In response to President Trump’s blizzard of executive orders and his all-out assault on government bureaucracy, federal judges around the country — especially in Washington — have issued rulings at a blistering rate for the past two months.
The decisions, much like Mr. Trump’s actions, have touched on an astonishing array of subjects: foreign aid, transgender rights and immigration, as well as whether the president can fire appointees at will, withhold spending mandated by Congress and authorize Elon Musk and his subordinates at the U.S. DOGE Service, or Department of Government Efficiency, to slash the federal work force.
While some rulings have gone the president’s way, taken as a whole, they represent an effort to push back at Mr. Trump’s serial attempts to increase his authority and the executive branch’s dominion over the government. They reflect a fraught and chaotic moment where so much seems uncertain and the federal government itself is under siege.
The Trump administration has appealed many, if not most, of the decisions, and a few have already been reversed by higher courts. More will certainly be revised or stricken down as the cases move through the judicial system.
But for now, here are key passages in several noteworthy rulings.
The president’s power to fire appointees
“A president who touts an image of himself as a ‘king’ or a ‘dictator,’ perhaps as his vision of effective leadership, fundamentally misapprehends the role under Article II of the U.S. Constitution. In our constitutional order, the president is tasked to be a conscientious custodian of the law, albeit an energetic one, to take care of effectuating his enumerated duties, including the laws enacted by the Congress and as interpreted by the judiciary.
“At issue in this case, is the president’s insistence that he has authority to fire whomever he wants within the executive branch, overriding any congressionally mandated law in his way. Luckily, the Framers, anticipating such a power grab, vested in Article III, not Article II, the power to interpret the law, including resolving conflicts about congressional checks on presidential authority. The president’s interpretation of the scope of his constitutional power — or, more aptly, his aspiration — is flat wrong.”
Birthright citizenship
“The loss of birthright citizenship — even if temporary, and later restored at the conclusion of litigation — has cascading effects that would cut across a young child’s life (and the life of that child’s family), very likely leaving permanent scars. The record before the court establishes that children born without a recognized or lawful status face barriers to accessing critical healthcare, among other services, along with the threat of removal to countries they have never lived in and possible family separation. That is irreparable harm.”
Freezing federal funding and foreign aid
“In the simplest terms, the freeze was ill-conceived from the beginning. Defendants either wanted to pause up to $3 trillion in federal spending practically overnight, or they expected each federal agency to review every single one of its grants, loans, and funds for compliance in less than twenty-four hours. The breadth of that command is almost unfathomable. Either way, defendants’ actions were irrational, imprudent and precipitated a nationwide crisis.”
“The provision and administration of foreign aid has been a joint enterprise between our two political branches. That partnership is built not out of convenience, but of constitutional necessity. It reflects Congress and the executive’s ‘firmly established,’ shared constitutional responsibilities over foreign policy and it reflects the division of authorities dictated by the Constitution as it relates to the appropriation of funds and executing on those appropriations.
“Congress, exercising its exclusive Article I power of the purse, appropriates funds to be spent toward specific foreign policy aims. The president, exercising a more general Article II power, decides how to spend those funds in faithful execution of the law. And so foreign aid has proceeded over the years.”
“Stripped of its equitable flair, the requested relief seeks one thing: The conference wants the court to order the government to stop withholding the money due under the cooperative agreements. In even plainer English: The conference wants the government to keep paying up. Thus the conference ‘seeks the classic contractual remedy of specific performance.’ But this court cannot order the government to pay money due on a contract. Such a request for an order that the government ‘must perform’ on its contract is one that ‘must be resolved by the claims court.’”
Efforts to remake the federal government
“USDS’s actions to date have proceeded remarkably swiftly. In the less than two months since President Trump’s inauguration, USDS has reportedly caused 3% of the federal civilian work force to resign, shuttered an entire agency, cut billions of dollars from the federal budget, canceled hundreds of government contracts, terminated thousands of federal employees, and obtained access to vast troves of sensitive personal and financial data.
“USDS appears able to do this in part because of its access to many agency’s IT systems, which help the department carry out its objectives at warp speed. But the rapid pace of USDS’s actions, in turn, requires the quick release of information about its structure and activities. That is especially so given the secrecy with which USDS has operated.”
Funding for transgender care
“Plaintiffs have established that the hardship they are suffering, as well as the hardship PFLAG’s members are experiencing, are caused by the discontinuation of what has been deemed by medical professionals to be essential care. This hardship comes as a result of the conditioning on federal funding outlined in the executive orders and is nonspeculative, concrete and potentially catastrophic. Specifically, the sudden denial or interruption of plaintiffs’ medical care has caused or is expected to soon cause unwanted physical changes, depression, increased anxiety, heightened gender dysphoria, severe distress, risk of·suicide, uncertainty about how to obtain medical care, impediments to maintaining a social life, and fear of discrimination, including hate crimes.”
Immigration operations in places of worship
“For over 30 years, the United States government has imposed various limitations and safeguards on the execution of immigration enforcement actions in or near places of worship. In light of the First Amendment’s protections relating to religious exercise, such limitations served to mitigate the potential collision between the interests of government and religion that would inevitably arise from intrusions by armed law enforcement officers into churches, synagogues, mosques, temples and other places of worship. On Jan. 20, 2025, the United States Department of Homeland Security abruptly removed all such limitations and safeguards and instead left decisions on whether to conduct such enforcement actions to the unilateral discretion of individual officers. Three different faith communities have now challenged this action.”
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