Weekly Roundup: Supreme Court Limits Nationwide Injunctions
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We're like too bad. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Today, the conservative 6-3 majority on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that federal courts likely exceeded their authority by issuing nationwide injunctions. The decision came in a case challenging President Trump's executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship in

And in a press conference this morning, Trump called the ruling a monumental victory. I was elected on Tuesday.

a historic mandate. But in recent months, we've seen a handful of radical left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers. We're going to break down what that means for the future of this particular case and for other Trump administration policies that are currently tied up in court injunctions. Kerry, let's start with the basics. What did the court ruling say?

A conservative supermajority of the court, all six conservative justices, ruled that these kinds of nationwide injunctions, which have served as a check on President Trump's executive orders and agenda this year, that they likely exceed the power that Congress has given to federal courts. And the immediate impact is going to be that...

the Justice Department is very likely to go back into court and seek to lift or change the terms of a lot of these injunctions that have been in place since January or February on a bunch of different kinds of Trump policies. Now, the Supreme Court majority, led by Amy Coney Barrett, said that the analysis could be slightly different when it comes to state power and state action, in part because this underlying issue of birthright citizenship is

is so important to people and so important to states. States have all these entitlement programs and systems and processes for registering people's birth certificates and acknowledging birth. And to the extent to which somebody could be born in one state and be a citizen and then travel to another state and not be a citizen, that's

It's kind of a no-go. And so it's possible that with respect to this birthright citizenship executive order, states could come back into court and get some kind of relief that would help a whole bunch more people. But in a lot of other cases involving these universal or nationwide injunctions, the Supreme Court says they're really, really heavily disfavored now.

Now, we should say that President Trump is not the first president to be stymied by these universal injunctions. Many presidents have been frustrated by them as they've tried to exercise their executive authority. Yes. And we've heard a lot from President Obama and President Biden and President Trump in his first term about how frustrated they were when a single judge somewhere around the country could try to set policy or at least temporarily block a

the president from doing something he wanted to do. The difference in this case is that while a lot of presidents have complained about it, this is the first time the Supreme Court has decided to take up the issue. And they did it relatively early in President Trump's term on the emergency docket. And now they have ruled very, very strongly in his favor.

Yeah. And there were a host of things, as Kerry mentions, that Obama and Biden were upset about. Clearly, this has been a thing that's increased over the years, having these nationwide injunctions. Biden was stymied on things like immigration, equal protection, health care, student loans, financial regulation and on. Now, there weren't as many nationwide injunctions against Biden. The left would argue that that's because there were more objectionable things and more broad sweeping actions that Trump had taken. But this certainly clears the way

and opens the floodgates somewhat for Trump, who's been really trying to test the limits in this second term to figure out how far he can go. And he's had such

sweeping executive orders, more executive orders than past presidents. And that's why so many of these ended up in court. And now the president is going to feel like he can do basically as much as he wants, whatever he wants on any subject he wants. And that's part of what these liberal justices who were dissenting were so concerned about. Justice Sonia Sotomayor basically said,

no right is going to be safe under the system the majority creates. And Justice Katonji Brown Jackson actually set up this idea that if you have to go to court to make sure the executive branch doesn't tamper with your fundamental rights, that's a fundamental threat to the rule of law, an existential threat to the rule of law, because not everybody is going to be able to get to court quickly or find lawyers. And in the meantime, the executive branch

can largely get its way. And it's expensive for normal people. I mean, most normal people don't want to end up in court. Having to say, oh, God, I got to hire a lawyer is super expensive. And Trump has gone after these law firms that were taking pro bono cases to do that stuff for free for people whose rights might have been affected. Carrie, it may be too soon to know the answer to it, but I need to ask, what does this mean in practice? What does this mean if there is someone who is not in this country legally right now who is about to give birth to a child?

The first thing to know is that the Supreme Court has stayed the effect of its ruling for 30 days. So that gives the lower courts and plaintiffs some time to regroup. The second thing to know is that state attorneys general from places like New Jersey and Massachusetts

have ongoing litigation in the lower courts about this already. And every judge who's considered this question of the constitutionality of this birthright citizenship executive order has agreed with states and plaintiffs and ruled against the Trump administration. In other words, it's been basically settled law for 150 years that the vast majority of babies born on American soil are American citizens, with only a few teeny tiny limited exceptions.

And so the state attorneys general feel somewhat confident that they will win even with this ruling by the Supreme Court when the case gets back to the lower courts.

because it's such a fundamental issue and a rule otherwise would produce such chaos for parents and for states. As we've said, birthright citizenship is not the only Trump executive action that has been caught up in the courts with these broad injunctions. So what other issues will be affected by this ruling? There are a number

of other cases to which this might apply involving Trump's efforts to shrink the federal workforce, some of his actions on immigration, and his ability to fire folks at agencies in the government. We talked with Amanda Frost, a law professor at the University of Virginia. Here's what she had to say. I

I think this is fairly momentous, not because it addresses the substance of the birthright citizenship executive order. It doesn't do that. But because it addresses this question of universal or nationwide injunctions, which are an essential tool for those challenging lawless executive action or executive action, I think exceeds executive power. And as a result of this decision, now, while individual plaintiffs could win relief, each and every person affected would have to sue in order to get relief.

And in other words, an administration that's violating the law could lose a case and yet nonetheless apply the policy across the nation. Yeah. And I think it really just highlights the fact that, you know, so much of what the people who oppose Trump, whether it's the left or other sort of more traditional mainstream Republicans have tried to do is to try to stop Trump through the courts. And it just looks like now that's just not going to be the case. All right. We're going to take a quick break and we will have more on this in a moment.

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What avenues are left for people who want to challenge Trump's executive actions? There are a bunch of things that people could do. One is that every old buddy who's affected by something would have to find a lawyer and go to court. And groups like Democracy Forward, who have been very active in suing the Trump administration this year, say they're going to do just that. And the other thing that people could do

is seek to file class action lawsuits. The problem with that or the challenge with that is that sometimes it's hard to get everybody to sign into the class and it can take some time before courts recognize that group of plaintiffs. And in the meantime, some people's rights could be violated.

And in the medium term, there's political activism. I mean, you know, the courts are something that the left and others who oppose Trump have tried to use to be able to stop what he's doing in the short term, certainly, and they hope in the long term. But, you know, there's the 2026 midterm elections. This becomes sort of another notch up in the power of the executive at a time when Congress has

continually sort of taking a step back from trying to assert its power in the balance of power. I mean, I think that it just depends on, you know, the types of things that people in Congress have priorities over. And we've seen, I think, more, you could argue, Republicans in the second Trump term are

are more Trumpy. There are far fewer people who are willing to stand up to this president. I continue to look back at the 10 Republicans who voted for Trump's impeachment, and only two of them are left in Congress because the others were targeted. There's no incentive for these folks to take a stand against the president when they disagree or think he's gone too far. So they're more likely now than they were in the first term to roll out the red carpet for the president and allow him to do what he wants to do.

And Kerry, is the Supreme Court here, and I think arguably with some other rulings that we've seen in the past couple of years, are they putting the scales in favor of the executive?

I think a number of these justices worked in the executive branch at different levels, from people like John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh to others of the justices. And it's certainly the case that they have a really strong view of executive power, and they've asserted that in their decisions. The other thing is

that this Supreme Court majority has done in the last few years is not only give more power to the executive branch, but also to give more power to itself. And it clarified here today in this opinion about nationwide injunctions that the executive branch needs to follow the judgments and opinions of the Supreme Court itself while limiting the ability of lower court judges to check the executive branch.

You know, the Supreme Court has given Trump other kinds of powers before he even became president, you know, saying that he was essentially immune from any criminal prosecution as long as it was functioning within his official acts, which is basically everything that a president does or tries to do. So he's gotten much stronger and we're only –

several months into this Trump presidency. A lot of this is laying the foundation for what's to come. We still have three and a half years left of the Trump presidency. He's trying to figure out what the guardrails are, and the guardrails are largely off the highway at this point. This isn't really a guardrail, but in terms of public opinion, President Trump talks about a

mandate, an overwhelming mandate for these policies, that he is doing the work that he was elected to do by the American people. What does that mandate look like? And in particular, what does it look like on birthright citizenship and ending it? Yeah, I'll put a pause on the mandate question writ large for a second and look more specifically at birthright citizenship. There was an NPR-Ipsos poll last month that showed 53 percent of people

supported continuing birthright citizenship for people born in the country. Only 28% said that they think that it should end. 17% didn't know. Now, that could mean that there's a potential ability to gain, you know, through messaging some of those folks over. And that 53%, by the way, looks an awful lot like the president's disapproval rating writ large. So that's

You know, it's not as clean cut as saying, oh, it's a 15 point advantage or 25 point advantage for that side of things. There was a similar poll by YouGov in February that showed a 51-39 split on this with 9 percent of people not sure on whether or not they think that birthright citizenship should continue.

So, in general, you might say tip of the scale goes to those who believe that birthright citizenship should continue. So, he doesn't exactly have a huge mandate on this issue. We've also seen his immigration policies get more unpopular. You know, he started off where it was relatively popular because people were frustrated with the record number of people coming across the border during the Biden administration. But with

What Trump's tried to do in saying that his focus was going to be on criminals, which has big support, to then now moving into places like Los Angeles where you're scooping up landscapers, that has a lot less support in the polls. As far as this idea that Trump continues to say, and he's said repeatedly since his election, that he has a mandate because he won the election. He had this sweeping electoral college victory. I mean, he only won the popular vote by one and a half percent.

percentage points. That is not exactly a sweeping mandate. It was not even 50% of the vote. And when you look more deeply into this, and there was a Pew validated voters study that came out this week that showed that when you take all of the people who voted, 64% of eligible voters voted.

But if you were to take everyone, that means that Trump only won 32 percent of all of the eligible voters in this country. Harris only won 31 percent. So not much of a mandate for anybody for exactly what everyone wants in this country. I think we're going to have to talk about that more another time. We're going to take a quick break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. On NPR's ThruLine. School teachers are going to be the ones that rebuild our society in a way that is more cohesive.

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Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back and it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And after this week of news, we have earned it.

What can't you let go of? We go on air pretty early sometimes, all three of us. Yes. And we get wake-up calls sometimes, right? We also get wake-up calls, you might remember them, when you're in hotels and you might be in a different place. And you say, I want to start out my vacation early. I want to make sure I get up. So they have the front desk give you a wake-up call. Usually that's on the phone. There's a hotel in China that's doing a very different kind of wake-up call. And this involves...

Red pandas. What? Where people are able to say that they want a wake-up call where red pandas are unleashed into your room and are allowed to get onto your bed. I mean, that'll wake you up, right? Oh, no.

I have a lot of questions. I don't know. Are red pandas friendly? I have no idea. All I know is there was one in D.C. that escaped and was stealing stuff from people. Remember that? Yeah, but it didn't hurt anybody. It was cute and it had a really bushy tail. They are really cute. They're red also. These are not the big black pandas that everyone sees that can destroy you. These are like the little tiny, not tiny, but they're, you know. They're like a dog size. Like raccoon size. Yeah, like a raccoon size. Now, this hotel was actually ordered to halt

It's wake-up call service by their local forestry bureau that said that they could no longer do this. But I guess it seemed fun for a while. Yeah, and probably also maybe good sanitation would tell you not to let wild animals lose in people's hotel rooms, but whatever. Yeah.

So, Tam, what can't you let go of? So we haven't actually covered this on the podcast yet this week because there has been so much other news. But President Trump went to the NATO summit and something unusual happened. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte seemed to refer maybe to President Trump as daddy. They're not going to be fighting each other. They've had it.

They've had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell. You can't stop them. Let them fight for about two or three minutes. Then it's easier to stop them. And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language. You have to use strong language. Every once in a while you have to use a certain word. And the context is that earlier in the week, President Trump dropped an F-bomb while talking about Iran and Israel. OK, so that happened. A little awkward.

Then President Trump has a press conference and a reporter asks him about it, which then makes this news cycle continue going. And he says like, oh, yeah, he's very affectionate. He likes me very much. So press conference ends. President Trump gets on the plane, flies home.

10 o'clock at night, the White House drops this video into its Instagram feed, which is like slow motion video of President Trump at the NATO summit to this song. The graphic says Daddy's Home. It was weird. Well, you know.

Social media teams have to social media, I suppose. I feel like there's a lot more the Internet could do with that. And I was I think probably has. The Internet has done a lot. Yeah. I was just going to say. I'm still stuck on the F-bomb and I can't get over that. Oh, yeah. Well, it was quite the couple of days with presidential language. Yeah. Carrie, what can't you let go of? I.

I, too, have an animal. Can't let it go. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But I really you'll understand why this is so relevant to our interests. OK, so in the United Kingdom, two young bears named Mish and Lucy escaped from their enclosure, found the honey supply for an entire week.

scarfed down the entire honey supply for an entire week and then basically passed out sleeping.

Because why wouldn't you after you ate all the sugar to your heart's content? Well, did they get stuck like Pooh Bear? No, they did not get stuck. They were corralled back into their enclosure and they promptly went to bed. And I'm telling you right now that after the news week we have had, this is my plan for the weekend. I am going to find the chocolate ice cream and put on the bear costume.

And fall asleep. The Bear, the television show. The Bear, the TV show. Not the Chicago... Some shirt costume. The Chicago-based television show. Thank you for clarifying. That is a show that makes me want to eat and cook. Because it's amazing to see the dishes they make. I did make that omelet, by the way. Psh.

Potato chips on soft things really works well. It's a texture thing. Yeah, it's a texture thing. It's a good thing. Absolutely. All right. We are going to leave it there for today. Our executive producer is Mathani Mathuri. Casey Morrell edits the podcast. Our producer is Bria Suggs. Special thanks to Krishna Dev Kalamer and Lexi Schipittel. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

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