A Democracy Drive Thread
Defying court orders, threatening and stripping the power of federal judges, floating the suspension of habeas corpus, and turning on his own Supreme Court appointees — the campaign against the U.S. courts that try to check him.
This thread tracks, in chronological order and with sources, the administration’s attacks on the American judiciary: court orders ignored or slow-walked, judges threatened, sued, or targeted for impeachment, calls to “abolish” courts and suspend habeas corpus, and the president’s public attacks on the very justices he appointed. (Rulings that went the administration’s way are a separate story; this page is about the effort to defy, intimidate, or hollow out the courts.)
May 10, 2026
Trump posted that Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett should be more loyal to him because he put them on the Court, casting their independence as ingratitude and “disrespect” and floating packing the bench.
March 17, 2025
On March 17, 2025, border czar Tom Homan said on Fox & Friends that the administration would keep flying alleged Venezuelan gang members out of the country regardless of the courts, after it let deportation planes proceed despite a federal judge's verbal order that they turn around. The removals were carried out under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law invoked in peacetime. It was one of the administration's first open defiances of a court order.
“I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming.”
April 4, 2025
On April 4, 2025, U.S. District Judge John McConnell — for the second time — found the administration in violation of his preliminary injunction against an across-the-board freeze on federal grants, ruling that FEMA's new “manual review” process was “covertly” withholding disaster-relief money from 22 states and Washington, D.C. He found the review was an attempt to carry out Trump's executive order denying funds to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, and ordered the money released. States including Oregon and Hawaii said tens of millions in storm, wildfire, and flood-recovery aid had been frozen.
April 7, 2025
On a Fox News appearance aired April 7, 2025, Mark Levin suggested Congress use the budget process to eliminate the funding of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after it blocked deportations to a Salvadoran mega-prison, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller agreed that Congress had the power to do so, saying it had to “step up.” It was an explicit call to use the power of the purse to punish a court for its rulings.
April 9, 2025
On April 9, 2025, the House voted 219-213 to pass the No Rogue Rulings Act, a bill by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) that would bar federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions and limit their relief to the parties before them — sharply curbing the main tool courts had used to halt Trump's directives across the country. Republicans called the injunctions “rogue”; Democrats countered that they reflected the illegality of the underlying orders. The bill faced long odds in the Senate.
April 10, 2025
On April 10, 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld an order directing the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man it had deported to El Salvador's CECOT mega-prison on March 15 despite a court order barring his removal. Rather than comply, officials claimed the ruling was “in our favor,” and El Salvador's president said he would not send him back; Justice Department lawyers stonewalled the district judge over what, if anything, was being done. Abrego Garcia was not returned until June — nearly two months later.
April 23, 2025
On April 23, 2025, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher — a Trump appointee — ruled that the administration had violated a 2019 class-action settlement when it deported a 20-year-old Venezuelan asylum-seeker identified as “Cristian” to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, despite his pending asylum claim. She ordered the government to facilitate his return; Justice Department lawyers argued she lacked jurisdiction to review the removal at all.
April 28, 2025
At an April 28, 2025 briefing, Fox News's Peter Doocy asked press secretary Karoline Leavitt whether the administration would ever arrest “somebody higher up on the judicial food chain, like a federal judge or even a Supreme Court justice.” Leavitt did not rule it out, saying anyone “breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials is putting themselves at risk of being prosecuted, absolutely,” and left the decision to the Justice Department. The exchange followed the FBI's arrest of a Wisconsin state judge earlier that month.
“Anyone who is breaking the law or obstructing federal law enforcement officials is putting themselves at risk of being prosecuted, absolutely.”
April 29, 2025
In an April 29, 2025 brief to the U.S. Court of International Trade, the Justice Department argued that Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs under an emergency-powers statute was “unreviewable” by the judiciary and that whether trade deficits constitute a national emergency was “beyond the courts' authority to resolve.” The court disagreed, soon freezing most of the tariffs as exceeding presidential power.
May 9, 2025
On May 9, 2025, Stephen Miller told reporters the administration was “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus — the centuries-old right to challenge unlawful imprisonment in court — as a way to remove migrants without judicial review, adding that whether it did so depended on “whether the courts do the right thing or not.” CNN reported Trump was personally involved in the discussions. The Constitution permits suspension only in cases of rebellion or invasion.
“The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion, so ... that's an option we're actively looking at.”
June 25, 2025
On June 25, 2025, the Justice Department took the extraordinary step of suing every one of Maryland's 15 federal district judges over a standing order, signed by Chief Judge George Russell III, that paused the deportation of detainees for two business days after they filed habeas petitions — time for a court to review the case. The DOJ argued the judges had exceeded their authority. A judge dismissed the suit on August 26 as “potentially calamitous,” and the government said it would appeal.
November 6, 2025
In early November 2025, U.S. District Judge John McConnell ordered the administration to use a $4.6 billion reserve to fully fund SNAP food benefits for roughly 42 million people during the government shutdown. The administration did not pay, and McConnell cited Trump's own Truth Social posts — declaring that benefits would flow only “when the Radical Left Democrats open up the Government” — as evidence of a deliberate intent to defy his order. The Justice Department appealed, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson issued an administrative stay pausing the order.
“SNAP Benefits...will be given only when the Radical Left Democrats open up the Government.”
February 20, 2026
On February 20, 2026, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the emergency-powers statute did not authorize Trump's global tariffs — with his own appointees Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joining the majority. The administration responded by attacking the Court: Vice President JD Vance called the decision “lawlessness from the Court, plain and simple,” and Trump said the justices he had appointed “sicken me,” adding that he was “ashamed” of members of the Court for lacking “the courage to do what's right.”
“Two of the people that voted for that, I appointed, and they sicken me. They sicken me because they're bad for our country.”
July 13, 2026
On July 13, 2026, a federal judge ruled that Trump had sought to “manipulate the judicial process” and used the court for “political purposes” through his $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS and Treasury and a purported “anti-weaponization” settlement never actually filed with the court. A group of 35 former federal judges had moved to reopen the case, accusing the administration of corrupting the judicial process. It fit a documented pattern: a tally of more than 40 cases in which courts found false statements or serious defects in the government's representations, and at least 77 rulings containing unusually sharp judicial criticism of the administration.