In his opening statement before two House Judiciary subcommittees on Tuesday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said, “The notion that unelected lawyers can micromanage the executive branch and override a commander-in-chief who received 77.3 million votes should trouble every American.”
The current national discussion on whether federal judges are abusing their power through political activism is not new, though Gingrich pointed to a 2024 Harvard Law Review report that showed 92.2% of the injunctions in President Donald Trump’s first term in office were issued by a judge appointed by a Democratic president.
“Since Jan. 20, 2025, lower courts have imposed 15 nationwide injunctions against the current Trump administration,” Gingrich added. “This is compared to six during George W. Bush’s eight years, 12 during Barack Obama’s eight years, and 14 during Joe Biden’s four-year term.”
The joint hearing on judicial overreach and nationwide injunctions took place before the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government and the Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence, and the Internet.
Democratic and Republican lawmakers on the committees clashed over whether the judiciary branch is overstepping its authority by barring much of Trump’s actions since entering the White House in January and what the remedies are to ensure balance between the three branches of government.
Nationwide injunctions have been placed on several of Trump’s orders, ranging from his attempt to end birthright citizenship and the deportation of illegal immigrants to dissolving federal diversity, equity and inclusion offices and reducing federal grant funding. Democratic lawmakers accused the president of using his executive power to bully those who don’t support his actions.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., said during Tuesday’s hearing that Trump’s actions are designed “to instill fear, intimidate, exact revenge against and punish those who dare to stand up to him and hold him accountable to the laws of our nation.”
Johnson also claimed that of the record 107 executive orders Trump has filed in his first 71 days in office, many “are unlawful or unconstitutional, and the president does not have the power to change the Constitution through executive order, even if his name is Donald Trump.”
Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, countered that a single appointed federal judge shouldn’t have the authority to freeze an action taken by the president.
But Democrats argued that as the minority in the House and Senate, federal judges are the only defense against Trump’s agenda.
The Tuesday hearing comes ahead of a House vote on a bill brought by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif. The bill would keep federal judges from establishing nationwide injunctions. A similar bill brought by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would restrict judicial rulings to only the parties involved and not a universal decision.
Utah Sen. Mike Lee also introduced a bill that would limit the ability of a single district court judge to block a presidential order through a nationwide injunction. Instead, such a move would be issued by a three-judge district court with the possibility of a “direct appeal” to the Supreme Court.
During opening remarks of Tuesday’s hearing Issa said, “The federal judiciary isn’t interpreting the law, it is impeding the presidency. It is, in fact, not co-equal, but holding itself to be superior.”
“The reality is every judge is considering himself not to be an associate justice, not to even be the chief justice, but in fact, to be a combination of the justice and the president the United States. This demands that we make a change and make it quickly,” he said.
Constitutional or not?
Gingrich claimed that federal judges’ recent rulings against Trump could be a “potential judicial coup d’etat“ and that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts should institute a policy that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to review any nationwide injunctions made by a lower court.
“There is clearly a potential constitutional crisis involving the judicial branch’s effort to fully override the legislative and executive branches. Fifteen district judges effectively seized control of various executive branch duties in the first six weeks of the current presidency through nationwide injunctions,” Gingrich said. “It clearly violates the Constitution and more than 200 years of American history.”
However, Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said in her testimony that accusing judges of an abuse of power was a misstep.
“The premise of this hearing that courts have overreached or transcended the limits of their authority and that this overreach calls for some response is badly mistaken,” she said. “The Trump administration has been on a losing streak in the federal courts.”
“The lawsuits have been brought and have overwhelmingly succeeded because many of the challenged actions have been taken without regard for and often with outright contempt for both statutes and the Constitution, and by that I mean both the constitutionally required process for lawmaking and the rights the Constitution commands government to respect,” she added.