Dakota Beacon

A political conflagration accelerates when judicial gas is thrown on the fire. Everyone has heard of “lawfare”. And, if you know lawfare you will love the newest version -- “judicial insurrection.”

Lawfare derives from the attempts, through legal means, to thwart and deter the executive branch’s every action. Lawfare refers to the strategic use, or misuse, of legal systems to achieve political aims. More concisely, lawfare uses legal action to cause problems for an opponent. Throughout the two Trump campaigns and administrations lawfare epitomized the “weaponization” of law using investigations, lawsuits, and prosecutions to hobble Donald Trump’s efforts.

“Judicial insurrection” becomes a follow-on or subset of lawfare. Judicial insurrection has no formal definition as a legal concept in US law. However, three resulting events manifest the activism of some federal judges. Their crusading is on full display.

  -- Judges and their courts undermine constitutional norms by defying laws or executive authority.

  -- Judges and their courts obstruct reforms or overturn laws based on ideological grounds.

  -- Judges and their courts resist oversight or accountability by shielding law breakers from consequences.

Under 18 US Code § 2383 insurrection specifies “Whoever incites, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or its laws…” Therefore, an allegation of judicial insurrection reasonably applies to judges or courts engaged in a kind of rebellion where ideological decisions knowingly challenge or defy executive power.

When President Trump returned to office for a second term following a decisive win, coordinated legal resistance appeared in the form of activist judges. An expanding network of lawsuits, activist rulings, and nationwide injunctions served as the principal weapon in an escalating war. Unelected federal judges (many appointed by Presidents Clinton, Obama, and Biden) issued sweeping orders to block core elements of President Trump’s agenda trying to paralyze the executive branch and thereby preserve radical laws and policies.

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

The US Supreme Court on June 23 issued a stay on an April 18 injunction issued by US District Court for the District of Massachusetts in the case D.V.D. (a Cuban immigrant using a pseudonym) versus the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). That injunction restricted DHS’s attempts to deport illegal aliens to third countries other than the immigrant’s original home country.

Yet Judge Brian E. Murphy, (a Biden appointee) issued an order mere hours after the Supreme Court stay acting as though the nation’s highest court had not thrown out his first injunction.

DHS shot back with a scorching request to the Supreme Court asking the court to halt Murphy’s action. The DHS filing reads, “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…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.”

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

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

To illustrate, the ink was barely dry on various Trump’s executive orders before public-sector unions and other leftist groups took the new administration to court. They hand-picked jurisdictions with judges more likely to give them the injunctions they sought. The judges, many of them appointed by Democrats, issued “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. However, these judges weaponized nationwide injunctions claiming to protect people across the country who were never parties to the suit in the first place.

Murphy’s level of defiance suggests that Congress may have to restrain federal judges. Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, 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 pick these judges to make nationwide policy. If they defy the Supreme Court, that makes a rather persuasive case for impeachment.

Dennis M. Patrick can be contacted at (JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).