Federal judges dealt numerous blows to Trump’s agenda this week as he and his allies have been railing against the judiciary.
Several federal judges expressed frustration this week with how President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing forward his sweeping agenda, as Trump and his allies got even more aggressive in their criticism of the judiciary.
Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who temporarily halted deportations being carried out under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, while also blasting the jurist on his Truth Social platform as a “grandstander” whose rulings are “inept.”
The Trump administration currently has over 15 appeals pending, including from rulings this week reining in the power of Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency.
Here’s a look at the major legal developments of the past seven days:
Judge and DOJ spar over deportations
Lawyers for the Justice Department chided U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for pressing them for answers after they appeared to ignore his directive over the weekend that any flights carrying out deportations under the AEA should return to the U.S., accusing him of “[c]ontinuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts.”
At a hearing Friday, Boasberg told DOJ lawyers their filings had “the kind of intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States.”
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement Tuesday pushing back on Trump and his allies for calling for Boasberg’s removal, saying that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary order barring the administration from deporting people by invoking the AEA and ordered any such flights that were in the air to return to the U.S.
There were two flights that did not return — the government claimed they were already out of U.S. airspace, so the deportees were already technically “removed” from the country.
At a hearing on Monday, the judge called the government’s arguments a “stretch” and summarized them as “we don’t care, we’ll do what we want.” He ordered the Justice Department to turn over more information about the flights the next day, leading to the days of pushback by the administration, which claimed he was not entitled to ask questions relating to the AEA, a wartime statute that dates back to 1798.
The act had previously only been invoked during major wars — the War of 1812 and both world wars.
A Trump proclamation last week applied it to members of Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that his administration has declared to be a foreign terrorist organization. The proclamation said the gang “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
That led to the suit brought on behalf of five Venezuelan nationals the government is trying to deport under the act, and who maintain they’re not members of the gang.
Boasberg has not yet made any finding on the plaintiffs’ claim that the AEA cannot apply to a gang from a country the U.S. is not at war with, but Trump has continued accusing him of trying to “usurp” his power. “No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday morning.
Judge says DOGE is ‘hitting a fly with a sledgehammer’
A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday signed a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to sensitive records for millions of Americans housed at the Social Security Administration.
The “millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent” contain “sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information,” U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a 137-page opinion.
That information “includes Social Security numbers, personal medical and mental health records, driver’s license information, bank account data, tax information, earnings history, birth and marriage records, home and work addresses, school records, immigration and/or naturalization records, health care providers’ contact information, family court records, and employment and employer records,” she noted, adding the office hadn’t put forward a rationale for needing such access.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” Hollander wrote, describing the administration’s methods as “tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”
Her order barred DOGE from accessing any more sensitive records and directed it to “disgorge and delete” any such data it has, as well as barring it from “installing any software” on SSA information systems.
