By Phillip Jauregui – washingtontimes.com – March 17, 2025

After getting shellacked in the November elections — losing the White House, Senate and House — the left is back to its old playbook of judicial activism. Only this time, leftist judges are not legislating from the bench. They are playing fake president from the bench: ordering the gender mutilation of children, directing nonprofits to fund foreign aid assistance, barring the president’s Treasury staff from viewing its own payment records and enshrining a host of other insane policies.

The American people, Congress, President Trump and his administration are justly outraged by the many abuses of judicial power.

The founders understood that man’s sinful nature left him susceptible to the temptation to abuse power. Therefore, they structured our government with separation of power and checks and balances. So, what power does each branch have to correct this problem of judicial usurpation of presidential power?

The first line of defense lies within the judiciary because the problem originated there. First, the trial judges should correct their unlawful orders in cases where power has been usurped. Second, if they do not, then appellate courts and the Supreme Court must reverse them. Of course, the Supreme Court cannot reach down into a pending case on its own initiative. It must be asked to do so by one of the parties to the lawsuit. However, when appeals and writs are filed, the Supreme Court would be wise to police its own branch because, if it does not, the other branches are fully capable of correcting this abuse of judicial power.

The executive branch is interested in protecting its own power, and there is precedent for doing so. President Lincoln famously declined to follow the courts in Ex Parte Merryman, President Andrew Jackson let the state of Georgia defy the Supreme Court’s Worcester v. Georgia tribal lands ruling, and even President Obama engaged in a soft threat against the Supreme Court in the Obamacare case. Thus far, Mr. Trump has said he will not disregard unconstitutional court orders, which means the Supreme Court or the legislative branch must address the problem.

Congress has many tools to address judicial activism. The first is the power of the purse to reduce funding to a recalcitrant judiciary if it fails to police itself. The Constitution provides that compensation for judges and justices “shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.” However, it is entirely permissible for Congress to freeze judicial salaries, reduce the overall budget for the judicial branch by any amount, and force the court to maintain its salaries commensurate with the Constitution but reduce its budget in other areas.

Speaking of Congress’ power of the purse, President Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Department of Government Efficiency might jointly investigate fraud, waste and abuse in the judicial branch and let those findings drive cuts in the judicial budget. That prospect might encourage the Supreme Court to better police its own branch.

Of course, Congress has many other options to “check and balance” the judiciary, including limiting the jurisdiction of federal courts, reorganizing the circuits, adding judgeships, sunsetting judgeships, limiting the ability for single courts to issue nationwide injunctions, investigating judges and even impeaching and removing bad-behaving judges.

Some say Congress cannot impeach judges for their rulings in cases. History says otherwise. The first federal judge impeached and removed from office was Judge John Pickering in 1804 for ruling a case that defied the law. The articles charge that Pickering ruled “said act of Congress not regarding, but with intent to evade the same” and that he ruled “contrary to his trust and duty as a judge of the said district against the law of the United States and to the manifest injury of their revenue.” The same generation that drafted and ratified the impeachment and removal clauses knew them best and used them to remove Pickering for his radical rulings. The same can be done today.

Preferably, the executive and legislative branches would not need to act because their actions would reduce the power and prestige of the judicial branch, not just the bad judicial actors. The Supreme Court must engage and get its own branch in order to avoid that scenario.

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Source: Leftist judges undermining the presidency – Washington Times