The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse has an extremely useful compilation showing the current progress in all cases challenging Trump Administration policies filed to date. The website is here. [There is also a separate site for cases involving, but not challenging, Trump policies.] [I’m told that students at the University of Michigan Law School are responsible for keeping these sites up to date – kudos to them]
By my count, there are 28 separate cases** in which a TRO or a Preliminary Injunction has been issued against the government’s implementation of its policies.
**Six cases involve challenges to Trump’s patently (and rather embarrassingly) unconstitutional Executive Order regarding birthright citizenship, six involve challenges to employment actions, two involve DOGE access to government information, four involve Trump Administration policies regarding transgender rights, one involves immigration policy, eight challenge various aspects of the Spending Freeze(s), and one involves Trump Administration policies dismantling DEI initiatives.
Wow! Of course, we all know that TROs and PIs are not adjudications on the merits of any case; they do not involve a determination the Administration’s actions have been unlawful.
But still . . . TROs and PIs do require judges to find that there is a “substantial likelihood” that the challenge will succeed, on the merits – i.e., that the challenger will be able to show that the government has behaved unlawfully. Twenty-eight judges have done so – 28! Surely, it’s a record – 28 restraining orders in five weeks!
I know, I know – “That’s why we elected him!! Break everything down! Smash everything!! Get rid of all that stupid ‘rule of law’ nonsense!! No man who saves his country is violating the law!!”
Maybe so. But I kind of liked that rule of law nonsense, where Presidents were supposed to follow the law, like everyone else. It served us pretty well, over the last 250 years. Such a shame to see it go. I think we’ll miss it when it’s gone.
The post The American People vs the Trump Administration appeared first on Reason.com.
