Justice Alito Needs To Nail His 46 Theses To The Door of Chief Justice Roberts

46. That’s the estimated number, as of Wednesday, of injunctions, enjoinments, or temporary restraining orders district court judges have put on the Trump administration, covering areas of Article II responsibility from foreign aid policy to immigration, national security, and military readiness. The absurdity factor of judicial overreach was already reaching maximum levels, but yesterday may have taken the amplifier up to the preferred Spinal Tap limit of 11. 

Judge Ana Reyes, a Uruguayan-born Joe Biden appointee to the D.C. district court in 2023, was confirmed on a purely partisan vote – 51-47. She has long been an advocate for the LGBTQ community, and yesterday’s decision was not unusual, coming from her. What was peculiar, was part of her rationale for the 79-page ruling, mandating that the Pentagon readmit transgendered males and females, or females and males, or whatever to whatever, back to military service. 

Would honestly prefer Berdyaev’s footnote “it was revealed to me in a dream” pic.twitter.com/wXPYHj3XXf

— Adrian Vermeule (@Vermeullarmine) March 19, 2025

That’s right, Judge Reyes cited Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton as a footnote to her bottom line ruling. Welcome to America, where we live no longer under the rule of law, but the rule of show tunes. 

OH, sure, you thought “You’ll Be Back” was about mad King George III singing that the United States would see the error of its ways, leaving British rule but yearning one day to come back and rejoin the realm. Oh, no. In Judge Reyes’ world, You’ll Be Back means transgendered military personnel excused from service by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Trump administration are now to be returned to duty immediately, by order of this particular district court commander-in-chief. 

Dylan Mulvaney, the man most responsible for nearly killing off the Bud Light brand forever, is out with a new podcast…and the obnoxious promo video for it. 

Dylan Mulvaney releases bizarre song to promote his new podcast ‘The Dylan Hour’ about his life living as a ‘Girl.’ pic.twitter.com/YfQsDtsiQe

— Oli London (@OliLondonTV) March 18, 2025

I guess the next promo will now have to be a G.I. Dylan motif. 

In the first bite at the rogue judge apple making it to the Supreme Court, a 5-4 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and the three liberals on the Court ruled that D.C. District Court Judge Amir Ali was being unreasonable in setting a Midnight deadline to start cutting foreign aid checks through USAID for work already concluded, and needed to go back and set a reasonable guideline. Alito, and the other three conservatives on the Court, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas, joined in dissent, literally stunned that the Court was entertaining rulings from district judges getting way out in front of their skis and not nipping this judicial overreach in the bud while they had the chance. 

Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars? The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.

After the majority’s rebuke to Judge Ali to be reasonable, he responded…by giving the feds two days to pay up. 

I’m not saying every one of these lawsuits brought by left-wing groups has no merit. There are certainly legal questions that can and should be answered, ultimately by the Supreme Court. But it should be clear to everyone what the left’s play here is. They no longer control over the Article II branch with which to deploy lawfare against Donald Trump and slow him down or stop him. They lost that with the November election. They do not have the Article I branch. They lost control of both house of Congress in the same election. They are still emploing lawfare, though. This time, it’s by means of their last resort – judge shopped Article III judges, appointed mostly by Biden and Barack Obama, literally from benches spanning Washington, D.C. to San Francisco to accomplish the same goal – impede, delay, or stop the President from carrying out his Article II powers in pursuit of his policy agendas. 

Alito was crystal clear in his dissent as to what would happen now that the Court whiffed on the opportunity to spank the district court overreach. There would be, and now has been, a snowball effect. We had three different district judges all file injunctions against the Trump administration on three completely different issues in the same day. This is getting out of hand. Alito should be reminding the Chief, “I told you so,” every time one of these judges issues a ruling citing, again, checks notes for accuracy, a Broadway musical. He should be compiling his list like Martin Luther did in 1517 with his 95 Theses against abuses by the Catholic Church. So much an advocate for reform was Luther that he nailed his theses to the door of the All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany. It led to the Reformation movement and the Protestant Church. Alito should be nailing these rulings to the Chief’s door in chambers.

The same reformation with respect to the Article III branch needs to happen, and it needs to happen very soon. District court judges should rule on harm done in their jurisdiction to and by individual parties. It is simply not their role to weigh in from the bench and issue nationwide injunctions that usurp the power of the Article II branch because it doesn’t align with their view of how things ought to be. 

I’ve seen a lot online from my friends on the right who are wanting to go down the impeachment road for these rogue judges. From both a practical and strategic standpoint, that is a mistake. One, if you can get articles of impeachment done in the House with a two-seat majority, wonderful. That’s an indictment. They’re still on the bench issuing bad rulings until Republicans get 67 votes in the Senate, which will happen at precisely half past never. It’s a waste of time and doesn’t accomplish the goal. 

Second, what goes around comes around. If Republicans start dropping impeachments of judges, don’t think for a second that Democrats when they do regain power one day, and they will, unfortunately, pay that back with interest. This is not a fruitful conversation or tactic to adopt. 

The answer to the district court judge problem is in two parts. One, now that the bulk of the primary and secondary Trump agency and department personnel have been confirmed, it’s high time to fill up the court vacancy tree. It’s time for conservative judges that have been on the bench for a long time to take senior status and free up picks for Trump to get confirmed while they control the Senate. There are plenty of openings on the district court, and there are a several on the appellate courts that need to be nominated and confirmed. 

But in the end, it all comes back to the Supreme Court. Chief Roberts, as is his wont, likes to participate in decisions with as minimalist of a footprint as possible. I get that. But what’s happening now is rapidly approaching critical mass, just in sheer volume of cases, of being unprecedented district judge overreach. And if the appellate courts are going to abet these judges by slow-walking or, in some cases, not responding at all to appeals from the Trump administration in order to peel more time off his four-year term in office, the conservatives on the Court have to drag the Chief and Justice Barrett, kicking and screaming if necessary, to act and set the tone before half the country begins to lose faith in the judiciary. 

That’s not an outcome any of us really want. The Court can fix this, and they must, very soon.