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An ultrapartisan federal judge issued a stunning and possibly unprecedented order on Monday that simultaneously violated the rights of vulnerable children and the lawyers trying to protect them. At the Trump administration’s bidding, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor—who sits in Texas—commanded Rhode Island Hospital to give him sensitive information about minors who received gender-affirming care, including their private medical records and Social Security numbers. He then issued an injunction claiming to prohibit the hospital from seeking relief in the federal courts that oversee Rhode Island under threat of contempt. And he barred the hospital from “aiding and abetting” any other party that might ask for help from these courts, including the children whose rights will be trampled by disclosure of their records.

O’Connor’s order is an extreme abuse of power that verges on impeachable misconduct. He has absolutely no authority to prevent any party from seeking relief in another court, let alone the home courts with natural jurisdiction over this dispute. Nor may he gag any litigant from “aiding and abetting” others who wish to make their case in those courts; these prohibitions read more like the diktat of an autocrat than the lawful directive of a jurist. O’Connor’s massive overreach seems designed to tee up a constitutional crisis over the ability of MAGA judges to facilitate the administration’s persecution of blue-state residents many miles away. It also tests the resolve of judges in those blue states to hold the line against distant conservative courts attempting to encroach upon their constitutional authority at the president’s behest.

The Trump administration set off this conflict when it issued a subpoena seeking to compel Rhode Island Hospital to turn over a mountain of information about transgender minors whom it had treated. This demand was part of a nationwide assault on doctors who offer gender-affirming care, and seven courts had already blocked similar subpoenas issued against other providers. The basic problem, as these courts identified, is that the government failed to accuse these doctors of any plausibly unlawful conduct, rendering the subpoenas invalid. When the Justice........

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