'Here we are again' — federal district courts piling on injunctions to stop Trump
"Here we are again." Those words of Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick may be the only uncontested line in his opinion this week, enjoining the Trump Administration from withholding federal funds to "sanctuary jurisdictions."
In President Trump's first term, efforts to implement sweeping changes on immigration and other issues were met by a slew of injunctions. In 2017, one of those orders was from Judge Orrick, an Obama appointee in San Francisco.
Trump has already faced a record number of national injunctions by district courts. His administration has objected to forum- and judge-shopping by political opponents by bringing the majority of such challenges in overwhelmingly Democratic states like California.
Such injunctions did not exist at the founding, and only relatively recently became the rage among district court judges. Under President George W. Bush, there were only six such injunctions, which increased to 12 under Obama.
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have complained about district judges tying down presidents like so many judicial Lilliputians. However, when Trump came to office, the taste for national injunctions became a full-fledged addiction. Trump faced 64 such orders in his first term.
When Biden and the Democrats returned to office, it fell back to 14. That was not due to more modest measures. Biden did precisely what Trump did in seeking to negate virtually all of his predecessors' orders and then seek sweeping new legal reforms. He was repeatedly found........
© The Hill
