n recent weeks, the courts have once again become the main problem for the Donald Trump Administration. While media attention in the U.S. is focused on the Iran war, inflation, or the country's 250th-anniversary celebrations, more than a dozen orders, judgments, and decisions have set the political pace. These are significant setbacks for the Administration less than five months before the legislative elections. Not all are final, as there are temporary injunctions or blocks, such as the denial of permits for wind and solar parks on federal lands, but they illustrate how federal courts remain almost the only institutional brake on the presidential agenda.
In the coming months, the Administration faces a series of legal battles, some before the Supreme Court, that will determine the real extent of its power. The most important one affects immigration policies, asylum, and deportations, where the courts must decide to what extent the president can act unilaterally invoking national security reasons or even revoke the nationality of those born in the U.S. but are children of undocumented individuals. Also at stake is the ability to use federal funds as a tool to pressure states and cities, conditioning grants and aid on the adoption of certain policies. Or the strength to move forward with his flagship project: a ballroom with a gigantic bunker in the White House itself.
If the courts were decisive in his first six months, pushing the institutional seams to the limit and triggering an embryo of a constitutional crisis, they are once again playing a crucial role. While he has had some significant victories, for example in district redesign matters, the recent decisions affect everything, from major political issues to the leader's whims. For instance, a judge overturned the decision of the board (handpicked by Trump when he took office) of the Kennedy Center in Washington, the quintessential cultural institution, which approved a name change to include the president's name in JFK's mausoleum.
Furious, Trump, who also wanted to close the center for two years to carry out remodeling works (which would mask the steep decline in revenue and public attendance since the institution's personalistic colonization), said he was stepping down from managing the Kennedy Center and passing the baton to Congress.
Another judge is also threatening to halt this Sunday's celebration of a major UFC event, a series of mixed martial arts fights featuring Spanish fighter Ilia Topuria, coinciding with Trump's birthday. The group that went to court argues that the administration has violated numerous federal laws on construction, environment, and permits to accommodate "a deeply corrupt private commercial sports event" disguised as a "patriotic celebration," granting unprecedented access to the White House and the Lincoln Memorial to a company owned by a friend of Trump, Dana White, with quite striking works in the official gardens.
Earlier this month, another federal judge blocked the Executive's attempt to establish a fund endowed with 1.800 billion dollars to compensate Trump's allies who claim to have been victims of the instrumentalization of the Department of Justice by previous Democratic administrations. Judge Leonie Brinkemahalted the process to ensure that funds were not disbursed irreversibly before the legal battle was resolved. Realizing that they lacked sufficient support in Congress and that Americans did not understand how those who stormed the Capitol could enrich themselves, the administration used the order to backtrack on the idea. At least for now.
Last year, after an Afghan killed two National Guard members in Washington, the administration indefinitely suspended the processing of asylum applications and froze immigration applications of those affected by the travel ban, leaving millions of immigrants in the U.S. in legal limbo. Last Friday, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. overturned part of these policies, stating that "they have paralyzed the lives of countless individuals simply for being from their country (...) More than six months later, many of these people are still without work, legal status, and no real possibility to plan their future."
In a harsh statement, the judge believes that the Government "claims legal and regulatory authority it does not possess; makes decisions without the reasoned explanations it must provide; acts without considering the trust interests of the applicants it must consider; and justifies its actions with 'national security' pretexts that mask anti-immigrant sentiments it is forbidden to allow to influence its decision-making. Legally speaking, this means that USCIS actions are contrary to the law, arbitrary, and capricious," he concluded, urging the reactivation of asylum processes.
Also on that fateful Friday for the administration, District Judge Myong Joun halted the Executive's attempt to compel states to meet a series of conditions to receive billions of dollars from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The court approved a preliminary injunction in response to the lawsuit filed by 20 Democratic states challenging the new conditions to obtain SNAP funds. These include restrictions related to "gender ideology," "immigration," and "equal sports opportunities" for women and girls. In their lawsuit, the states allege that the Department of Agriculture has imposed unconstitutional and illegal obstacles, jeopardizing essential nutritional support, vital agricultural research, and national food chain and community safety.
Another significant example: District Judge Leo Sorokin in Boston ruled on Monday that the $100,000 annual fee imposed by Donald Trump on H-1B visa applications, an attempt to discourage companies from hiring highly skilled foreign personnel to hire domestic talent, is an illegal tax that violates federal law and the Constitution, siding with the 20 state attorneys general who challenged it. Sorokin argues that the measure is actually a tax and not a regulatory restriction, and that only Congress, not the president, can collect it.
If immigration has always been Trump's great obsession, gender issues come right after. He repeatedly attacks transitions or the participation of "men in women's sports." In a ruling issued on Sunday, Judge Royce C. Lamberth approved a preliminary injunction prohibiting the Bureau of Prisons from implementing a presidential executive order that would transfer 14 transgender women serving sentences in female prisons. The affected individuals claim that such a policy would expose them to violence or risk of sexual assault. The order mandates that they remain in their current locations in female prisons and reintegration centers while the case continues, considering that the 14 had shown that their claims are likely to succeed and that, without a favorable resolution, they would suffer imminent and irreparable harm.