Trump Reacts to Supreme Court Clearing Obstacle to His Agenda

President Donald Trump is looking forward to proceeding with his agenda after the Supreme Court on Friday granted the administration’s request to narrow the scope of nationwide injunctions by federal judges.

“We can now promptly file, proceed with numerous policies that have been wrongly enjoined on a nationwide,” Trump said at a press briefing Friday.

Trump thanked Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas for their 6–3 ruling on federal injunctions.

The Supreme Court struck down a lower court injunction blocking the Trump administration’s executive order on birthright citizenship, laying out clear rules for courts utilizing universal injunctions going forward.

The case, Trump v. CASA, concerned universal injunctions that lower court judges had issued pausing Trump’s executive order interpreting the 14th Amendment as not guaranteeing what is known as “birthright citizenship.” 

The justices ruled that “universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts.”

“These judges have attempted to dictate the law for the entire nation,” Trump said. “In practice, this meant that if any one of the nearly 700 federal judges disagreed with the policy of the newly elected president of the United States, he or she could block that policy from going into effect.”

Trump is “grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem, and they’ve made it very simple,” he said.

Some of the executive orders that faced federal injunctions that the Trump administration will now be able to move forward with include cutting some federal funding to sanctuary cities, suspending refugee resettlement, freezing wasteful spending, stopping federal taxpayers from paying for transgender surgeries, and more.

Trump especially thanked Barrett, who wrote the majority opinion.

“I just have great respect for her. I always have. And her decision was brilliantly written today, from all accounts,” the president said.