74 Lawsuits Have Been Filed to Stop Trump, Most in a Handful of Courts
(Bloomberg) -- Lawsuits against the Trump administration have put four US courts with a majority of Democrat-appointed judges at the center of fights over the onslaught of executive actions roiling the US government.
Progressive Portland Plots a Comeback
Why American Mobility Ground to a Halt
SpaceX Bid to Turn Texas Starbase Into City Is Set for Vote in May
How to Build a Neurodiverse City
Saudi Arabia's Neom Signs $5 Billion Deal for AI Data Center
In the first four weeks of the new administration, at least 74 lawsuits were filed, and of those, 58 were brought in federal district courts in Washington, Boston, Seattle and suburban Maryland, according to a Bloomberg News analysis. Each of those districts has a majority of active judges nominated by Democratic presidents and each feeds into appeals courts with a similar ideological balance.
The cases have challenged President Donald Trump's hard-line immigration policies, efforts to slash the size and reach of federal agencies and roll back civil rights protections and diversity programs. Others have focused on Tesla Inc. and SpaceX Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency and its constitutionality and access to agency computer systems.
'Advocates will want to go to places that they perceive to be more sympathetic,' said Nancy Gertner, a Harvard Law School senior lecturer and retired Boston federal judge who was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.
With courts as key players in political fights, the strategy behind where challengers file takes on new significance — and scrutiny. But the cases against Trump and his appointees are more spread out across districts and circuits compared to the flurry of cases brought by conservatives against Joe Biden's administration, according to legal scholars tracking such actions. Trump's opponents also haven't turned to single-judge divisions, a move that can ensure predictability in who hears a case.
17 Judges
So far, at least 17 judges — including several appointed by Republicans — have orders in place blocking or temporarily halting actions by Trump's administration.
Those include initiatives to restrict birthright citizenship, suspend or cut off domestic and foreign US spending, shrink the federal workforce, oust independent agency heads and roll back legal protections and medical care for transgender adults and youths. In other cases, the administration has agreed to a pause to give judges time to rule, another way that legal fights are forcing a slowdown.
Advocacy groups and Democratic attorneys general have declined to talk publicly about their strategy when it comes to where they're suing the Trump administration. Skye Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward, which has filed multiple lawsuits, pointed to the range of rulings to date from judges in different courts and circuits.
'So many of the actions are outside the bounds of even reasonable disagreement on the rule of law,' Perryman said.
Spokespeople for the White House and the US Justice Department did not respond to requests for comment.
Half in Washington
Of the 74 cases filed as of Friday, more than half are in the nation's capital. Litigants have to show a reason for filing in a particular court and Washington has long been the primary forum for lawsuits against federal agencies and White House policies. In some instances, US law requires cases against the government to be filed there.
But coalitions of Democratic attorneys general also have been splitting up cases across their home states. Advocacy groups and federal worker unions have been filing where they're based or where they have clients and members.
Cases in Washington get appealed to the DC Circuit, while those in Boston, Maryland and Seattle go to the 1st, 4th and 9th Circuits, respectively. Republican state officials and conservative groups routinely brought lawsuits against the Biden administration in districts in the conservative-leaning 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
During Trump's first term, the DC, 4th and 9th Circuits handed him a number of high-profile losses, especially on immigration issues. The 1st Circuit didn't play as prominent a role. Gertner said it historically had a reputation as a moderate bench. The circuit's six active judgeships are filled with five Democrat appointees and one vacancy for Trump to potentially fill.
Musk Attacks
Trump's allies have lashed out at judges in response, including attacks by Trump's billionaire ally Musk and Vice President JD Vance. During Trump's first term, his criticism of judges who ruled against him drew a rare public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who defended the judiciary's independence.
Federal judges push back on the idea that the party of the president who appointed them is a predictor, let alone a factor, in how they'll rule. They point to their lifetime tenure, conflict of interest laws and ethics rules as bulwarks against politically-motivated decision-making, though the latter is only binding on lower courts, not the US Supreme Court.
Still, Katherine Macfarlane, a professor at Syracuse University College of Law and an expert in federal court civil procedure, said that in politically charged cases, at least some amount of 'macro' strategy around where to file has become standard.
Political protections like life tenure haven't 'been enough to give parties confidence that it doesn't matter who you're in front of,' she said.
At the district court level, complaints about the tactic known as 'judge shopping' escalated during the Biden administration, when conservatives brought a noticeable proportion of cases in Texas divisions where only one or two judges were sitting.
'Forum Shopping'
Steve Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center who has researched judge shopping and was critical of the practice during the Biden years, said that hasn't been a hallmark of Trump challengers so far.
'Is there forum-shopping? Sure. Is it anything close to what was happening over the past four years? No,' Vladeck said.
Earlier this week, the chief judge of the Massachusetts federal court released a new policy that lawsuits filed in the district's single-judge divisions in Springfield and Worcester seeking nationwide relief against US government policies would be randomly assigned across the entirety of the bench. To date, though, challenges to the Trump administration have been filed in Boston.
Gertner, a senior lecturer at Harvard Law School, said the wave of pushback from judges pausing or blocking the Trump administration's actions was a sign that the location of these fights might not prove a significant factor in the outcomes. She cited the example of the four judges — two appointed by Republicans and two by Democrats — who have ruled against Trump's birthright citizenship limits.
'The distance between what Trump is doing and what the law requires and what the Constitution requires is so substantial that it doesn't matter what the judge is,' she said.
--With assistance from Christopher Cannon.
The Undocumented Workers Who Helped Build Elon Musk's Texas Gigafactory
The Unicorn Boom Is Over, and Startups Are Getting Desperate
The NBA Has Fallen Into an Efficiency Trap
Japan Perfected 7-Eleven. Why Can't the US Get It Right?
How Silicon Valley Swung From Obama to Trump
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New York Times
29 minutes ago
- New York Times
Here Are Some of the Southern California Immigration Raids From the Past Week
Tension has been growing for months over the Trump administration's aggressive efforts to deport people who remain in the United States illegally. But the situation escalated in Los Angeles about a week ago. After protesters converged on immigration raids and demonstrated against U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials, President Trump deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops to the city. While the focus has turned to ensuing protests in downtown Los Angeles and the heavy military response — the call-up has since increased to 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines — ICE agents have continued immigration raids each day in Southern California. It is difficult to have a comprehensive picture of the ICE efforts because the agency does not issue a list of people who have been detained each day nor the locations where they were taken from, and authorities did not confirm the number of raids they conducted in California this week. But residents, immigrant rights groups and elected leaders have cobbled together accounts of ICE workplace raids that they describe as indiscriminate attempts to find anyone who might be undocumented. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How do Israel and Iran tensions impact the U.S.?
DAYTON, Ohio (WDTN) — Tensions continue to rise after an Israeli attack that targeted Iran's nuclear program. This comes before President Trump was scheduled to hold peace talks between the two countries. 2 NEWS spoke with local experts on what this all means for U.S. security. Five things to know about Israel's attack on Iran There are still a lot more questions than answers after this strike, as both sides continue to warn the other about continued attacks and retaliatory attacks, but one Cedarville University professor says any harm coming to U.S. soil is still relatively low. 'Tensions have really been rising between the two, especially in recent years,' said Dr. Glen Duerr, Cedarville University professor of international studies. Israel and Iran have been exchanging strikes over the past 24 hours, all centered around Iran's growth in nuclear weaponry. 'It must be at a point where Mossad, the roughly equivalent of Israel's CIA, said that Iran is a danger,' said Duerr. 'They're getting to a breakout point, where they need to act.' Duerr says a lot escalated following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel. 'Especially after October 7, 2023, when Israel's territory was attacked, and notably, as well, Iran for the first time directly attacked Israel via drone in April and then again in October of 2024,' said Duerr. Concerns have been raised as to if the U.S. could see an attack of this scale, or even a cybersecurity attack — especially towards prominent military locations like Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. But Dr. Duerr doesn't see that happening. 'It's certainly possible, but not likely. I think the target is Israel, although the Israeli and American defense industries are very, very closely coordinated, including in this area around Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,' said Duerr. 'Certainly Iran could target the United States in terms of a cyberattack, but it's the timing doesn't make an awful lot of sense.' Israel attacks Iran's capital with explosions booming across Tehran 2 NEWS reached out to WPAFB to see if they have increased security in response to the recent activity, but have not heard back. President Trump has attempted to hold peace talks between the two countries, but the outcomes of what could happen due to this conflict are endless. 'My sense is that we'll see this kind of lower level tension, some exchanges between the two continue with low intensity into the future until something that changes, whether it's Iran's nuclear weapons program being discontinued or, heaven forbid, something broader that happens in the Middle East as well,' said Duerr. Duerr tells 2 NEWS that the conflict will be continuing — especially if Israel feels that Iran's nuclear program could reach a critical breakout point. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
34 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How Trump's Africa strategy may become a double-edged sword
With US President Donald Trump on a cost-cutting warpath since starting his second term, aid to Africa has been slashed and now defence spending is in his sights - but could these approaches cost more in the long run? The phrase his administration presses on Europe to assume more of the costs of its own defence is "burden sharing". This is the challenge that Washington is now throwing down to African armies too - and they are far less comfortably resourced to take it on. Moreover, having paid dearly in lives and money, in the struggle to hold back the spreading reach of jihadist armed groups across the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin and Somalia over recent years, they could be forgiven for feeling that they already carry much of the burden - and for the sake not just of their own continent but the wider international community too. Benin, which has lost more than 80 soldiers in jihadist attacks since the start of the year, is just one example. "The epicentre of terrorism on the globe" is how the Sahel was described a few days ago by Gen Michael Langley, who as head of US Africa Command (Africom) oversees the American military presence south of the Sahara. In briefings and interviews over the past few weeks, he has graphically outlined the threat that jihadist groups will present if their push southward towards the Gulf of Guinea succeeds. "One of the terrorists' new objectives is gaining access to West African coasts. If they secure access to the coastline, they can finance their operations through smuggling, human trafficking and arms trading. This not only puts African nations at risk but also raises the chance of threats reaching US shores." Gen Langley has admitted that the current upsurge in militant attacks is "deeply concerning". Yet he has also repeatedly hammered home a core message: the US is minded to rein back its own sub-Saharan military operations, leaving local armies to take on more of the defence burden. Some 6,500 personnel are currently deployed in Africa by the US military and a 2019 list published by Africom mentioned 13 "enduring" American bases across the continent and a further 17 more temporary facilities. But some of these installations, including the purpose-built drone base at Agadez in Niger, have already been shut down, in particular after military juntas seized power in Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso since 2020. And it now looks as if the once-ambitious American operational footprint will be pruned back quite a lot more. Perhaps we will see more air power deployed from offshore to hit militant targets - Gen Langley says there have been 25 strikes in Somalia this year, double the 2024 total - but a much thinner permanent on-the-ground military presence. "Some things that we used to do, we may not do anymore," he recently told a conference in Kenya's capital, Nairobi, that brought together chiefs of defence staff and other senior officers from 37 countries. "Our aim is not to serve as a permanent crutch, but to achieve US security objectives that overlap with our partners. We should be able to help African nations build the self-reliance they need to independently confront terrorism and insurgencies." In the bluntness of his language Gen Langley reflects the stark change of outlook and policy that has come from January's change of power at the White House. "We have set our priorities now - protecting the homeland." What matters to the no-longer-so-new Trump II administration, the general made clear in a Pentagon publication last week, is fighting terrorists - particularly those who might attack the US. Other priorities are countering the spread of Chinese military influence across Africa and protecting freedom of maritime navigation through key trade choke points such as the Strait of Gibraltar and the Mediterranean, the Suez Canal and the Bab el-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. In some respects, the focus on training and capacity building that Gen Langley now expounds is not so very different from the approach of previous American administrations, Republican as well as Democrat. He lauds the National Guard State Partnership Program, through which individual US states have been helping to build the capacity of government security forces across Africa and other parts of the world - for the past three decades. France too is pursuing this approach, with the closure of bases in Chad and Senegal, while those in Ivory Coast and Gabon have been handed over to their governments, with only small French training teams left behind to work alongside African colleagues. However, in other respects, the Trump administration's Africa strategy represents a drastic shrinkage in outlook and - critics might argue - a conscious retreat from addressing the factors that drive instability, conflict and terrorism, particularly in the Sahel, which is among the poorest regions on the planet. For under President Joe Biden the US looked far beyond the military realm alone in its efforts to counter the both the growing reach of jihadist groups and other sources of violence. And Gen Langley, as Africom chief, was an articulate exponent of this much broader thinking. Only last year, in an interview with the Associated Press news agency, he outlined what he described as a "whole of government" response to the proliferation of conflict, stressing the importance of good governance and action to tackle the fragilities of African states and the impacts of desertification, crop failure and environmental change. This approach openly recognised that recruitment by armed groups and the spread of violence is fuelled not only by jihadist ideology, but also by a host of social and economic factors, including the stresses now afflicting farming and pastoralist livelihoods. Gen Langley himself does not seem to have abandoned this analysis, recently noting how Ivory Coast had countered the jihadist threat to its northern border areas by complementing security force deployments with development projects. He could equally have pointed to the success of a similar approach pursued by the president of Niger, Mohamed Bazoum, before he was deposed in the July 2023 coup. But of course, these days Africom must operate within the context of a US foreign policy radically reshaped under Trump. There are even rumours that it could be downgraded to become a subsidiary of the US command in Europe and Gen Langley suggests African governments should tell Washington what they thought of this idea. Already the separate Africa unit at the radically slimmed down National Security Council at the White House is reportedly being wound up and integrated into the Middle East-North Africa section. Its director, Gen Jami Shawley, an Africa specialist appointed to the role only in March, has now been assigned to more general strategic functions. Addressing Congress this week, Gen Langley warned about China's and Russia's African ambitions: Beijing's agility at capitalising on the US's absence and Moscow's ability to seize military opportunities created by chaos and instability. Given these concerns, some might wonder if the general is discreetly signally his doubts about a slimmed down Africa strategy. Meanwhile, under the "efficiency drive" led, until recently, by tech billionaire Elon Musk, the American government's main international development agencies, USAID and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, have been effectively shut down. The spine of the new US economic engagement with Africa is now private sector trade and investment. But business generally needs to operate in a stable and secure context - which Africa's most fragile and violence-prone regions cannot offer. And in winding up the American development agencies, the Trump administration has stepped aside from funding the rural projects and social programmes that sought to address land and water pressures and lack of economic opportunity, the key drivers of conflict - and the jihadist groups' recruitment of frustrated rural young people. For the fragile regions that are the main sources of jihadist violence the US response is reduced to the purely military, and now it is seeking to shift even most of that on to the shoulders of African states that already struggle to respond adequately to a plethora of challenges and responsibilities. Paul Melly is a consulting fellow with the Africa Programme at Chatham House in London. The region with more 'terror deaths' than rest of world combined Freed captive tells BBC of life in West African jihadist base Why Trump is on the warpath in Somalia 'My wife fears sex, I fear death' - impacts of the USAID freeze Trump's tariffs could be death knell for US-Africa trade pact Go to for more news from the African continent. Follow us on Twitter @BBCAfrica, on Facebook at BBC Africa or on Instagram at bbcafrica Focus on Africa This Is Africa
