After weeks of legal setbacks and injunctions that have slowed or disrupted the implementation of its fascist policies, the Trump administration is moving closer to direct defiance of the courts. Trump gave the signal for this Monday with his first direct attack on the US Supreme Court—three of whose nine members he appointed, providing a 6-3 right-wing majority.
“I’m doing what I was elected to do, remove criminals from our Country, but the Courts don’t seem to want me to do that,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter.”
Trump was reacting to the 7-2 ruling issued by the Supreme Court just before 1 a.m. on Saturday morning, April 19, which has temporarily barred the resumption of deportation flights taking Venezuelan and Salvadoran migrants to the torture prison in El Salvador operated by the dictatorial regime of President Nayib Bukele.
The US president went on to denounce the fundamental right of due process, which is based on the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, indicating it should not apply to immigrants. “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” he wrote. “We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do. What a ridiculous situation we are in.”
Actually, Trump has claimed that he intends to remove as many as 21 million people from the United States—more than double the consensus estimates of undocumented immigrants. His statement that trials of even hundreds of thousands are “not possible to do” means that the vast majority of immigrants, as well as the millions of others who are being targeted for state repression and violence, will be denied all constitutional rights.
Trump repeated his comments about denying due process to immigrants in remarks made to reporters Tuesday in the Oval Office. “I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” he said. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”
“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” he continued. “The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.”
This broadside against judges who find the administration in violation of the Constitution was followed up by his top aides. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday attacked “rogue district court judges.”
Deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller went on Fox News Wednesday to declare, “Either we all side and get behind President Trump to remove these terrorists from our communities or we let a rogue radical left judiciary shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus. President Trump will make this nation safer than ever before and do it over the fighting and opposition of the communist left-wing judges.”
One right-wing talk show host urged Trump on X: “Ignore the Supreme Court. Arrest anyone who tries to enforce this. Dissolve the Supreme Court entirely if they push. You can deport foreigners or you don’t have a country anymore.”
This fascist vitriol is setting the stage for violent attacks both on individual judges and on the families of those targeted for illegal detention and deportation. Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland father of three who was wrongly deported to the CECOT prison in El Salvador, said she has moved to a safe house.
She told the Washington Post that she feared for her safety and the safety of her children after the Department of Homeland Security posted on X a court document from 2021—a protective order she obtained against her husband after a family conflict—which provided her home address. “I don’t feel safe when the government posts my address, the house where my family lives, for everyone to see, especially when this case has gone viral and people have all sorts of opinions,” she told the Post. “So, this is definitely a bit terrifying. I’m scared for my kids.”
In the case of the courts, at least half a dozen federal district judges have received threats in the form of unsolicited pizza deliveries to their own residences, a method of telling the judges, “We know where you live.” According to Judge Esther Salas, whose home was attacked by a crazed defendant in 2020, such threats have escalated qualitatively in recent weeks.
Salas’ 20-year-old son Daniel Anderl was shot and killed by the attacker, who later committed suicide. Judge Salas was not at home. But this month, she told NBC News, pizzas have been delivered to the homes of several federal judges with her son, Daniel Anderl, listed as the person sending it: a clear death threat.
Supplementing this campaign of political bullying, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed on April 10 the “No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025” (NORRA), by a vote of 219-213, with just one Republican joining all of the Democrats in opposition.
The bill expressly states, “notwithstanding any other provision of law, no United States district court shall issue any order providing for injunctive relief, except in the case of such an order that is applicable only to limit the actions of a party to the case before such district court with respect to the party seeking injunctive relief from such district court and non-parties represented by such a party acting in a representative capacity pursuant to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.”
Translated into ordinary English, NORRA would bar federal district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. This would severely restrict the courts’ ability to enjoin unconstitutional governmental conduct. Injunctions issued by a District Court would instead bind only the actions of the parties involved in that specific case or those within that judicial district.
Consequently, this bill would undermine the fundamental principle that nationwide injunctions are necessary to ensure the uniform application of constitutional rights across the country, preventing variations by location. Under NORRA, conduct in one or more states or parts of states could be deemed “constitutional” and lawful, yet unconstitutional and unlawful in other states or parts of states, meaning that constitutional rights would depend on one’s ZIP code.
Since Trump has taken office, federal judges have issued more than two dozen nationwide injunctions barring the enforcement of many of his executive orders, including those involving birthright citizenship, diversity initiatives, multiple cases of DOGE firings, withdrawals of protections against deportations for certain immigrant groups and actions against law firms.
By the passage of the NORRA, the Republican House hopes to be able to present to Trump a legislative remedy to help facilitate his dictatorial agenda. Or at least, they seek to demonstrate their slavish loyalty to the would-be dictator, since the law is unlikely to pass the Senate where it would need a 60-vote majority, and Republicans hold only a 53-47 margin.
Democrats have opposed the bill, arguing that Republicans did not complain when conservative judges issued nationwide injunctions against the Biden administration during his presidency. Republicans responded that during the Biden administration Democrats had introduced similar bills, without success, to limit and restrict nationwide injunctions.
Nationwide injunctive relief was rare prior to the 1960s, as government actions being restricted in one district usually meant the government refrained from that action nationally, rather than just attempting it again in a similar case. During the 1960s, however, injunctive relief was used by the government to compel desegregation and to enforce constitutional rights.
In recent decades, as the political crisis within the ruling elite has become ever more intense, the courts have more and more been called on to step in and settle issues rather than allow them to be taken out to the broader population, where social anger against the ruling elite has become explosive.
So far the campaign of political bullying and criminal threats has failed to accomplish its aim, as federal judges issued further rulings this week striking down or limiting the scope of Trump’s executive orders and other policy directives.
On Tuesday, District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein of New York criticized the denial of due process to immigrants seized on the streets by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). “This is not a secret court, an inquisition from medieval times. This is the United States of America,” he said at a hearing. “You gotta tell a person what he’s done.”
In Colorado, District Court Judge Charlotte Sweeney blocked the federal government form using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove anyone detained in the state, without providing three weeks’ notice so they could challenge their removal in court. To the extent Trump’s executive order “relies on the Act’s invasion and incursion provisions to justify its removal powers, it does so improperly,” she wrote.
On Wednesday, a Maryland federal judge appointed by Trump in his first term, Stephanie Gallagher, ruled that the administration had wrongly deported a 20-year-old Venezuelan immigrant in violation of a legally binding, court-approved settlement last year of a lawsuit against the summary deportation of migrants who arrive as children. The young Venezuelan, known only by the name “Cristian,” had arrived as an unaccompanied minor and filed for asylum.
Judge Gallagher cited approvingly the rulings of her colleague Susan Xinis, the federal judge handling the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. She went even further than Xinis in spelling out the government’s obligations in the case, writing: “This Court further orders that facilitating Cristian’s return includes, but is not limited to, Defendants making a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application on the merits …”
Three more federal court rulings were handed down on Thursday, on cases not directly related to the mass deportation campaign.
In San Francisco, Federal District Judge William Orrick issued an injunction prohibiting federal agencies from withholding funds from 16 “sanctuary” cities and counties, which have limited or barred cooperation with ICE. The cities include San Diego, Minneapolis and New Haven.
In Washington D.C., District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked enforcement of part of an executive order issued by Trump last month requiring voters to present documentary proof of citizenship when they go to the polls. “Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the states—not the president—with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote, adding that Trump could not “short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
In New Hampshire, District Court Judge Landya McCafferty blocked the withholding of federal funds from K-12 public schools that maintain programs that the administration characterizes as “diversity, equity and inclusion,” saying that this violated free speech rights and exceeded the authority of the executive branch over local schools. The temporary restraining order applies to any school that employs members of the National Education Association or the American Federation of Teachers, which were among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.