piles compliance costs on businesses, stifles innovation, and hampers economic growth. Reassessing these missteps marks progress toward a regulatory approach that defends consumers without punishing industry.
Consumers deserve clear, commonsense policies — especially after years of market confusion driven by the CFPB’s heavy hand. They also deserve policies shaped by accountable officials, not by bureaucrats operating in defiance of congressional oversight. Credit access remains essential for Americans seeking financial stability in times of need. Crafting sound regulations — and eliminating those that never made sense — protects both their financial futures and the broader economy.
Consumers also deserve protection they can trust. Creditors need clear, consistent rules to serve their customers without facing unpredictable regulatory entanglements. Any reform bill must address these concerns directly and distribute the CFPB’s remaining legitimate duties across existing, accountable agencies.
As these changes take shape, stakeholders must stay engaged. Reforms should be implemented deliberately and effectively — promoting economic growth while preserving oversight where it’s needed. If President Trump wants to cement his legacy as the president who dismantled the administrative state, he must make sure the CFPB doesn’t just get paused. It must stay gone for good.
We thought the Supreme Court had finally purged anti-religious discrimination from Establishment Clause jurisprudence. After years of confusion — conflating the ban on state-sponsored religion with an invented mandate to scrub faith from public life — the Court, through a series of rulings on religious schools and public funding, had restored sanity. It returned the law to its pre-Warren era understanding: Equal treatment of religion does not violate the Constitution.
Yet, here we are again.
Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.
In a move that stunned observers, Oklahoma’s own Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the state supreme court now argue that states cannot recognize religious charter schools.
On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The case centers on St. Isidore, a Catholic online school seeking to join Oklahoma’s charter school system. Drummond contends the school’s religious affiliation disqualifies it. He sued the state charter board — a move usually made by the ACLU or militant secularist groups.
The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with him. The court claimed that granting charter status to a Catholic school would violate the First Amendment by effectively establishing Catholicism as a state religion. Justices labeled charter schools “state actors” and argued that any religious affiliation disqualifies a school from public recognition.
This logic turns the First Amendment on its head. The Constitution does not require hostility toward religion. It requires neutrality. Denying a religious school access to a public benefit — simply because it is religious — violates precedent.
Oklahoma’s Charter Schools Act permits any “private college or university, private person, or private organization” to apply for state funding to open a charter school. Excluding religious applicants contradicts not one but three major Supreme Court rulings.
In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc v. Comer (2017), the court ruled that excluding a religious school from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified “solely because it is a church” is “odious to our Constitution.” That case involved a grant for playground resurfacing. If states can’t deny rubber mulch, they can’t deny full charter status.
In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), a 5-4 majority held that state constitutions barring aid to religious institutions over secular ones violates the Free Exercise Clause. Public benefits, the Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized, cannot be denied “solely because of the religious character of the schools.”
Then came Carson v. Makin (2022), where Maine tried to distinguish between religious status and religious use, barring religious schools from voucher funds. The court rejected the distinction. Roberts, writing again for the majority, ruled that the program “operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” He warned that attempts to judge how a religious school carries out its mission invite unconstitutional state entanglement.
So how, after such ironclad precedent, do we find a Republican state attorney general and a court in a state Trump carried in every county ruling that religious schools can’t even apply for public funding?
The answer lies in years of lukewarm Republican control. These are Republicans in name only, who blocked judicial reform and refused to challenge activist courts. Now, Drummond wants a promotion. He’s announced his run for governor after already overruling the state education superintendent’s decision to ban pornography in public libraries.
This case reveals a larger pattern. Courts act as a one-way ratchet. Even after strong Supreme Court rulings, liberal lower courts defy precedent. They delay, split hairs, and distinguish without merit. The high court may reverse Oklahoma, but its rulings rarely secure lasting victories.
And the irony? Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.
During the House debate on the First Amendment in 1789, James Madison explained: “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience.”
That principle — freedom of conscience without coercion — shaped the American experiment. Far from excluding religion, the founders assumed its influence. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” He added that politics and religion formed an “alliance which has never been dissolved.”
It’s time for the Supreme Court to reaffirm that alliance — clearly, decisively, and without leaving room for lower courts to ignore. And in Oklahoma, it’s time to elect Republicans who still believe the Bible belongs in the Bible Belt.
Student loans are back in the headlines as the Trump administration moves to resume collections on delinquent federal student debt.
The issue demands serious scrutiny. Borrowers should honor their obligations. Yet the federal government has become the world’s largest predatory lender, handing tens of thousands of dollars in debt to teenagers who often lack the financial literacy to understand what they are signing. No underwriting process checks their ability to repay. Unlike most other loans, student debt cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.
The Trump administration should shift its collection stance and seize the opportunity to reform the broken student lending system.
This corrupt setup has enriched colleges, universities, and their administrators while leaving young people burdened with worthless degrees and mountains of debt.
With an entire generation saddled by debt and losing faith in the American dream, the Trump administration should lead a bold reform effort to fix student lending.
First, Trump should work with Congress to get the federal government out of the student loan business entirely. The government is not a bank. Borrowing money at the federal level only to shovel it out to unqualified borrowers is reckless and unsustainable.
Next, the administration should pressure universities — particularly nonprofits with massive endowments. To maintain their tax-exempt status, these institutions must justify the return on investment for their degrees, hold a stake in the loans, and offer refunds for programs that fail to deliver promised outcomes.
If a student pursues a degree leading to a $50,000 salary, a college should warn them that taking on $200,000 in debt will never produce a worthwhile return. Aligning financial incentives would push schools to prioritize real-world job skills over administrative bloat and ideological indoctrination.
Student loans should also undergo an underwriting process based on both the student’s academic aptitude and the projected market value of the degree they are pursuing. Loans for high-value degrees should be higher than those for low-value ones, forcing colleges to stay competitive. Loans should also be restricted from funding noneducational expenses like spring break trips.
Additionally, student loans should become dischargeable through bankruptcy, just like other forms of personal debt. Colleges that hold a portion of the loan would then share the risk, giving them a stake in student success.
Finally, outstanding student loans must be restructured. Interest payments already made should be applied toward the principal, and students should have the right to seek recourse against universities that saddled them with overpriced, low-value degrees.
The Trump administration has already welcomed many young Americans into the center-right coalition. Tackling the real crisis of college debt — an industry siphoning wealth from the next generation while pretending to offer economic opportunity — would show young voters that conservatives stand for their future.
Fixing student lending is not only good politics; it is the right thing to do to preserve the American dream for everyone.
Last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the State Department had revoked more than 300 student visas. The move allows the Trump administration to deport noncitizens who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at universities across the country.
Rubio defended the decision when asked about concerns over free speech — specifically, whether protesting or writing about foreign policy issues could justify a visa revocation.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of ‘free speech.’
“If you are in this country on a student visa and are a participant in those movements, we have a right to deny your visa,” he said. “We are not going to be importing activists into the United States. They’re here to study. They’re here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements that are disruptive and undermine our universities. I think it’s lunacy to continue to allow that.”
Rubio is right.
Whether someone supports Israel, supports the Palestinian cause, or criticizes both, that debate is beside the point.
No one has a right to a U.S. visa — student or otherwise. If a visa-holder engages in speech or activism that violates the terms of the visa — such as promoting violence, disrupting public order, or engaging in unauthorized political activity — the government has the authority to revoke the visa and deport the individual.
The Trump administration has made this position clear, particularly in cases involving pro-Palestinian protesters who have expressed support for Hamas, which the United States designates as a foreign terrorist organization.
But the issue of foreign student activism extends beyond the Israel-Hamas conflict.
An analysis by the Capital Research Center found that many “pro-Palestinian” groups share ties with broader movements that oppose the United States and the West in general. These groups frequently advocate violence to achieve their goals, including the destruction of the U.S., which they label an imperialist “settler-colonial” state.
Revoking the visas of foreign students who disrupt public order or seek to undermine American society is both legal and necessary. But the issue goes beyond campus protests. With hundreds of thousands of student visa-holders from adversarial nations like China, the threat is not just ideological — it’s also a national security concern.
No serious nation should defend the rights of foreign nationals actively working to harm it under the banner of “free speech.”
The Constitution does not guarantee the right to a U.S. education. Attending an American university is a privilege, not a right.
Understanding the difference between rights and privileges is essential — especially considering the influence universities have on shaping American political discourse. While student visas are intended for academic study, today’s universities increasingly promote ideological activism over traditional education. And that shift is happening at the same time as the number of international students in the U.S. has grown to over 1 million annually.
At Columbia University, more than 55% of students are foreign nationals — an 18% increase between 2017 and 2022. NYU’s student body is 42% international, up 24% over the same period. This trend is just as pronounced at the graduate level. In 2023, international students made up 42% of Princeton University’s graduate program.
As foreign student enrollment rises alongside campus political activism, the Trump administration has the authority and obligation to respond decisively to the growing influence of ideological movements within universities.
In a series of aggressive actions, the administration has withheld hundreds of millions in federal funding from institutions like Columbia University for what it calls “inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students.” It has also launched investigations into other universities over allegations of race-based segregation and transgender athletic policies. Through executive order, the administration has taken steps to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education — a long-standing goal for many conservatives since the department’s establishment in 1979.
Unsurprisingly, the left has responded with swift opposition, deploying both legal challenges and familiar media outrage.
Several academic groups have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration to stop the deportation of foreign students. Teachers’ unions have sued to block the administration’s move to revoke federal funding from Columbia University, while others have challenged its attempt to shutter the Education Department.
Mainstream media outlets have framed these actions as an “authoritarian power-grab,” accusing the administration of trying to “impose its political will on American universities, which foster curiosity and independent thought.”
Some critics have gone even further, likening Trump’s efforts to confront anti-American activism on college campuses to the Nazi-era program of Gleichschaltung — a system of totalitarian “social control.”
While American universities may be called many things, bastions of “independent thought” are not among them. Claims that Trump is seeking total “social control” are difficult to take seriously, given how heavily university faculty skew left.
A 2023 Harvard Crimson survey found that just 0.4% of Harvard faculty identified as “very conservative,” while 31.8% described themselves as “very liberal.” A broader study of 51 leading liberal arts colleges revealed a 10.4-1 ratio of Democrat to Republican faculty, underscoring a deep ideological imbalance.
This dominance of progressive ideology on campus doesn’t stay confined to the classroom. It flows into national politics, funding Democratic candidates and fueling an activist pipeline that often promotes anti-American narratives.
According to OpenSecrets, Democrats have received more than 70% of all political donations from the education sector in every election cycle since 2002. In 2018, donors from the education industry gave over $64.5 million to Democrats and just $7.8 million to Republicans.
Teachers' unions show an even sharper tilt. In the 2024 cycle, the National Education Association contributed 98.48% of its donations to Democrats and only 0.79% to Republicans. Employees of the U.S. Department of Education gave zero dollars to Republican candidates.
Given the dominance of left-wing ideology on college campuses and the steady stream of campaign donations from the education sector to Democratic politicians, it’s no surprise that Democrats are fiercely defending what functionally operate as their institutions. Trump’s actions threaten not just campus activism but a political pipeline that helps sustain the left’s long-term dominance.
Far from representing an “authoritarian power-grab,” the Trump administration’s efforts mark one of the first serious attempts by the political right to challenge a system that has traded education for progressive indoctrination.
If the country hopes to reclaim its universities — a goal critical to the republic's long-term health — rooting out radical activism and defunding ideological strongholds must continue and accelerate. Republicans cannot afford to hand over the nation’s future to those who openly disdain it.
Can a single judge unilaterally thwart the president of the United States?
That’s the contentious question the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to resolve last week in response to court orders blocking its effort to curtail birthright citizenship, coming after a slew of decrees requiring the president to do everything from halting major actions on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and domestic spending to disbursing billions in foreign aid.
'If any judge can weaponize their power to usurp the president’s legitimate Article II authority and defy the will of the American people, then we no longer have a constitutional republic.'
At issue is a legal remedy — universal injunctions — that allows any of the nearly 700 federal judges to prevent the president from enforcing policies not only against those bringing a case but anyone, everywhere. Universal injunctions were rare until the first Trump administration, when their usage exploded as Democrats and progressives turned to the courts to block many of his policies.
In the early days of Donald Trump’s second administration, courts have issued such injunctions at a historic pace and with growing potency, notably over the weekend with a suspension in deportations of Venezuelan gang members without a hearing. During February alone, district court judges, most nominated by Democrats, ordered 15 such injunctions — more than Joe Biden faced during his first three years as president. Courts from Washington, D.C., to Washington state have issued injunctions in “epidemic proportions,” now not only governing “the whole nation” but “the whole world,” the administration says.
The injunctions come in response to the more than 100 lawsuits that, critics argue, blue states, progressive nonprofits, and ex-government officials have deliberately brought before sympathetic judges — a tactic known as “forum shopping” or “judge shopping” that both parties have employed.
Democrats and progressive legal scholars argue these injunctions are a necessary brake because Trump is creating what they call a “constitutional crisis” by pushing the bounds of his office. “Thankfully,” Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Dick Durbin (Ill.) has said, “the judiciary is performing its duty to check the executive.”
The universal injunctions ordered so far have not only hamstrung the president but raised myriad legal and practical questions, some of which the administration raised in its applications to stay the birthright citizenship injunctions filed on March 13. These include whether a court’s authority is limited to ruling on cases and controversies concerning the parties before it; if it’s reasonable for the federal government to have to “run the table over months of litigation in multiple courts of appeals to have any chance of implementing” its policies; and to what extent the Supreme Court wishes to see conflicting circuit court opinions as to universal injunctions’ legitimacy persist.
So far, the nation’s highest court has been unwilling to resolve these questions, despite past pleadings from Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and the Biden administration. The justices’ reticence was brought into stark relief earlier this month when a 5-4 majority issued a one-page opinion involving a D.C. district court’s universal injunction halting the administration’s “pause” on foreign assistance. The ruling neither grappled with the merits of the case nor the ability of the trial judge, Amir Ali, to, in critics’ eyes, micromanage a president.
In a blistering, nine-page dissent, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that he was “stunned” that the court’s majority had asserted that “a single district court judge” has “the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars.”
The court’s reluctance to weigh in — as such cases have worked their way through the lower courts — has left all three branches of government in limbo and increasingly at each other’s throats.
As the Trump administration accused “liberal judges” of “abusing their power” to unilaterally block the president’s basic executive authority, frustrated congressional Republicans are moving to pass legislation to curtail universal injunctions while making it harder to “judge shop.” Some are even pursuing the more extreme measure of impeaching judges perceived to have overstepped their authorities — recently drawing the ire of at least two federal circuit court judges.
The dueling clashes between Democrats and a president they see as overreaching in pursuit of his agenda, and Republicans and a judiciary they see as overreaching while the Supreme Court sits idly by, come months after Chief Justice John Roberts issued a report hailing judicial independence and fretting over purported threats to it.
Scholars differ over when courts first started issuing universal injunctions. Some date them back to the Progressive Era and others to the 1960s. Congress’ concern with such decrees appears to have escalated during the first Trump administration when their usage exploded, with panels in both houses holding hearings on the practice.
No matter what the Supreme Court decides in the case brought by the Trump administration, congressional Republicans are addressing the issue.
On March 5, the day Alito issued his dissent, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) brought his No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 before the House Judiciary Committee. The legislation would prohibit district courts from issuing injunctive relief beyond the party seeking it in court.
Issa argued that while universal injunctions have stymied Democratic and Republican presidents alike, none has found himself nearly as constrained as Trump. He spoke while introducing his bill flanked by a chart showing the number of decrees issued against each administration from George W. Bush onward.
According to an April 2024 Harvard Law Review article, courts slapped the first Trump administration with 64 universal injunctions, more than half of all such injunctions entered between 1963 and 2023 — that is, over six decades. Democrat-nominated judges issued 92% of these orders.
In notable instances, the 45th president prevailed on appeal — as in Trump v. Hawaii, a case overturned by the Supreme Court concerning his executive order restricting travel from nations posing terror threats — but often only after months of litigation.
Justice Clarence Thomas laid out his argument against universal injunctions in a concurrence in that 2018 case, calling them “legally and historically dubious” and “inconsistent with longstanding limits on equitable relief and the power of Article III courts.”
“If federal courts continue to issue them, this Court is dutybound to adjudicate their authority to do so,” Thomas concluded — a position Justice Gorsuch, too, would adopt.
The first Trump administration would oppose their usage in public remarks and official guidance, but the court never took up the question — and the injunctions persisted. Ranking Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.) shot back at Issa over the chart that “the implication ... is that somehow the courts have done something wrong rather than Donald Trump having done something wrong.”
'Allowing a single district judge to unilaterally micromanage the executive branch should raise eyebrows, to say the least.'
The courts have targeted Trump, Raskin argued, “because he is trampling the lawmaking and spending powers of the Congress of the United States. He’s violating the civil service rights of federal workers. And he’s betraying the federal law in every particular way.”
Advocates of such injunctions contend that, beyond constraining an overreaching executive by covering non-parties to a case, they protect those who might lack the resources to bring suit, reduce needless litigation, and are, at times, practically necessary while promoting uniformity.
Raskin, who voted against the legislation alongside his fellow Democrats, did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries about this story.
The Biden administration took a different position when courts issued universal injunctions against its favored policies. In December 2024, it asked the Supreme Court to stay one such injunction halting enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act. Therein, the departing president endorsed both Thomas’ and Gorsuch’s criticisms of the practice and called on the Court to consider ruling on their legality. It did not.
Issa’s bill passed out of committee with an amendment permitting a three-judge panel to issue a universal injunction should a case be brought by two or more states in different circuits. He characterized this as a “middle ground, something that’s fair” to protect presidents, regardless of party.
He anticipates his bill will come to the House floor “relatively quickly” and pass.
Hours after the markup, Republican Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) took to the Senate floor to express concern about “some of the recent orders from individual district judges, issued on an expedited basis with very broad nationwide impact.”
In a statement to RealClearInvestigations, Sen. Grassley said:
Allowing a single district judge to unilaterally micromanage the executive branch should raise eyebrows, to say the least. I have serious questions about district courts’ recent use of [generally non-appealable] temporary restraining orders [which Justice Alito argued deserved scrutiny] and universal injunctions to put a leash on the executive branch, and I think Congress ought to closely examine the issue.
Grassley’s committee colleague, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), is working on a bill to curtail the practice. “The Constitution empowers Congress to address this issue by limiting jurisdiction and, in some cases, through impeachment,” Lee said. “I am drafting legislation to establish a [three-judge] panel that would expedite Supreme Court review of such blanket injunctions.”
Whether and to what extent a bill to curtail injunctions can pass through the Senate is unclear, though Issa told RealClearInvestigations he was optimistic. Similar legislation has languished in past Congresses — though notably, a federal law called for three-judge panels to preside over cases dealing with injunctions against federal statutes until its repeal in the 1970s.
Democrats and Republicans alike have also previously sponsored legislation aimed at combatting the related practice of forum — or judge-shopping — only for those bills to die. While considered a “first cousin” to the issue of nationwide injunctions, Issa said there will be legislation forthcoming to deter it. He touted a companion bill that would require disclosure of third-party funding of cases.
The California congressman also told RealClearInvestigations he would be raising matters of judiciary reform before the Judicial Conference of the United States, which held its biannual meeting earlier this month, while noting that he believed Attorney General Pam Bondi would be making a similar pitch.
The Justice Department did not respond to RCI’s inquiries about this story.
The conference, chaired by Chief Justice John Roberts, meets twice yearly to “consider administrative and policy issues affecting the federal court system, and to make recommendations to Congress concerning legislation involving the Judicial Branch.”
Issa says the organization, which has previously issued nonbinding guidelines concerning judge shopping, may serve as a venue to “fix some of these things sooner rather than later.”
For its part, the Trump administration recently availed itself of its own tool to “ensure the democratic process remains intact by curbing activist judges and holding litigants accountable.”
The White House published a memorandum on March 11 requiring parties seeking injunctions against it to “cover the costs and damages incurred if the Government is ultimately found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained.” This, the administration has argued, would “deter frivolous litigation” by creating risks for “activist groups” filing “meritless lawsuits.”
The White House did not respond to RealClearInvestigations’ inquiries for this story.
A March 13 order from U.S. District Court Judge James Bredar in Maryland illustrated the limits of this effort. In directing the administration to reinstate federal workers fired across 18 agencies, Bredar imposed an injunction bond of a mere $100 per plaintiff.
One Mike Lee aide has indicated that Congress could look to pass legislation, perhaps as part of a package limiting universal injunctions, to ensure injunction bonds meet certain standards — a law that would presumably combat judicial efforts to demand artificially small bonds.
Injunctions aside, as Lee suggests, a more extreme remedy exists for taking on justices whose jurisprudence is perceived to be beyond the pale: impeachment.
Elon Musk has called for an “immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one,” as he put it in a quote post referring to D.C. District Judge John D. Bates. The judge had ordered federal health agencies to restore certain pages removed from their websites under President Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology and extremism.”
Some GOP House members concur. They have introduced articles of impeachment against Bates, one of three such judges threatened with the ultimate sanction, generally on the grounds of abuse of judicial power.
Another is Judge Paul Engelmayer, a Southern District of New York judge who originally prohibited President Trump’s chosen personnel — from the DOGE staffers to senior appointees, including even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent himself — from accessing Treasury Department payment systems.
D.C. District Judge Amir Ali is the third judge to have been hit with articles of impeachment to date. He issued the temporary restraining order halting the administration’s foreign aid pause that drew the rebuke of the Supreme Court’s minority.
With his weekend directive halting President Trump’s effort to remove Tren de Aragua gang members from the United States via invocation of the wartime Alien Enemies Act, D.C. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg joined his colleagues on Tuesday as at least the fourth judge to face articles of impeachment this year. Hours after Boasberg issued his directive, House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas), announced on X that he planned to file such articles this week.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) told RealClearInvestigations, “If any judge can weaponize their power to usurp the president’s legitimate Article II authority and defy the will of the American people, then we no longer have a constitutional republic.”
In response, he and Reps. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.) and Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.), sponsors of other articles of impeachment, have launched the Judicial Activism Accountability Task Force. “We encourage members who are passionate about ending abusive judicial overreach, upholding the separation of powers, and defending the U.S. Constitution to join our effort,” Clyde said.
Congress has impeached only 15 federal judges in U.S. history, convicting eight — almost always on grounds of corruption. Three left the federal bench before impeachment proceedings concluded.
Despite the rarity of such efforts, Crane told RealClearInvestigations, “Our Founders gave us the power to impeach, and we cannot take stands based on what the Senate is allegedly going to do. We owe it to the American people to use every tool at our disposal.”
Following the Judicial Conference’s biannual meeting, it hosted a call with reporters in which two circuit court judges, Jeffrey Sutton and Richard Sullivan, condemned the recent impeachment efforts.
“Threats to judges are threats to judicial independence,” Sutton said, acknowledging the calls for impeachment. “One thing worth keeping in mind is if we dilute the standards for impeachment, that’s not just a problem for judges, that’s a problem for all three branches of government.”
Sullivan added, “Impeachment is not — shouldn’t be — a short-circuiting of [the judicial] process, and so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that.”
Clyde told RealClearInvestigations that beyond impeachment, “I certainly think other remedies to combat judicial activism are worth pursuing, and I anticipate that’s an avenue our task force will explore.”
While myriad cases make their way through the courts, Democrats have suggested the Trump administration will lose patience and seek a more dramatic showdown.
Chuck Grassley’s remarks on the Senate floor came in response to a March 4 speech from Durbin regarding a resolution calling on the Senate to affirm “the rule of law and the legitimacy of judicial review.”
The Illinois senator and other Democrats insinuated, based on recent remarks from the president, vice president, and others in and around the administration, that it might defy a court order, necessitating the resolution.
In a rejoinder, Grassley argued that Democrats had “repeatedly threatened the court for ruling in ways that they did not like” and remained mum while Joe Biden flouted the Supreme Court in response to its positions on policies like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium, student loan debt relief, and affirmative action.
“Now that we have a Republican president, my Democratic colleagues appear to have a newfound respect for the courts,” Grassley said, calling Durbin’s resolution “nothing but a partisan messaging statement.”
In a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on March 13, Grassley defended the Trump administration, noting:
In the few weeks since he’s been in office, President Trump has been overwhelmed by decisions from individual district judges that encroach on his core constitutional powers. Nevertheless, he and his administration have worked diligently to abide by those orders, no matter how outrageous, by appealing them and challenging their scope and reach. And the President has been explicit about his views. He’s said, “I always abide by the courts, always abide by them. And we’ll appeal."
Nevertheless, invoking Dred Scott and other landmark decisions, Grassley noted, “Our history teaches that, in extreme cases, there may even be grounds to defy a court decision.”
Just days later, it appeared to some that such an extreme case might have arisen.
Critics of the Trump administration and many in the media were quick to claim it had defied Judge Boasberg’s Saturday universal injunction halting the president’s Tren de Aragua deportation effort. That's because several hundred members of the designated terrorist organization, apprehended and ticketed for deportation to El Salvador under the policy, landed in San Salvador reportedly hours after Boasberg issued his directive — and despite his oral demands in a hearing just prior that any such flights be turned around.
In a notice to the court on Sunday, the administration indicated the members “had already been removed from U.S. territory” when the order came down. Citing this point, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt issued a statement indicating, “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. ... The written order and the administration’s actions do not conflict."
Leavitt added:
As the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion. A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrier full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil.
The administration argued that Boasberg’s order constitutes a “massive, unauthorized imposition” and “unprecedented intrusion upon the Executive’s authority” in an emergency court filing that same day. Consistent with Grassley’s remarks, it came in a motion to stay Boasberg’s order — while the president appeals it, and, per his administration's notice, as it uses other unchallenged authorities to target Tren de Aragua.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has called on the plaintiffs in the birthright citizenship cases to file their responses to the administration by April 4.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.
The Trump administration has been inundated with lawsuits. While this is hardly surprising, the sheer volume — well over 100 as of this writing — and the speed at which unfavorable rulings have been issued against the president are remarkable.
The rapid pace of these cases has muddled key legal issues. Notably, many cases involving contracts, back pay, and civil service protections likely do not belong in federal district court at all. These courts have, in turn, successfully backlogged Trump’s agenda by issuing temporary restraining orders — a unilateral command to back down without any opportunity to appeal.
Most of the lawsuits against Trump don’t belong in the district courts at all — yet they are successfully halting his presidential operations.
The Department of Justice should explore creative legal strategies to steer these cases away from federal courts toward the appropriate venues: the Court of Federal Claims and the Merit Systems Protection Board. At the same time, the White House should take steps to ensure that these are fair venues for claims against the administration rather than partisan courts presided over by residual Biden appointees.
The trouble with these cases is that they probably don’t belong in district court at all. Congress — which has plenary power over the lower courts — has determined that contract disputes belong in the specialty Court of Federal Claims.
Similarly, cases involving adverse personnel actions under civil service laws are designated for the Merit Systems Protection Board. Yet many of these cases end up in the district courts.
The Department of Justice has urged the Supreme Court to force district courts to abide by their jurisdictional limits. However, the Trump administration has another weapon in its arsenal to force the issue sooner: invoking the ancient writ of prohibition.
The writ of prohibition, originating in English common law, was popularly used to resolve jurisdictional court disputes. If a court improperly exercised jurisdiction over an ecclesiastical matter, for instance, the King’s Bench could issue a writ of prohibition to divest it of authority.
In the United States, this writ was initially rare but gained broader applicability with the creation of modern circuit courts of appeal, allowing appellate courts to act in aid of their jurisdiction. According to one appellate court, to invoke the writ, there needs to be a clear instance of a court violating its jurisdiction without any other available way to challenge its actions — precisely the situation Trump faces.
In many of these lawsuits against the administration, the district court simply lacks jurisdiction. For example, if a plaintiff seeks to force USAID to pay out a contract, that case would fall under the jurisdiction of the CFC, not a federal district court. The same principle applies to personnel actions, which should be heard before the MSPB rather than in district courts.
If the district court grants a temporary restraining order in both cases, the government effectively has no way to appeal. Trump, therefore, has a right to seek a writ of prohibition to prevent district courts from exceeding their jurisdiction when given no adequate appellate remedy. That’s exactly why the writ exists.
This jurisdictional battle highlights another critical issue for Trump: his appointments. If the Department of Justice succeeds in redirecting contract cases to the CFC, they would currently land before a Biden appointee. Trump has the authority to change that immediately, and he should.
The situation at the MSPB is more complex. Trump previously dismissed its chairman, who subsequently sued him. However, a vacancy remains on the board. Trump should move quickly to fill it, ensuring the MSPB is well positioned to handle the influx of personnel claims.
“Government by temporary restraining order” will persist until a higher court intervenes. The writ of prohibition is an underused but powerful legal remedy that the Justice Department should consider pursuing.
Meanwhile, Trump must ensure that if cases are rerouted to the CFC and MSPB, those bodies are not controlled by Democrats when they don’t need to be. The president has the power to make the CFC and MSPB great again — and he should use it.
The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take up a case involving questions surrounding federal candidate litigation of state election regulations. Known as Bost v. Illinois State Board of Elections, the case offers the nation’s highest court with the opportunity to provide a definitive ruling on the issue of whether a federal candidate who has […]
Just as the Russia hoax was weaponized to hamstring the first Trump presidency, the flurry of injunctions is designed to hamstring his second one.
Even leftists know the Constitution would never allow courts to force presidents to enlist deranged men wearing skirts. That's why they hate the Constitution.
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