During Trump’s first term, the Democrats had two major arrows in their quiver: The Russia Hoax and lawfare. When they weren’t falsely accusing him of being a Russian asset, they were using the courts to prevent him from acting. By doing so, they managed to hamstring almost all of his domestic actions. This time around, while the Russia Hoax is gone, we’re seeing lawfare on steroids, so much so that we can reasonably say that we’re living in a “kritarchy” (i.e., rule by judges). This is not what our Constitution intended.

In just the last 24 hours, judges have held that:

• People who arrived in America illegally as unaccompanied minors (meaning they’re still here illegally) cannot be deported as illegal alien gang members with what Stephen Miller calls “infinity due process.”
• Because states have control over their elections, which are limited under the Constitution to legal citizens, the federal government cannot require voters to prove that they are citizens.
• Trump cannot stop funds from going to sanctuary cities that blatantly violate federal immigration laws.
• Trump may not put federal grants and contracts on hold when schools and colleges discriminate against people based on race under the rubric of DEI programs.
• Trump must reinstate the leftist-controlled Voice of America and rehire all the employees.

In the weeks leading up to these last four rulings, the courts have consistently held that Trump may not undo any of the Obama or Biden Executive Orders, despite Trump having the same constitutional powers. Judges are following an unwritten new policy that Adrian Vermuele states succinctly:

There’s a GOP-created chart making the rounds based on a Harvard study, showing that while judges issued nationwide injunctions against Obama only 12 times during his eight years, and against Biden 28 times during his four years, they’ve issued more than 79 nationwide injunctions against Trump in the four years of his first term and three months of his second term—and to this already out-of-date-chart we can add the five most recent rulings described above:

Indeed, of the total 127 nationwide injunctions issued since 1963, 64 were against Trump during his first term. Not coincidentally, 92.2% of those injunctions came from judges appointed by Clinton and Obama.

Leftists, of course, would say that Trump has been the subject of injunctions at this extreme rate because every one of his actions is illegal. However, we Americans understand that this is not true. And while I couldn't find statistics on the number of injunctions overruled at the appellate or Supreme Court level, or the number of cases ultimately decided in Trump’s favor, I’m willing to bet that the numbers are significant. (And of course, a lot of them just died because Biden came into office and reversed Trump’s Executive Orders, which is, as Vermuele said, legally accepted.)

Mostly, what we Americans see is that Trump has issued and is issuing Executive Orders that are consistent with the Constitution and the laws on the books, and that Democrat judges are blocking those executive orders because they violate Democrat norms or administrative regulations. Trump, of course, is the constitutional boss of the unelected, and arguably completely unconstitutional, administrative state.

In other words, what we’re seeing is unelected, often highly radical judges across America usurping the constitutional powers granted to the duly elected president of the United States. This is the last thing the Founders wanted. Indeed, according to Alexander Hamilton, the Founders imagined that the unelected judiciary would be the least dangerous branch of government because it lacked purse or sword.

Thanks to the judiciary’s blatantly partisan actions (frankly, par for the course for leftist judges), our government is badly out of balance. And while Democrats think they are proving their power, they are actually destroying the judiciary. It’s so bad that Justice Alito took the unprecedented step of openly castigating his fellow Supreme Court justices for blatantly violating the law to achieve a Democrat-preferred outcome.

Image made using AI.