Judicial Insurrection Breaks New Ground as Judge Defies Supreme Court Itself

District court judges aren’t just striking down President Donald Trump’s orders, arguably taking presidential power on themselves. In at least one case, a district judge appears to have openly defied the Supreme Court itself.

The Supreme Court Monday issued a stay on an April 18 injunction in the case D.V.D. v. Department of Homeland Security. That injunction slapped restrictions on DHS’ attempts to deport illegal aliens to countries other than their original home countries.

Yet Judge Brian E. Murphy, an appointee of President Joe Biden confirmed by the Senate less than a month before Trump took office, issued an order mere hours after the Supreme Court stay, acting as though the nation’s highest court had not thrown out his initial injunction.

The case involves seven men whom the Trump administration aims to deport to South Sudan. Murphy threatened to hold DHS officials in criminal contempt for ostensibly violating his April 18 temporary injunction, halting the deportation flight during a stopover at a U.S. military base in Djibouti, a country in the Horn of Africa.

The illegal aliens’ lawyers asked Murphy for another order Monday, but he declined to issue a new order, stating that his May 21 order remained in effect. The problem? That May 21 order involved enforcing the April 18 injunction the Supreme Court had just blocked.

DHS clapped back with a blistering filing to the Supreme Court, asking the court to put Murphy in his place.

“The district court’s ruling of last night is a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals,” DHS wrote in a filing Tuesday.

“This court should immediately make clear that the district court’s enforcement order has no effect, and put a swift end to the ongoing irreparable harm to the executive branch and its agents, who remain under baseless threat of contempt,” the filing continued.

DHS noted that the May 21 order “explicitly purported to do nothing more than clarify and enforce the terms of the original injunction,” so it cannot stand if the original April 18 injunction falls.

DHS condemned Murphy’s “unprecedented defiance” of the Supreme Court’s authority, but the judge’s move makes a bizarre kind of sense in the context of the judicial insurrection.

The Judicial Insurrection

When woke bureaucrats stared down the barrel of a second Trump term, they strategized about how best to tie the new president’s hands. Bureaucrats’ allies outside the administration geared up to sue the Trump administration, enlisting friendly judges.

Sure enough, the ink was barely dry on the president’s executive orders rooting woke ideology out of the government before public-sector unions (which represent federal bureaucrats) and leftist groups had taken the new administration to court. Many of these groups also hand-picked jurisdictions with judges more likely to give them the injunctions they seek.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer noted last month that judges have issued 40 nationwide injunctions against the federal government, including 35 from the same five judicial districts.

Many of the unions and leftist groups filing these lawsuits also staffed and advised the Biden administration, as I expose in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.” The ACLU, for instance, pushed the Biden administration to open the border, and now the ACLU is filing lawsuits to block Trump’s border policies.

The judges—many of them appointed by Democrats, surprise surprise!—have taken the opportunity to issue “nationwide injunctions.” While temporary injunctions allow a judge to protect one of the parties in a case from harm while the court considers the case, judges have weaponized this power, claiming to protect people across the country who aren’t parties to the suit.

Restraining the Insurrection

The Supreme Court is currently considering the issue of nationwide injunctions, and a ruling on this contentious topic could not be more timely.

Yet it seems some judges may not be content to take the Supreme Court’s final say. The Supreme Court should respond to Murphy’s brazen act of defiance, but it remains to be seen whether the district judge will back down.

Murphy’s level of defiance suggests that Congress may have to take action to restrain the federal judges. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, has introduced articles of impeachment against at least one judge. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, introduced the Restraining Judicial Insurrectionists Act of 2025 to create a formal process addressing the issue.

Americans didn’t elect these judges to make nationwide policy, and if they defy the Supreme Court, that makes a rather eloquent case for impeachment.

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