There’s no doubt that if President Trump used his executive authority to increase hiring at federal agencies, allow in a million more destitute migrants at the southern border, and fast-track the high-ranking of trans service members, not a single judge would have ordered him to stop.

It would have never happened because in America 2025, the judiciary has made it impossible to ever fix severe problems Americans elect a president to address. The only thing a president can do on his own, according to their orders and rulings, is make the problems worse. To grow the government, flood the country with foreigners, and normalize antisocial behavior is always legal and legitimate. Joe Biden did it with impunity. But to oppose any of it is to get smacked down by some district judge who can’t stop raving about the “Hamilton” musical.

It’s been utterly surreal this week to watch court after court tell the head of the executive branch that he has no control over his own administration’s agencies (including the Defense Department), that he can’t decline to spend billions of taxpayer dollars on his political opposition’s domestic priorities, and that he’s required to halt deportations of alleged foreign terrorists.

D.C. District Court Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, on Tuesday prohibited the Defense Department from ending accommodations for trans-identifying service members, an early order from the president for the purpose of military “readiness.” Reyes, who earnestly cited the “Hamilton” musical in her order, effectively made herself commander of the armed forces, a job description that was previously exclusive to the president of the United States.

On the same day, Maryland District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, appointed by Barack Obama, ordered the administration to reinstate agency functions, including email and payment access to all employees at the U.S. Agency for International Development — which Trump had mandated the almost complete shutter of at the behest of his adviser Elon Musk. The basis of Chuang’s decision was that he didn’t agree that Musk was solely acting in an advisory role but as an illegitimate official without the proper authority. In essence, Chuang saw fit to override the president’s management of an agency under executive — not judicial — purview.

Again on Tuesday, D.C. District Judge Tanya Chutkan blocked the administration from terminating $14 billion in grant money for “clean energy” projects, initiatives that were set in motion by the previous White House but which are in direct contradiction to Trump’s stated agenda. In other words, a judge is threatening to compel the president to pursue policies that run contrary to what he told voters he would execute.

A fourth judge carried over a legal dispute from the weekend in which he, James Boasberg of the D.C. district and another Obama appointee, demanded the administration provide him details on deportation flights that had sent illegal aliens and alleged members of a designated Venezuelan terrorist organization to El Salvador. The point was to potentially catch the administration in sending the flights for takeoff after the judge had issued his order — which is to say, dare the president to dispute Boasberg’s assumed authority over national security. It raises an obvious question: Who is better positioned to assess threats to the American people? A judge in D.C. or the president, who oversees U.S. intelligence and law enforcement? Boasberg votes himself.

If Trump did the exact opposite of what he was elected to do, no judge would be seizing executive authority for themselves. They oppose the president and the voters who put him in office.