Trump's Legal Team Keeps Arguing Courts Can't Review His Decisions. Judges Keep Disagreeing.

President Trump has spent nearly a decade telling Americans that judges who rule against him aren't doing law, they're doing politics. In November 2018, after U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar in Oakland blocked Trump's attempt to deny asylum to migrants who crossed the border outside official ports of entry, Trump called Tigar "an Obama judge" and vowed "it's not going to happen like this anymore."

The policy Tigar blocked ran headlong into the actual text of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which says any alien physically present in the U.S., or arriving here, "whether or not at a designated port of arrival," may apply for asylum. Trump's proclamation tried to override that language by executive fiat. Tigar's temporary restraining order simply enforced the statute Congress wrote.

That comment drew a rare public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, who said in a statement released by the Supreme Court: "We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for."

A pattern that's escalated in Trump's second term

What was a rhetorical jab in 2018 has become a formal legal strategy in Trump's second term, according to reporting from Reason. Justice Department lawyers have repeatedly argued not just that specific rulings against Trump are wrong, but that entire categories of his decisions are unreviewable by courts in the first place.

That argument has surfaced in litigation over Trump's tariffs, his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to justify deportations, his deployment of National Guard troops to American cities, actions targeting political opponents, and even his plan to demolish the White House's East Wing to build a large ballroom.

The clash reached a flashpoint in March 2025 involving James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who ordered the administration to turn around planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members being deported under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute historically reserved for declared conflicts with hostile nations. The administration's position, that judges lack authority to second-guess the president's determination that removals were justified, has been tested repeatedly in court and has not fared well.

The strongest case for deference

There's a real argument buried under Trump's combativeness. Presidents have historically been given wide latitude on national security, foreign policy, and immigration enforcement, areas where courts have traditionally been reluctant to substitute their judgment for the executive branch's. Tariff authority under statutes like the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, and decisions about troop deployments, sit closer to that traditional zone of executive discretion than, say, domestic regulatory policy.

That's a legitimate structural question about separation of powers, and reasonable legal scholars disagree about how much deference courts owe the executive on these matters. Trump's lawyers are making arguments about deference that deserve consideration. The difficulty arises when they frame these as absolute claims that judicial review doesn't apply at all, rather than as claims about the proper standard of review.

Courts, including Trump appointees, have rejected the "no review" argument repeatedly

Federal courts have not been persuaded that Trump's decisions sit beyond judicial reach. Judges across the ideological spectrum, not just Obama or Biden appointees, have ruled that his asylum restrictions, deportation actions, and other executive moves contradicted existing statutes or exceeded delegated authority. The consistent theme in these rulings is that the text of the laws Congress passed doesn't say what the administration claims it says.

Trump's personal attacks on judges have gone well beyond the "Obama judge" comment. He has called for the impeachment of judges who ruled against him, accused sitting justices of cowardice or bias, and framed adverse rulings as illegitimate obstruction rather than the ordinary functioning of a coequal branch.

What's actually unresolved

The unresolved question isn't whether courts have the power to review executive action. They clearly do, and no court has ruled otherwise. The open question is how much deference courts should extend to the president in genuinely gray areas like tariff authority and national security determinations, and whether the current wave of litigation will produce Supreme Court rulings that draw a clearer line. Cases over the Alien Enemies Act deportations and tariff authority remain in active litigation, and their outcomes will determine how much of Trump's second-term legal strategy survives appellate review.