The brushbacks have come mainly from district judges, who occupy the lowest level of the three-tiered federal judiciary. So far, it’s been a different story among Trump’s three most powerful judicial appointees: Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. That troika, along with the high court’s three other conservatives, has handed Trump numerous short-term victories in emergency rulings this year, often lifting injunctions against Trump policies issued by district judges.

The White House leaned into that bottom-line success in a statement to POLITICO that attributed Trump’s defeats to Democratic appointees and sidestepped questions about the defeats dealt by Trump’s own picks.

“The Trump Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as lawful despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful lower court rulings from far-left liberal activist judges,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson. “The President will continue implementing the policy agenda that the American people voted for in November and will continue to be vindicated by higher courts when liberal activist judges attempt to intervene.”

Trump allies also emphasize that district court judges tend to require the approval of home-state senators, leading presidents to nominate more moderate picks than they might otherwise in states dominated by the opposing party.

Still, in some cases in which Trump-appointed judges have heard Trump-related cases, they have gone further than simply ruling against his policies. They have delivered sweeping warnings about the expansion of executive power, the erosion of checks and balances and have criticized his attacks on judges writ large.

One Trump appointee rebuked the president and his allies for a “smear” campaign against the judiciary.

“Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system,” U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen wrote in a recent ruling, “this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.”

Rulings against the administration by Trump-appointed judges have come in some of the most high-profile cases of Trump’s second term. Here’s a look at the most notable examples.

National Guard call-up

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut, a first-term Trump appointee in Oregon, ruled that Trump’s effort to put National Guard troops in Portland was “untethered” from reality and risked plunging the nation into an unconstitutional form of military rule.

Deporting Guatemalan children

U.S. District Judge Tim Kelly, a first-term appointee in Washington, D.C., rejected the Trump administration’s claim that it was trying to reunite unaccompanied Guatemalan kids with their parents when it abruptly loaded hundreds of children onto buses and planes for a middle-of-the-night deportation effort. That explanation “crumbled like a house of cards,” he wrote, after the Guatemalan government contradicted the claim. Kelly blocked the immediate deportations, saying they appeared to violate the law.
Restricting the AP’s White House access

U.S. District Judge Trevor McFadden said the White House had unconstitutionally evicted the Associated Press from Oval Office events over its refusal to adopt Trump’s “Gulf of America” label. McFadden’s ruling was later put on hold by an appeals court. Notably, Trump has mischaracterized this ruling twice in recent days during public remarks, claiming that McFadden, a first-term appointee, not only sided with his restrictions on the AP but endorsed his relabeling of the Gulf of Mexico. Neither McFadden nor the appeals court reached such a conclusion.

Trump’s tariff power

Few issues are as central to Trump’s economic agenda as his power to levy tariffs at will against U.S. trading partners he claims are ripping off the country. But Timothy Reif, a judge he put on the U.S. Court of International Trade, joined two other judges in ruling that Trump lacked the legal power to impose such sweeping tariffs, a traditionally congressional authority. A federal appeals court later agreed with the panel, and the matter is now pending before the Supreme Court.

Summary deportations under the Alien Enemies Act

Several Trump-appointed judges joined a nationwide legal rebuke of the president and his administration over efforts to abruptly deport Venezuelan nationals using Trump’s wartime authority under the Alien Enemies Act. U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. was the first to label the effort “unlawful.” Two other first-term Trump appointees, U.S. District Judges John Holcomb and Stephanie Haines, ruled that Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was legitimate but that the administration’s effort to speedily deport its targets violated their due process rights.

Returning Daniel Lozano Camargo

Among the targets of Trump’s Alien Enemies Act order was Daniel Lozano Camargo, a Venezuelan man who had been residing in Texas. Unlike others whom the administration abruptly sent to El Salvador under that order, Lozano Camargo was protected by a 2024 settlement requiring the government to resolve his pending asylum claim before deportation could occur. U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher, a first-term Trump appointee in Maryland, ordered the administration to facilitate the man’s return to the United States — following the lead of her colleague on the Maryland bench, Obama appointee Paula Xinis, in the similar case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Mandatory detention of potential deportees

The Trump administration has sought to vastly expand the use of detention for immigrants facing deportation — seeking to deprive bond hearings for all potential deportees, even if they’ve spent decades living in the United States. Dozens of judges have found the abrupt shift illegal, saying the move is potentially subjecting millions of people to being locked up while they fight to remain in the United States. In recent days, several Trump appointees have joined their ranks. They include first-term appointees: Dominic Lanza of Arizona, Rebecca Jennings of the Western District of Kentucky and Eric Tostrud of Minnesota. Kyle Dudek of the Middle District of Florida, whom Trump appointed this term, was confirmed to the bench just two weeks before ruling against the administration.

Targeting the Maryland bench

Cullen’s stinging assessment of Trump and his allies’ attacks on judges came in a remarkable legal attack by the Trump administration against the entire federal district court bench in Maryland. The administration sued the judges there over a blanket policy to delay all urgent deportation cases for 48 hours to give the court a chance to act before litigants were deported. The administration said the rule infringed on executive power to execute immigration laws. But Cullen rejected the administration’s lawsuit as defective and the improper way to seek relief from an administrative process it disagreed with.

Other rejections

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, another Washington, D.C.-based first-term Trump appointee, has turned down the administration on multiple fronts — including an effort by the Justice Department to use Trump’s pardon of Jan. 6 defendants to cover unrelated crimes. She also granted an injunction requiring the administration to disburse funds it had withheld from the National Endowment for Democracy.

Another first-term Trump appointed judge, Mary McElroy of Rhode Island, repeatedly rebuked the administration in recent weeks for abrupt funding cuts to homelessness programs and public health grants. Last week, she blocked the administration from repurposing $233 million in FEMA grants from blue states over what those states said was punishment for refusing to assist with immigration enforcement.

It's almost as if he is violating the law and SCOTUS is bending over backwards to enable him to meet some agenda. There needs to be tribunals if we make it out of this shit.

>>1445563
>to meet some agenda.
It's Project2025 and Agenda47.

As a victim of the American judicial system, I never thought that there were honorable judges

Does it matter? I'm not saying this at the behest of Trump, but he's very clearly shown that he's willing to ignore the ruling of judges. Is it just him throwing a hissy fit because they're HIS judges telling him to stop breaking the law?

>>1445647
>Hissy fit
Essentially yes. I remember when Donald-appointed judges laughed his claims about a stolen election out of court. It didn't stop magats from repeating lies about the election being stolen. They're like kindergarteners repeating something that's obviously wrong just to be annoying. It's funny for those of us not in the cult, and confirms we're not crazy, but won't slow down the constitutional crisis

>>1445651
I'm going to be honest. I really don't want to go through civil war because of this guy. I wish MAGA would realize this shit is not worth it.

>>1445665
I'm holding out hope, mostly for reasons listed here: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/09/19/american-democracy-resilience-00548910

To summarize, presidential systems are more resilient to takeover than parliamentary ones, rich countries are less likely to see their democracies fall, democracies get stronger with time, and those who succeed in takeovers are generally popular. The rot will still have an effect and the non-billionaires among us will struggle with groceries and healthcare... but these aren't necessarily existential matters. If nothing else, Donald isn't long for this world (too many well-done filet mignons with ketchup)

>>1445669
tell that to UK democracies are a fallacy.
>>1445665
it won't end until you terrorists stop terrorizing. when will you learn to stop being terrorists

>>1445671
when will you get a real job or learn english

>>1445672
coming from the terrorist nepo baby, civil war will come and you will be the first. actions have consequences and your violent rhetoric will cause you to suffer.
evil people need to suffer and that means leftists like you, i've never seen a leftist who wasn't an insufferable narcissist or a braindead piss baby they do not exist

>>1445674
so, never?

>>1445677
civil war in 2 week's time, the rapture was a sign, it'll only come when the evils are purged. that means you

>>1445679
so this is permission to laugh at you again in 2 weeks' time?

>>1445679
...What is this bit, man

>>1445516
>Judges appointed by Trump keep ruling against him
Doesnt mean anything when Senate blue-slips are a thing.

>>1445665
>Not worth it to remove the browns, exile the subhuman shitskin parasites back to the third world, and piss off all the people who have ruined us over the last 50 years

Anything is worth this. Every seething brown or brown apologist that leaves this country is a victory.

>>1445750
A victory for whom?

>>1445753
Actual humans.

>>1445754
Such as?

>>1445763
White Americans of good standing from the original European settler stock. There aren't any other humans, Anon. You know that.

>>1445767
lmfao okay bro

>>1445767
It's funny how Germans, Pollacks, and Italians used to be second class citizens.

>1445750
Its honestly so boring that bait is just this boring template of trying to sound as bad as possible and you just know its a fat piece of shit behind it.

The hypocrisy is that white Americans are foreigners invading a country. I think every one of them ought to be scalped. They'll die more pathetic than the jews at Auswitz.