Federal judges have blocked President Donald Trump’s executive orders related to stemming the flow of illegal immigration, as well as slimming the federal bureaucracy and slashing government waste.
‘Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government,’ Trump wrote on TRUTH Social on Tuesday. ‘Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop. Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!’
Judges in U.S. district courts – the lowest level in the three-tier federal court system – have mostly pushed back on Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency. Here are the six times judges have blocked Trump’s executive orders so far:
Federal Funding Pause
The Trump administration quickly pushed to withhold Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) money sent to New York City to house migrants, saying it had ‘significant concerns’ about the spending under a program appropriated by Congress. The Justice Department had previously asked the appeals court to let it implement sweeping pauses on federal grants and loans, calling the lower court order to keep promised money flowing ‘intolerable judicial overreach.’
McConnell, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, is presiding over a lawsuit from nearly two dozen Democratic states filed after the administration issued a memo purporting to halt all federals grants and loans, worth trillions of dollars.
‘The broad categorical and sweeping freeze of federal funds is, as the Court found, likely unconstitutional,’ McConnell wrote, ‘and has caused and continues to cause irreparable harm to a vast portion of this country.’
The administration has since rescinded that memo, but McConnell found Monday that not all federal grants and loans had been restored. He was the first judge to find that the administration had disobeyed a court order.
The Democratic attorneys general allege money for things like early childhood education, pollution reduction and HIV prevention research remained tied up even after McConnell ordered the administration on Jan. 31 to ‘immediately take every step necessary’ to unfreeze federal grants and loans. The judge also said his order blocked the administration from cutting billions of dollars in grant funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The Boston-based First Circuit Court of Appeal on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s effort to reinstate a sweeping pause on federal funding.
The federal appeals court said it expected U.S. District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island to clarify his initial order.
DOGE Treasury Department access
U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas, who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, on Monday ordered lawyers to meet and confer over any changes needed to an order issued early Saturday by another Manhattan judge, Obama-appointee Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, that banned Elon Musk’s DOGE team from accessing Treasury Department records. Vargas instructed both sides to file written arguments if an agreement was not reached.
The order was amended on Tuesday to allow Senate-confirmed political appointees access to the information, while special government employees, including Musk, are still prohibited from accessing the Treasury Department’s payment system.
On Friday, 19 Democrat attorneys general, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, sued Trump on the grounds that Musk’s DOGE team was composed of ‘political appointees’ who should not have access to Treasury records handled by ‘civil servants’ specially trained to protect sensitive information like Social Security and bank account numbers.
Justice Department attorneys from Washington and New York told Vargas in a filing on Sunday that the ban was unconstitutional and a ‘remarkable intrusion on the Executive Branch’ that must be immediately reversed. They said there was no basis for distinguishing between ‘civil servants’ and ‘political appointees.’
They said they were complying with the Saturday order by Engelmayer, but they asserted that the order was ‘overbroad’ so that some might think even Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was banned by it.
‘Basic democratic accountability requires that every executive agency’s work be supervised by politically accountable leadership, who ultimately answer to the President,’ DOJ attorneys wrote, adding that the ban on accessing the records by Musk’s team ‘directly severs the clear line of supervision’ required by the Constitution.
Over the weekend, Musk and Vice President JD Vance reacted to the escalating conflict between the Trump administration and the lower courts.
‘If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal,’ Vance wrote broadly. ‘Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.’
Musk said Engelmayer is ‘a corrupt judge protecting corruption,’ who ‘needs to be impeached NOW!’
‘Fork in the Road Directive’
Boston-based U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr., who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton, kept on hold Trump’s deferred resignation program after a courtroom hearing on Monday.
O’Toole on Thursday had already pushed back the initial Feb. 6 deadline when federal workers had to decide whether they would accept eight months of paid leave in exchange for their resignation.
A ‘Fork In the Road’ email was sent earlier last week telling two million federal workers they could stop working and continue to get paid until Sept. 30. The White House said 65,000 workers had already accepted the buyout offer by Friday.
The country’s largest federal labor unions, concerned about losing membership, sued the Office of Personnel Management, asking the court to delay the deadline and arguing the deferred resignation program spearheaded by Musk is illegal.
Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department lawyer, called the plan a ‘humane off ramp’ for federal employees who may have structured their lives around working remotely and have been ordered to return to government buildings.
Birthright Citizenship
The Trump administration on Tuesday said it is appealing a Maryland federal judge’s ruling blocking the president’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for people whose parents are not legally in the country.
In a filing, the administration’s attorneys said they were appealing to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. It’s the second such appeal the administration has sought since Trump’s executive order was blocked in court.
The government’s appeal stems from Biden-appointed U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman’s grant of a preliminary injunction last week in a case brought by immigrant rights groups and expectant mothers in Maryland. Boardman said at the time her court would not become the first in the country to endorse the president’s order, calling citizenship a ‘precious right’ granted by the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
The president’s birthright citizenship order has generated at least nine lawsuits nationwide, including suits brought by 22 states.
On Monday, New Hampshire-based U.S. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, said in relation to a similar lawsuit that he wasn’t convinced by the administration’s arguments and issued a preliminary injunction. It applies to the plaintiffs, immigrant rights groups with members who are pregnant, and others within the court’s jurisdiction.
Last week, Seattle-based U.S. District Judge John C. Coughenour, who was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan, ordered a block of Trump’s order, which the administration also appealed.
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)
The Trump administration is expected to argue before a federal judge Wednesday that the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) is rife with ‘insubordination’ and must be shut down for the administration to decide what pieces of it to salvage.
The argument, made in an affidavit by political appointee and deputy USAID administrator Pete Marocco, comes as the administration confronts a lawsuit by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees – two groups representing federal workers.
Washington-based U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, on Friday ordered a temporary block on plans by the Trump administration to put 2,200 USAID employees on leave. He also agreed to block an order that would have given just 30 days for the thousands of overseas USAID workers the administration wanted to place on abrupt administrative leave to move their families back to the U.S. at the government’s expense.
Both actions by the administration would have exposed the workers and their families to unnecessary risk and expense, according to the judge.
The judge reinstated USAID staffers already placed on leave but declined to suspend the administration’s freeze on foreign assistance.
Nichols is due to hear arguments Wednesday on a request from the employee groups to keep blocking the move to put thousands of staffers on leave as well as broaden his order. They contend the government has already violated the judge’s order.
In the court case, a government motion shows the administration pressing arguments by Vance and others questioning if courts have the authority to check Trump’s power.
‘The President’s powers in the realm of foreign affairs are generally vast and unreviewable,’ government lawyers argued.
Fox News’ Landon Mion and the Associated Press contributed to this report.