Republican lawmakers are fast-tracking bills this week to limit district court judges’ ability to issue national injunctions. It’s an effort to help speed along President Donald Trump’s agenda, even though the move could backfire against them under a future Democratic administration.
“District court judges are just that. They’re not Supreme Court judges and they shouldn’t be issuing decisions that apply to the entire country,” Rep. Harriet Hageman, who sits on the House Judiciary Committee, told NOTUS. “I’m not worried about whether a Democrat is in office or a Republican is in office, because I think it is a judicial issue.”
These bills are a response to what The Washington Post has estimated are more than 40 holds on presidential actions issued by federal judges since the second Trump administration began. They have stopped some of Trump’s more than 100 executive orders from taking full effect, including Trump’s attempts to end birthright citizenship, freeze foreign aid, suspend refugee programs and ban transgender people from serving in the military. On appeal, courts have maintained some injunctions while striking down others.
Rep. Darrell Issa introduced a bill in February that would prohibit district courts from issuing injunctions unless it applies “only to the parties of the particular case before the court,” meaning judges could only issue relief to represented plaintiffs, even for executive actions the court deems unconstitutional. Before the House canceled votes for the week, his bill was scheduled for a vote. It’s expected to pass the House with full Republican support, though it faces an uncertain future in the Senate.
Even as Republicans have spent years prioritizing judge confirmation, there is appetite from Senate Republicans for this type of bill, too, and it’s not just from hard-liners like Sens. Josh Hawley and Mike Lee. Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee who’s at times emerged as a moderating voice in the face of Trump’s tests of executive power, is among those who have introduced similar proposals in the Senate. Grassley’s committee is holding a hearing Wednesday to consider injunction-limiting proposals.
“These nationwide injunctions have become a favorite tool for those seeking to obstruct Mr. Trump’s agenda,” Grassley wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “The obvious solution is to limit district courts to resolving the cases only between the parties before them. If the Supreme Court won’t act to rein in the lower courts, Congress must.”
Some of the Republicans now pushing these judicial reforms, including Grassley, publicly celebrated when courts held up Democrats’s priorities, which Grassley acknowledged in the same op-ed: “Republicans and Democrats alike, including me, have cheered or criticized the policy implications of universal injunctions.”
Some current members of House Republican leadership are also throwing their support behind Issa’s bill and disregarding the fact that it could benefit Democrats down the line.
When NOTUS asked Republicans if they had any concern about the proposal backfiring under future Democratic presidents, House Republican Conference Chair Lisa McClain and Republican Policy Committee Chair Kevin Hern both responded, “None.”
Republicans argue that the issues district courts are responding to, many of which have national implications, should be worked out in the nation’s highest court, as they believe the Constitution intends.
“The Supreme Court speaks for all, the entire nation,” Issa told NOTUS. “The lower courts speak for the cases and the plaintiffs in front of them.”
These bills are being presented as alternatives to some of the calls from some Republicans — including the president — to punish judges who have granted injunctions against the Trump administration.
Trump himself has called for the removal of at least one judge. He posted on Truth Social in March that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who is adjudicating the administration’s plans to deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being in gangs, should be impeached.
“This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President,” Trump wrote.
Hawley told reporters last week that proposals like these, which focus on reshaping the power of lower courts instead of removing specific judges, could permanently stop what he sees as the judicial branch overstepping its constitutional authorities. It’s something he thinks impeachment can’t remediate.
“The thing about switching out judges is that if you don’t take away the underlying power, my worry is, you’ll run into this same problem over and over,” Hawley said. “My view is the Supreme Court should weigh in on this. I don’t think a district court judge has the authority to bind parties who are not before him or her, but they’re doing it, so we ought to correct that.”
A bill to curtail district court injunctions is not only an easier logistical bar for Republicans to clear than impeachment, but it’s also more palatable for members who are reluctant to punish or remove individual judges for their rulings.
“The idea of impeachment, I am not favorable to,” Rep. Dan Meuser told NOTUS. “But when judges are dealing with something that isn’t within their jurisdiction, they’re ruling on a national level on something where they really don’t have any reason to be involved other than a political reason. You can’t just have any federal judge being able to stop something that’s deemed a national security issue.”
He acknowledged that this could be used to benefit a Democratic administration in the future.
“It can certainly turn out to be not favorable for our party in future administrations, but that is how this system is set up,” Meuser said. “We don’t make rules to make things better for our party. It’s for the good of the system.”
Republicans who are on board with impeaching those federal judges also told NOTUS they’re happy to line up behind proposals like Issa’s.
“These have been massively, disproportionately used against President Trump, not just Republicans, but President Trump specifically. So I think that we’ve got a constitutional crisis on our hands, and it’s because of judges like Judge Boasberg. I think this is a good way to start pushing back against them,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, who also filed legislation to impeach Boasberg.
Rep. Keith Self, who co-sponsored Gill’s effort to remove Boasberg, told NOTUS he’s backing Issa’s bill as well. He dismissed any concerns that under a Democratic administration, he’d regret Congress raising the bar for district courts to issue nationwide injunctive relief.
“It’ll be the same under a Democrat, and we would want it to be,” Self said.
Democrats immediately pointed out that Republicans did not object when executive actions taken by past Democratic administrations — like former President Joe Biden’s student loan relief initiatives and immigration policies — were stalled by courts.
“They’re hypocrites,” Rep. Jim McGovern, the ranking member on the House Rules Committee, told NOTUS on Monday. “They have a contempt for courts that don’t do what they tell them to do.”
McGovern predicted that members of his party would be united against Issa’s bill. Democrats, out of power, have come to rely on courts for any pushback in a Republican-controlled Washington.
“The courts have been the people’s biggest weapon in fighting back against the president’s overreach, which is the role the founders wanted the courts to have,” Rep. Jennifer McClellan told NOTUS. “This bill is an attempt to weaken an independent judiciary as a check on an overreaching president.”
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Emily Kennard and Calen Razor are NOTUS reporters and Allbritton Journalism Institute fellows. Helen Huiskes contributed reporting.