➡ The Supreme Court, led by Justice Amy Comey Barrett, ruled that federal courts generally can’t issue nationwide injunctions, a practice often used against President Trump’s policies. This decision respects the separation of powers, asserting that judges can’t control the executive branch, which is chosen by voters. The ruling is a significant setback to the judicial coup and emphasizes that courts should not exercise general oversight of the executive branch, but resolve cases within their given authority. This decision is a crucial part of how we govern ourselves and is worth reading for anyone interested in our nation’s governance.
➡ The article discusses a court case where a district court deemed executive conduct unlawful. The author argues that this decision could potentially allow a single judge to shut down a law nationally. The author also criticizes Justice Jackson for not considering the technicalities of the law, which they believe are crucial for protecting civil liberties. The article concludes by stating that this decision could significantly impact President Trump’s efforts to enforce the rule of law on birthright citizenship and other areas.

Please. Do not forget the punctuations! Please. Do not forget the punctuations! Tom Fitten here with our weekly update on social media. Thank you as always for joining us this week. So much going on. First though, the Supreme Court has ruled in a series of cases that are important in big ways. And most importantly, I think of the rulings this week, is a ruling curtailing the power of the out-of-control courts. The court ruled 6-3 in a big decision written by Amy Comey Barrett, the Associate Justice appointed by President Trump, that the federal courts have no authority, generally speaking, to issue the types of nationwide so-called universal injunctions they’ve been issuing, mostly against President Trump to curtail his agenda that he’s trying to implement as he sees fit under law, and in accordance with the wishes of the voting public to put it in power.

It’s a respect for the separation of powers that judges can’t run the executive branch. It’s a respect for the rights of voters to select those who are actually going to run the executive branch. The President, we didn’t vote for the judges that run the country, we voted for the President. And so as the Justice highlights in her decision, it’s one thing to not like an imperial presidency, but the answer isn’t an imperial judiciary. And this is a major blow to the judicial coup, and I can’t highlight or overstate, I guess I could overstate it, right? It would be difficult to overstate how important the decision is.

And if you go, and I encourage you to go, as I’ve said before, and read these decisions, because they, generally speaking, are accessible to individuals who aren’t lawyers. I’ve read a lot of Supreme Court decisions, so I kind of know what to look for in terms of material that’s interesting. But it’s usually accessible to laymen. And this decision is about how we govern ourselves. And if you’re a patriot, you’re going to want to read it, and read the dissents. You may find something persuasive there. I find the dissents often make interesting points worth thinking about and considering.

And if they’re not always persuasive, rarely are they in terms of the liberals’ writing. But if they’re done well, and they’re being good lawyers and judges, or justices in this case, they’re worth considering. And Amy Comey Barrett, essentially on, let’s see, what page is it? I’m going to do it down here. They let me have the computer today, so bear with me as I move along and find the page, unless they can do it separately back there. I think I got it here. So at the end of her decision, I’ll just read it because it’s brief enough, you don’t need to see it.

Now, she basically summarizes the case. They found there’s a law, believe it or not, there’s a law that governs the judiciary. They’re not lawless, they’ve got the Constitution, obviously. But the law that really established the courts, the Judiciary Law of 1789. And she essentially finds that, and she’s joined by five other justices, it was a 6-3 decision, that that law established the courts, but also their ability to provide relief, or as they call it, equities. I think I’m fairly construing it. And what Justice Barrett and her colleagues say is, look, when we develop courts in this country, the understanding was the relief they could grant was limited by the Constitution and by the practice at the time, especially in the courts of England, mainly the main court in England, the Court of Chancery.

And the relief could be complete for the plaintiff, meaning someone could sue and the court could, within reason, grant complete relief. But they couldn’t grant relief to parties who weren’t before the court. And that’s the problem. The left is suing in court, suing in jurisdictions that are likely to be friendly to them. The bulk of all these universal injunctions have come from a small minority of liberal court districts in the country. I think Pam Bondi, the attorney general, highlighted that 25 of whatever, the 35 of them have come from five districts full of liberal judges. And those judges purport to run our nation’s government, practically speaking, by curtailing the powers of the president at the request of one party, a very limited number of people.

And that’s not the way the courts are supposed to work. We have courts that have jurisdictions across the country for only the people or the parties that live in those jurisdictions. So if I live in New York and Tom Fitton goes and sues the federal government and I say, President Trump can’t deport me, they can’t say, well, not only can President Trump not deport you, Tom, but he can’t deport everyone else in the country, similarly situated. That’s not the way it works. You don’t get to shut the entire policy of a national government down through one district court judge.

Arguably, the Supreme Court could do that. Of course, the Supreme Court is established by the Constitution. And even then, they have limits as to how far they’re able to go in terms of granting relief. So that’s kind of my somewhat confused way of describing the issue to you. The question is, should one judge have the power to tell President Trump at the request of one plaintiff, in theory, one plaintiff, one person, that he can’t, for instance, deport anyone back to Venezuela or to a third country? It doesn’t matter. The scope of authority these courts have exercised go into all areas of the executive function of the presidency.

From the military to foreign policy, tariffs, hiring and firing, curtailing waste, fraud and abuse, foreign policy generally, incredible. Federal courts, and this is how she concludes the argument, federal courts do not exercise general oversight of the executive branch. They resolve cases and controversies consistent with the authority Congress has given them. And again, that’s in the Judiciary Act of 1789. When a court concludes that the executive branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power to. And I’m going to read another section of the decision as well. And it’s on page 22 of the opinion, and I encourage you to go read it because it really highlights.

It’s extraordinary. Because she calls out Justice Barrett on behalf of her colleagues, one other judge by name, one other Justice Jackson, who issued a dissent that just horrified her colleagues. And I’ve been reading Supreme Court cases all my adult life. I’m generally familiar with the big cases out there as a result of my work at Judicial Watch. I can’t recall, and I’m sure the scholars out there, the constitutional scholars, will probably have something similar they can point to. But if they can, I’d be interested to see it because it would be extraordinary too. Such a strong denouncement, you won’t believe how strong the Justice denounced what Jackson wrote.

You just won’t believe it. So there were two dissents. There was Justice Jackson’s dissent and dissent by Justice Sotomayor and Justice Kagan. And I think, let’s see, Justice Sotomayor filed a dissenting opinion which Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson joined. And then Justice Jackson wrote her own dissent as well. And her dissent is called out. And the reason it’s so important is because what Justice Jackson did kind of lifts the veil in terms of what the left wants the courts to do. They want the courts to basically rule over us, contrary to the Constitution. Let me go back to the page, forgive me.

I’m so excited to read it. I basically put it down without looking at it. The principal dissent focuses on conventional terrain, just like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases in equity. Which is, let’s see, bring it up. There you go. You can see it right there, right? Part C. That may be too small for you to see. But then she tears into Justice Jackson. Justice Jackson, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor frankly to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as, quote, a mind-numbingly technical query, she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.

In her telling, the fundamental role of the courts is to order everyone, including the executive, to follow the law, full stop. I’m going to skip over some parathetical comments. And she warns, if courts lack the power to require the executive to adhere to law universally, courts will leave a gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound. Rhetoric aside, Justice Jackson’s position is difficult to pin down. She might be arguing that universal injunctions are appropriate, even required, whenever the defendant is part of the executive branch. If so, her position goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions.

As best we can tell, though, her argument is more extreme still because its logic does not depend on the entry of a universal injunction. Justice Jackson appears to believe that the reasoning behind any court order demands universal adherence, at least when the executive is concerned. In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court’s opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment. Once a single district court deems executive conduct unlawful, it is stated what the law requires. And the executive must confirm to that view, ceasing its enforcement of the law against anyone anywhere.

And then they go into a footnote where they say the following. Think about what this position means. If a judge in the District of Alaska holds that a criminal statute is unconstitutional, can the United States prosecute a defendant under that statute in the District of Maryland? Perhaps Justice Jackson would instinctively say yes. It’s hard to imagine anyone saying no. But why, on Justice Jackson’s logic, does it not violate the rule of law for the executive to initiate a prosecution elsewhere? So do you see how that reads? She’s saying Justice Jackson and her dissent. That one district judge can shut down a law nationally based on one decision, not even issuing an injunction.

And this is the kicker. This is the kicker. They don’t even want to give the argument the time of day. We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this. Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary. That’s pretty hard-hitting stuff. No one disputes that the executive has a duty to follow the law. But the judiciary does not have unbridled authority to enforce this obligation. In fact, sometimes the law prohibits the judiciary from doing so.

Observing the limits on judicial authority, including as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789 is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law. I don’t know what’s happening. Is there a fire alarm going on? You hear anything in the back there? Okay, so forgive the noise. They’re fixing it. So what she’s saying here, Justice Barrett, is that Justice Jackson may be asking the lower court judges or suggesting they don’t follow their oaths of office. Justice Jackson skips over that part, of course, before analyzing the governing statute because analyzing the governing statute involves boring legal ease.

You know, she’s a judge. So when Justice Jackson says it’s too technical to ask whether the law founding our federal judiciary outside the Supreme Court is too technical, boring legal ease. I mean, that’s not what judges are supposed to do. They’re paid to do the so-called boring legal ease. It’s the boring legal ease that protects our civil liberties, Justice. It’s the boring legal ease that protects our republic, Justice. It’s the boring legal ease that ensures that we’re not thrown in jail without due process, Justice. The boring legal ease that protects our freedom of speech, Justice. The boring legal ease that doesn’t let judges lord over us contrary to the Constitution in a way that would lead to judicial tyranny and dictatorship.

Justice Jackson says because analyzing the governing statute involves boring legal ease, she seeks an answer to a far more basic question of enormous practical significance. I’m quoting Jackson. May a federal court in the United States of America order the executive to follow the law? In other words, is it unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the judiciary? Excuse me. In other words, it is unnecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the judiciary. What matters is how the judiciary may constrain the executive. Justice Jackson would do well if he’d her own admission. Everyone from the president on down is bound by the law, and that goes for Judges 2.

That’s pretty incredible language from one justice to another. This decision was signed on by Chief Justice Roberts, Justice Kavanaugh, Justice Gorsuch, Justice Thomas, and Justice Alito. A repudiation like no other that I’ve seen of another justice’s position on a matter of law or in a dissent in the court. It was shocking to read. And more importantly, it was shocking to know that a justice on the Supreme Court basically is encouraging judges to engage in a judicial coup against our constitutional republic by asserting authority over the president that has no basis in statute, precedent, 200 years of law, or the United States Constitution.

And that’s not me talking. It’s six judges, justices on the Supreme Court. So an important decision, and what are the consequences of it? Because what is the issue about why did the Trump administration go to the Supreme Court about this issue of universal injunctions on a specific case? Because you had judges immediately shutting down President Trump’s desire to enforce the rule of law on birthright citizenship as he sees it, and I think fairly interprets it. And essentially this means that the efforts to curtail that have been really significantly set back, because there are other ways to challenge it under the law, as you might imagine.

Class action lawsuits, just there are other methods to do it. But they’re going to be imperfect, and it means essentially that his effort to enforce the rule of law on birthright citizenship will proceed apace with not significant opposition. As I said on this tweet here, today’s Supreme Court opinion, barring nationwide injunction ruled by judges, makes it significantly more difficult for the left and allied anti-Trump courts to completely stop Trump’s upholding the principle, and this is from his briefs, that the Constitution does not grant birthright citizenship to the children of aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States or the children of aliens whose presence is lawful but temporary.

So if you’re not here legally or you’re just passing through and you have a kid, the kid doesn’t become a U.S. citizen. And I think he’s correctly interpreting the law there, and I think if the Supreme Court does his job well, there’s a strong argument for them to uphold it, because it’s going to be challenged on the merits eventually, it’s going to get up there soon. But it also protects the president’s prerogatives in a host of other areas where these universal injunctions have been issued, as I say dozens of them practically speaking. And so Trump’s efforts to reform government, control government, curtail waste, fraud, and abuse, defend our sovereignty, have advanced significantly as a result of this one decision.

Does it mean we have lawlessness in the sense that the president can become a dictator, either President Trump or any president after him, and the judges have no way or courts have no way to constrain unlawful behavior by executive agencies? No. That’s not what’s happening. What it means is that the way to curtail power, abuses of power by a president, unlawful activity by a president, are constrained by the rule of law, meaning the court can do certain things to constrain, but they don’t have the right to run the country from the courtroom. Just as Congress can do certain things to constrain a president, they don’t have the right to run the executive branch from Capitol Hill.

Just as the president picks judges, and the president can have prerogatives in terms of enforcing the rule of law as chief executive, it doesn’t give him the right to run the legislature or make judicial decisions. That’s what separation powers is about. It doesn’t eliminate abuse of power. It curtails it through checks and balances, imperfect as it may be. And of course, you know, it’s tempting if you’re a conservative sometimes, you don’t like a decision made by a Biden person, you know, someone like Joe Biden or Obama or whatever, and you want the courts to shut it all down.

It’s not available in large measure anymore. It’s happened a few times to Biden and Obama, and we’ve celebrated it in terms of the illegal conduct as conservatives have seen it being shut down. But the process had gotten out of control. And of course, the few times that it was invoked successfully, universal injunctions, in a way to constrain government power and abuse by Obama Biden pale in comparison to what’s been going on with Trump. Trump’s trying to actually restrict government. [tr:trw].

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