By Manzanita Miller
Activist judges are working overtime this week to block President Donald Trump’s America First priorities and stop the president from curbing government spending and putting a pause on refugee resettlement.
In a significant blow to President Trump’s agenda, a Seattle-based federal judge blocked the president’s executive order suspending the refugee resettlement program on Tuesday.
In his executive order, President Trump noted that, “over the last 4 years, the United States has been inundated with record levels of migration” and stated that, “the United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants.”
Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden-appointee, blocked Trump’s executive order, forcing the United States to continue to resettle vast numbers of refugees into American towns and cities. Polling consistently shows the American people support reducing the number of refugees that enter the country for a variety of reasons. A YouGov poll during Biden’s term showed that just 29 percent of Americans say refugees “improve the U.S.” compared to 39 percent who say they do not.
Another thorny legal battle is unfolding over foreign aid funding. Judge Amir Ali, a Biden nominee, ordered an end to the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign aid spending on Monday.
The judge ordered the Trump Administration to pay roughly $1.5 billion dollars to USAID-affiliated non-profits, plus an additional $400 million to the State Department by Wednesday night.
Late Wednesday night, the case had reached the Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Roberts issued a last-minute pause to the court-ordered deadline that would have forced the Trump Administration to provide the foreign-aid funds by midnight, giving Trump’s team time to make their case over the next few days.
However, the pause does not mean the Trump Administration will prevail in curbing the foreign-aid funding, and the government could still be forced to pay close to $2 billion to various foreign-aid projects. The court will review the arguments for both sides and the case is likely to set an important precedent on Trump’s ability to withhold foreign aid spending.
In another blow to the Trump Administration, Judge Jeanette Vargas blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from accessing Treasury department data late last week. This order came after another judge had granted the DOGE team “read only” access to audit Treasury records.
DOGE has found itself in the crosshairs of left-wing judges repeatedly, likely because it is having the most sizable impact on reducing the vast sprawl of the federal government and drawing public scrutiny to many billions of dollars of wasteful spending.
Multiple lawsuits have been filed against DOGE challenging its ability to view data within government agencies from the Internal Revenue Service and Social Security Administration to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of Personnel Management.
That said, the Trump Administration has secured small legal victories in recent days. On Monday, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump-appointee, declined to force the Trump Administration to reinstate access for the Associated Press (AP), after Trump banned the AP from certain White House events over its refusal to refer to the Gulf of America by name.
In another victory last week, Judge Tanya Chutkan, an Obama-appointee, rejected a Democrat-led legal attack from fourteen states which attempted to deny the DOGE team access to data on the firing of federal employees.
In another victory last week, Obama-appointee U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss ruled against the University of California Student Association (UCSA), allowing Musk and DOGE to access data on student borrowers from the Department of Education.
President Trump is forging ahead, despite being blocked at every turn by activist judges. However, the Trump Administration’s efforts to curb government spending, audit the federal government, and pause refugee resettlement are being met with heavy resistance from left-wing judges.
Manzanita Miller is the senior political analyst at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
