Following a major Supreme Court ruling that curtails the authority of federal judges to issue nationwide injunctions, an emboldened Trump administration is preparing to aggressively challenge legal blocks on the president’s key policy initiatives, a White House official said.
Speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, the official said government attorneys will begin pushing judges to scale back or lift dozens of broad rulings that have stalled the administration’s agenda “as soon as possible.”
Top priorities include injunctions affecting the Department of Education and the Department of Government Efficiency, as well as a court order preventing the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the official told the Washington Post.
“Thanks to this decision, we can now promptly file to proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide basis,” President Donald Trump said Friday at a news conference in which he thanked by name members of the conservative high court majority he helped build.
On Friday, President Donald Trump hailed the Supreme Court’s decision to limit judicial power as a pivotal and necessary step in curbing what he sees as an overreaching court system that has frequently constrained his authority.
Legal scholars and plaintiffs involved in lawsuits challenging Trump’s executive orders acknowledged that the ruling could significantly reshape the legal landscape surrounding executive power, an issue that has dominated Trump’s second term. While some legal experts cautioned that the long-term effects may be more limited, others predicted the decision would embolden Trump to further advance his broad interpretation of presidential authority, the Post reported.
“The Supreme Court has fundamentally reset the relationship between the federal courts and the executive branch,” Notre Dame Law School Professor Samuel Bray, who has studied nationwide injunctions, said in a statement. “Since the Obama administration, almost every major presidential initiative has been frozen by federal district courts issuing ‘universal injunctions.’”
Nationwide injunctions temporarily block government actions until courts determine their legality. In recent years, they’ve become a favored tool for opponents of presidential directives, often delaying the implementation of executive orders for years, even when those orders are ultimately upheld.
Experts say the Supreme Court’s ruling could make it more challenging and time-consuming to contest executive actions, potentially leading to a fragmented legal landscape, with different rulings issued in various parts of the country.
In the short term, the decision is a setback for liberal groups that have turned to the courts to halt President Trump’s agenda. However, legal analysts note the ruling could also limit conservatives in the future if they seek broad judicial rulings against a Democratic administration.
Since returning to office, Trump has issued a wave of executive actions in his first month—ranging from dismantling federal agencies to efforts to eliminate birthright citizenship—prompting over 300 legal challenges aimed at blocking those moves, said the Post.
The Supreme Court ruled Friday that federal district courts must restrict their injunctions to only the parties directly involved in a case, whether individuals, organizations, or states. Previously, courts had the authority to issue broader injunctions that applied nationwide, including to those not directly part of the lawsuit.
