Several federal judges expressed frustration this week with how President Donald Trump’s administration is pushing forward his sweeping agenda, as Trump and his allies got even more aggressive in their criticism of the judiciary.
Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who temporarily halted deportations being carried out under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act, while also blasting the jurist on his Truth Social platform as a “grandstander” whose rulings are “inept.”
Lawyers for the Justice Department chided the judge, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, for pressing them for answers after they appeared to ignore his directive over the weekend that any flights carrying out deportations under the AEA should return to the U.S., accusing him of “[c]ontinuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts.”
At a hearing Friday, Boasberg told DOJ lawyers their filings had “the kind of intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States.”
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement Tuesday pushing back on Trump and his allies for calling for Boasberg’s removal, saying “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
In other cases this week, one judge blasted the administration for appearing to violate the Constitution in “multiple ways” while another complained the Justice Department was treating her like “an idiot.”
The Trump administration currently has over 15 appeals pending, including from rulings this week reining in the power of Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency.
Here’s a look at the major legal developments of the past seven days:
Judge and DOJ spar over deportations
Lawyers for the Justice Department chided U.S. District Judge James Boasberg for pressing them for answers after they appeared to ignore his directive over the weekend that any flights carrying out deportations under the AEA should return to the U.S., accusing him of “[c]ontinuing to beat a dead horse solely for the sake of prying from the Government legally immaterial facts.”
At a hearing Friday, Boasberg told DOJ lawyers their filings had “the kind of intemperate and disrespectful language I’m not used to hearing from the United States.”
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement Tuesday pushing back on Trump and his allies for calling for Boasberg’s removal, saying that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary order barring the administration from deporting people by invoking the AEA and ordered any such flights that were in the air to return to the U.S.
There were two flights that did not return — the government claimed they were already out of U.S. airspace, so the deportees were already technically “removed” from the country.
At a hearing on Monday, the judge called the government’s arguments a “stretch” and summarized them as “we don’t care, we’ll do what we want.” He ordered the Justice Department to turn over more information about the flights the next day, leading to the days of pushback by the administration, which claimed he was not entitled to ask questions relating to the AEA, a wartime statute that dates back to 1798.
The act had previously only been invoked during major wars — the War of 1812 and both world wars.
A Trump proclamation last week applied it to members of Tren De Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that his administration has declared to be a foreign terrorist organization. The proclamation said the gang “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
That led to the suit brought on behalf of five Venezuelan nationals the government is trying to deport under the act, and who maintain they’re not members of the gang.
Boasberg has not yet made any finding on the plaintiffs’ claim that the AEA cannot apply to a gang from a country the U.S. is not at war with, but Trump has continued accusing him of trying to “usurp” his power. “No District Court Judge, or any Judge, can assume the duties of the President of the United States. Only Crime and Chaos would result,” he wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday morning.
Judge says DOGE is ‘hitting a fly with a sledgehammer’
A federal judge in Maryland on Thursday signed a temporary restraining order blocking DOGE’s access to sensitive records for millions of Americans housed at the Social Security Administration.
The “millions of Americans whose SSA records were made available to the DOGE affiliates, without their consent” contain “sensitive, confidential, and personally identifiable information,” U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander wrote in a 137-page opinion.
That information “includes Social Security numbers, personal medical and mental health records, driver’s license information, bank account data, tax information, earnings history, birth and marriage records, home and work addresses, school records, immigration and/or naturalization records, health care providers’ contact information, family court records, and employment and employer records,” she noted, adding the office hadn’t put forward a rationale for needing such access.
“The DOGE Team is essentially engaged in a fishing expedition at SSA, in search of a fraud epidemic, based on little more than suspicion. It has launched a search for the proverbial needle in the haystack, without any concrete knowledge that the needle is actually in the haystack,” Hollander wrote, describing the administration’s methods as “tantamount to hitting a fly with a sledgehammer.”
Her order barred DOGE from accessing any more sensitive records and directed it to “disgorge and delete” any such data it has, as well as barring it from “installing any software” on SSA information systems.
Judge calls out Elon Musk’s social media posts
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Maryland found Musk and DOGE’s work to largely dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development “likely violated the United States Constitution in multiple ways.”
U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang said “the power to act to eliminate federal agencies resides exclusively with Congress” and that DOGE’s work to dismantle USAID violates the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution.
The government argued that Musk is merely an adviser to the president and was not responsible for efforts to slash the workforce and shutter USAID headquarters.
The judge, however, pointed to numerous posts of Musk’s on his X platform where he boasted he was responsible, including a Feb. 3 tweet where he wrote, “We spent the weekend feeding USAID to the wood chipper. Could have gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
Chuang issued a preliminary injunction ordering the agency to take steps to reopen the agency’s headquarters and to restore access to email, payment, security notification and other electronic systems for all USAID employees and contractors.
Chuang also barred DOGE from sharing the personal information of USAID staffers outside of the agency, citing the Musk team’s “extremely troubling lack of respect for security clearance requirements and agency rules relating to access to sensitive data.”
DOGE filed an appeal of Chuang’s order early Friday.
Judge says she is ‘very offended’ by DOGE’s actions but declines a restraining order
Not every plaintiff that sued DOGE this week was successful in court.
The U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonprofit funded by Congress and dedicated to conflict resolution, went to D.C. federal court seeking an emergency restraining order alleging that DOGE had used a “takeover by force” of its headquarters and was attempting to shut it down.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell questioned DOGE’s methods at a Wednesday hearing. “I am very offended by how DOGE has operated at the institute and treated American citizens trying to do a job that they were statutorily tasked to do,” Howell said, but she declined to sign the restraining order, saying the plaintiffs had not met the necessary requirements.
The Justice Department had contended the administration “acted in accordance with all laws” and had properly removed the institute’s top officials.
Though Howell ruled in the government’s favor, the Justice Department moved Friday to remove her from another case involving the president.
Howell signed off on a restraining order barring portions of Trump’s executive order punishing Perkins Coie, a law firm that’s done high-profile work for Democrats. The order suspended employees’ security clearances and barred them from federal buildings.
“It sends chills down my spine when you say that if the president in his view has the position that an individual, or an entity, or a company is operating a way that is not in the nation’s interest, he can issue an executive order like this,” Howell said at a hearing last week, calling it “a pretty extraordinary power for the president to exercise.”
The DOJ filing said the judge “has repeatedly demonstrated partiality against and animus towards the President” over the years, and cited her having signed off on parts of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump as one of the reasons she should recuse herself.
‘Soaked in animus’: Judge halts transgender military ban
Another federal judge in D.C. issued a preliminary injunction barring the Defense Department from implementing Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from enlisting or serving in the military.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes found the ban is “soaked in animus” and violates the equal protection clause because it discriminates based on transgender status and sex.
“Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact,” she wrote, adding that the government failed to produce evidence about how many transgender service members there are, or how transgender status impacts their military readiness.
“Transgender persons have served openly since 2021, but Defendants have not analyzed their service. That is unfortunate. Plaintiffs’ service records alone are Exhibit A for the proposition that transgender persons can have the warrior ethos, physical and mental health, selflessness, honor, integrity, and discipline to ensure military excellence,” Reyes wrote.
At a hearing Friday, the government argued, as it had previously, that the order is focused on people with the medical condition “gender dysphoria.”
Reyes pointed to a Feb. 27 tweet by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declaring that “Transgender troops are disqualified from service without an exemption.”
“I am not going to abide by government officials saying one thing to the public — saying what they really mean to the public — and coming in here to the court and telling me something different, like I’m an idiot,” Reyes told the DOJ attorney assigned to this case. “I am not an idiot.”
The Justice Department later called Reyes’ injunction “the latest example of an activist judge attempting to seize power at the expense of the American people who overwhelmingly voted to elect President Trump.”
Judges block EPA efforts to cancel climate grants
Yet another D.C. federal judge issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to terminate up to $20 billion in grants for climate initiatives, in a case brought by the environmental group Climate United Fund.
The money for the “Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund” had been appropriated by Congress in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, which was signed into law by then-President Joe Biden.
Trump’s EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, vowed to recover those funds after he was sworn in in January, saying “the entire scheme, in my opinion, is criminal,” according to a court filing.
The agency froze the account and later terminated the grants to the three nonprofits, which alleged the EPA didn’t follow proper procedures for terminating such grants.
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan agreed.
“When the court asked EPA to proffer evidence justifying its decision given the terms of the agreement, its only response was to refer to the termination letter, which gave no legal justification for the termination,” Chutkan wrote.
She said that while the EPA voiced concerns regarding “program integrity” and “programmatic fraud, waste, and abuse,” “vague and unsubstantiated assertions of fraud are insufficient.”