Who Is It That Governs Me? How Unelected Judges Usurp the Will of 80 Million Americans

by Daniel Schmid

The late Justice Scalia opined in his Obergefell dissent that the substance of certain judicial decrees was not of immense personal importance to him, but that: “It is of overwhelming importance, however, who it is that rules me.” He continued, judicial decrees bearing no basis in the Constitution say, in effect, “that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”

That is bad enough, but it gets immeasurably worse when our rulers become single jurists in the federal district courts governing by judicial fiat and restraining the duly elected president from enacting the agenda the people elected him to fulfill.

In the last month, the nearly 80 million people who voted for President Trump (and the millions who did not) awoke to the fact that seven or eight federal judges believe those votes mattered for nothing as if they — black-robed masters parading themselves as adjudicators of virtually every aspect of American life — know better.

Americans have seen a president work with lightning speed to correct some of the most egregious, unconstitutional, and unconscionable actions ever taken by an executive, and, unfortunately, those actions have been met with individual jurists divining for themselves as the guardians of American’s security.

Those intent on precluding President Trump from enacting the agenda he was elected to execute have filed suit after suit attempting to undo what Americans did at the ballot box.

Single federal judges have appointed to themselves the all-encompassing powers of all three branches of government. After all, who needs separation of powers when a judge can efficiently run the government from his chambers?

Unelected Head of Government Website Design?

The District Court in Washington, D.C., for instance, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) requiring the Trump administration to restore certain pages on public health websites that promote extreme gender ideology because a group of radical doctors claimed it interfered with their right to provide care to people claiming to be a different gender from their biological reality.

This single judge in D.C. decided that removing information discussing extreme gender ideology was “detrimental to public health.” So, in essence, a single, black-robed jurist decided that the Constitution granted district judges the authority to design websites and the federal government must include whatever content a district court decides.

The sole basis for such an absurd TRO is that it is apparently a public health problem to recognize what biology has recognized since time immemorial — that there are only two sexes (male and female), and you do not get to choose what your chromosomal reality is. Who knew the Constitution vested district judges with website design and content-moderation authority over U.S. government websites?

Unelected Head of the Nation’s HR Department?

The District Court in Washington, D.C., issued a separate TRO requiring the Trump administration to reinstate a lawyer it fired from the Department of Justice under President Trump’s constitutional authority. Discontent that Trump was not going to permit the lawyers from the Biden Justice Department to continue wreaking their unlawful and unconstitutional havoc on the American people, Hampton Dellinger — the former Biden Justice Department lawyer — sued, claiming that the federal court had the authority to require President Trump to maintain his predecessor’s band of unconstitutionally roving henchman. Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed, ordering Trump to not only reinstate Dellinger but also to reinstate his access to all Justice Department resources.

The judge went so far as to tell President Trump that he is prohibited from recognizing the authority of any other Special Counsel but Dellinger. In effect, Judge Jackson turned herself into the nation’s Human Resources Department. Who knew judges were also given watch over the nation’s personnel department?

Unelected Head of the Cabinet Secretaries?

The District Court in Massachusetts, not wanting to be outdone, issued an injunction prohibiting President Trump from cutting millions of dollars to the National Institute of Health (NIH). Mind you, this is the same entity that gave us Dr. Fauci and his three-year reign of COVID terror and was responsible for funding the gain-of-function research that begat COVID in the first place.

Despite the NIH’s egregious history that besieged Americans’ liberties, Judge Angel Kelley decided the Constitution put the power of the executive branch in the hands of a district judge and gave her the power of the nation’s purse. In Judge Kelley’s mind, there is no need for different Articles of the Constitution, and she behaves as if she possesses the Legislative Power of Article I, the Executive Power of Article II, and the Judicial Power of Article III.

The District Court in Rhode Island issued a TRO blocking President Trump’s temporary freeze on federal funding. The Office of Management and Budget temporarily paused all federal grant, loan, and financial assistance programs until the effectiveness and merits of each program could be assessed. In 2024, the amount of federal funds expended in these programs was $3 trillion (or 30% of federal government spending).

Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island also appointed himself over all three branches of government, requiring President Trump to end the funding freeze and distribute money, and he even chastised Trump for not dispersing the money quickly enough for his liking. Who knew Article III also gave district judges control over the Department of Treasury?

On that note, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly issued a TRO against President Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, going so far as to say that presidential appointees (including the Senate-confirmed Treasury secretary) were prohibited from accessing the Department of the Treasury’s information until she said so. From whence does a federal district judge derive the authority to prohibit the head of an agency from having access to the agency’s information? Certainly not the Constitution. Yet, that did not prohibit this district judge from appointing herself overseer of all cabinet secretaries.

‘Freedom to Govern Themselves’

As Justice Scalia noted, “This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected [judge], always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.”

The Constitution set a framework for how the Republic would be governed. In it, the People instituted a system whereby they would govern themselves, hold elections for their representatives, and otherwise tend to the nation’s affairs.

A few radical judicial appointees have set about on a course to change this. Who needs three branches of government when a single jurist in a black robe can ascribe to herself the power to hire and fire, spend money, design websites, moderate content on U.S. government websites, and otherwise tend to the affairs the Constitution set in the hands of elected representatives?

Elections have consequences, so they say. An endless string of TROs and injunctions prohibiting the nation’s Chief Executive from exercising the power he was elected to wield and enacting the agenda he campaigned on bringing raises the question, “Who is it that governs me?”

Originally published in The Stream.

For more from Daniel Schmid, Associate Vice President of Legal Affairs, click HERE.