President Trump emerged victorious in a courtroom in the District of Columbia when a judge shot down the American Civil Liberties Union’s attempt to restart a Biden-era “parole” program for unauthorized migrants.
That was a lonely win in otherwise legal disasters for Mr. Trump as federal judges leap to block his aggressive agenda.
“Trump hasn’t won in court even once since taking office,” said Democracy Docket, a left-leaning legal tip sheet that cheered the president’s shortfalls.
The losses include a preliminary injunction halting the president’s attempt to limit birthright citizenship, several restraining orders preventing him from pausing government assistance grants and contracts, a block on releasing names of FBI agents involved in pursuing cases against the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters, a freeze on plans to put on leave the entire workforce at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and a stay blocking Mr. Trump from finalizing his mass-buyout plan for the federal workforce.
Setting the most aggressive pace of any new president, Mr. Trump has signed dozens of executive orders and made decisions to rewrite the structure and activities of government.
Opponents, including Democratic officials, labor unions and people who stand to lose taxpayer money, have launched a massive resistance.
The cases are still in their infancy, though some have sped to initial rulings.
Federal judges have not been kind in assessing the president’s actions. One said Mr. Trump was trying to “run roughshod” over Congress, and another said his actions were “blatantly unconstitutional.”
“It has become ever more apparent that to our president the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals,” said U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour. “The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain.”
On Sunday, a federal judge in New Mexico blocked the administration from sending three Venezuelans to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba.
Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, an Obama appointee, granted the temporary order after a brief hearing, calling it a “short term” ruling.
“This will get revisited and further fleshed out in the weeks to come,” he told The Associated Press.
Other judges have similarly characterized their rulings as short-term pauses to give the legal cases a chance to develop without unleashing anything that would be difficult to reverse.
Experts said it was too soon to draw big conclusions about the legality of Mr. Trump’s agenda, particularly because the cases that have received early rulings were filed in courts known for leaning leftward and were heard primarily by Democratic appointees, who were more likely to be skeptical of Mr. Trump.
The Washington Times has sought comment from the White House for this report.
Republican frustration is beginning to show.
Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, announced on social media Saturday that he would write legislation to address “rogue judges.”
Elon Musk, who is leading Mr. Trump’s budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency, blasted the “corrupt judge” who blocked his team’s access to government payment information.
“He needs to be impeached NOW!” Mr. Musk wrote on X.
That judge, Paul Engelmayer, was an Obama appointee. Judge Coughenour, a Reagan appointee to the bench in Washington state and a Biden appointee in Maryland, has ruled against Mr. Trump’s birthright citizenship action.
In the cases of spending pauses, judges appointed by Presidents Obama and Biden ruled against Mr. Trump. A Clinton appointee iced the federal worker buyout.
A Biden appointee paused the FBI names, and a judge whom Mr. Trump appointed during his first term is handling the USAID action.
“It’s still early days, and the challengers are selecting friendly jurisdictions in which to file their suits,” said Ilya Shapiro, director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute.
He said the birthright citizenship case is “destined for the Supreme Court.” He figured other cases would become more apparent as Mr. Trump focuses on his goals, such as his spending pause.
“But in any event, these executive actions are much better lawyered than the flying-by-the-seat-of-the-pants moves eight years ago,” Mr. Shapiro said.
Underpinning Mr. Trump’s early moves is a sense of expansive executive powers.
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an opinion piece that Mr. Trump is following through on what has become known as the unitary executive theory of the presidency. That view, espoused by conservatives in particular, holds that the president has full personal authority over the operations of the executive branch because he has been elected by voters.
Mr. Vladeck said Mr. Trump has exceeded even the most far-reaching bounds of that theory, and he expects Mr. Trump’s legal losing streak to continue.
“These assertions are already faring poorly in the courts, and I suspect the Supreme Court, or at least a majority thereof, will be as skeptical as lower courts have been,” he wrote.
The one case in which Mr. Trump has prevailed involved a request by immigrant rights groups, on behalf of migrants, to restart the CBP One app, a Biden administration program that allowed unauthorized migrants to be “paroled” into the U.S. despite lacking a legal visa, as long as they prescheduled their arrivals at the border.
Mr. Trump ended the program and canceled all pending appointments when he took office.
Led by the ACLU, the immigration advocacy groups argued that the cancellations left migrants stranded in Mexico, where they faced violence and potential persecution.
Judge Rudolph Contreras, an Obama appointee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said courts cannot order the government to grant parole in specific cases.
The ACLU didn’t respond to a request for comment for this report.
The ACLU filed the parole request as part of a case against the Biden administration’s asylum changes.
Most challenges to Mr. Trump’s actions are to new cases.
Two cases filed within a minute after Mr. Trump took office challenged the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency.
Other cases include challenges to firings, expanded deportation authority, limits on federal funding for puberty blockers and other treatments for transgender people, requiring passports to reflect an applicant’s gender at birth and attempts to limit civil service protections for some bureaucrats.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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