This nonsense needs to stop. Since when does a district court have the authority to issue a nationwide injunction?
Since Donald Trump got elected, apparently, and the Establishment – or the Deep State, or whatever you want to call it – realized that its long-term agenda of destroying the American economy and merging our nation into a one-world socialist government was suddenly in jeopardy. What to do?
Lawfare! Challenge all efforts to “make America great again” and find like-minded judges at any level anywhere who are willing to usurp their limited authority and block the needed measures on some tenuous pretext, or at least delay them so long that they become unaffordable.
There have been numerous examples of this phenomenon over the last four years. Here’s one: a district court deciding that a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers permit used to authorize the Keystone XL pipeline was improper and somehow invalidated all projects using that permitting process. Here’s another: the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upholding that dubious decision.
“The lower court transformed a case challenging application of a permit on one pipeline project into a nationwide injunction affecting new oil and gas pipelines in every state, including West Virginia,” state Attorney General Patrick Morrisey protested at the time, subsequently joining his peers from multiple other states in asking the U.S. Supreme Court to stay that order.
Morrisey and his colleagues later petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that halted construction of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, ostensibly because the U.S. Forest Service lacks authority to grant rights-of-way through forestland beneath the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.
Whatever. Fine. Block project. Fabricate reason for doing so. Repeat. When the decision is overturned, some other judge with ideological or other biases will block it again with a different phony excuse.
It will be interesting to see what the Supreme Court justices have to say about these sinister tactics to forestall an economic renewal in our country. At some point, they’re going to have to rein in the rogue judges.
