While mainstream news outlets, cable networks and social media obsess over Elon Musk’s latest antics, they have neglected a far more important story — the Trump administration is accumulating a significant catalogue of appeals court and SCOTUS victories. Last Friday alone three more wins were added to the list. The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the White House may exclude AP from its press pool while SCOTUS stayed a district court order requiring DOGE to heed a Freedom of Information Act request and ruled that it can access Social Security Administration records.
The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as a win.
These rulings follow a spate of similar wins last month. On May 30, the Supreme Court stayed a district court ruling that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t revoke former President Biden’s parole of 532,000 non-citizens. On May 29, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed a U.S. Trade Court ruling that President Trump’s tariffs are somehow unlawful. On May 22, SCOTUS stayed a district court order reinstating two Biden administration officials fired by Trump. On May 19, SCOTUS stayed a district court ruling that Secretary Noem does not possess the legal authority to terminate the temporary protected status of 350,000 Venezuelan non-citizens.
The seven cases noted above do not exhaust the list of the Trump administration’s wins. During April the administration won three Supreme Court cases. On April 17, Justice Elena Kagan declined to stay a deportation order involving four Mexican nationals without referring the case to the full court. On April 8, SCOTUS stayed a district court order to reinstate 16,000 fired federal employees. On April 7, the Court vacated a district court order blocking deportations pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act. This particular ruling, combined with two others, led the editors of the Wall Street Journal to conclude that the Supreme Court was sending a message to the district courts:
President Trump is exercising executive power in aggressive and often novel ways, and opponents are suing to stop him. But in a trio of recent orders, the Supreme Court has sent lower-court judges an important reminder that they must still respect judicial rules and procedures. A 5-4 majority handed Mr. Trump a partial victory Monday by allowing his Administration to continue deporting Venezuelans believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act.
This last ruling turned out to be a Pyrrhic victory for the Trump administration, however. On May 16, the Court effectively reversed itself — prompting Justice Samuel Alito to issue this blistering dissent: “In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application.” The good news, on the other hand, is that there are six additional cases on the Supreme Court’s “Emergency Docket,” half of which invite definitive rulings concerning nationwide injunctions issued by district courts.
Trump’s EO on Birthright Citizenship Forces the Court’s Hand
The most obvious vehicle for such a ruling is Trump v. CASA, which revolves around the following issue: “Whether the Supreme Court should stay the district courts’ nationwide preliminary injunctions on the Trump administration’s Jan. 20 executive order ending birthright citizenship except as to the individual plaintiffs and identified members of the organizational plaintiffs or states.” In order to get to birthright citizenship, the Court must first deal with the proliferation of nationwide injunctions. The following exchange between Justice Clarence Thomas and Solicitor General D. John Sauer during oral arguments reveals why this metastasis matters so much:
JUSTICE THOMAS: So we survived until the 1960s without universal injunctions?
GENERAL SAUER: That’s exactly correct. And, in fact, those were very limited — very rare even in the 1960s. It really exploded in 2007 in our cert petition in Summers against Earth Island Institute. We pointed out that the Ninth Circuit had started doing this in a whole bunch of cases involving environmental claims.
Justice Thomas, exercising his gift for cutting through the red herrings, straw men and false dichotomies that constitute the stock and trade of Democrat lawyers, put his finger on a core problem facing the Court in Trump v. CASA. And he is by no means the only sitting justice who has genuine reservations about universal injunctions. Justice Elena Kagan has publicly expressed her concerns as follows: “It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.” She was right in 2022, when she said that. It will be quite difficult to reverse herself in 2025.
The Supreme Court will rule on Trump v. CASA before the end of June, and it’s a good bet that the Trump administration will be able to chalk it up as a win — and a big one. If so, the judicial insurrection that we have been watching will have been effectively put down. That certainly doesn’t mean the Democrats and their accomplices in the corporate media will end their assault on the Trump administration and the Constitution. Nonetheless, they will have lost one of the most powerful weapons in their political arsenal. Perhaps, by that time, even Elon Musk will have at last divined the difference between big money and genuine power on the world stage.
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