Donald Trump’s agenda suffered a triple blow on Thursday when three judges ruled against him in one day.
The rulings came just a day after the president slammed judges holding up his deportation plans as being engaged in a form of “judicial insurrection.”
In Washington, a federal judge pressed pause on a key part of Trump’s bid to enforce sweeping changes to voting and election registration.
ADVERTISEMENT
Opponents claimed his executive order requiring people to produce a document proving their citizenship before voting overstepped his presidential authority.
Putting the order on hold, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said in her 120-page opinion: Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections.”
The U.S. district judge, appointed by Bill Clinton, chided Trump, saying he couldn’t “short-circuit” Congress.
In San Francisco, another U.S. District Court Judge William Orrick barred the president from denying federal funds for “sanctuary” cities across the United States.
He ruled that the administration was prohibited “from directly or indirectly taking any action to withhold, freeze, or condition federal funds.”
The judge said Trump’s executive order halting funds violated the “Fifth Amendment to the extent they are unconstitutionally vague and violate due process.”
Sanctuary cities refer to communities with laws preventing or limiting local officials from cooperating with federal immigration authorities.
Besides San Francisco, there are 15 other cities and counties in the lawsuit, including Seattle and King County, Washington; Portland, Oregon; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; New Haven, Connecticut; and Santa Fe, New Mexico.
In the third ruling in Concord, New Hampshire, U.S. District Court Judge Landya McCafferty blocked the administration from cutting funding to schools with diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
The National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) launched the lawsuit accusing the administration of violating teachers’ due process and First Amendment rights.
The judge said the education department did not “even define what a ‘DEI program’ is” when it wrote to schools enforcing the change.
“A professor runs afoul of the 2025 Letter if she expresses the view in her teaching that structural racism exists in America, but does not do so if she denies structural racism’s existence. That is textbook viewpoint discrimination,” she said.
On Wednesday, Trump agreed during an interview with conservative pundit Glenn Beck with a claim by Senator Mike Lee that judges insisting on due process for immigrant deportees was akin to insurrection.
“When you have to get out and do court cases for individual people, and you would have in theory millions of court cases… They’re really saying you’re not allowed to do what I was elected to do,” he added.
