(NewsNation) — Two House Judiciary subcommittees held a joint hearing Tuesday examining judicial power, with a focus on the recent blocks of President Donald Trump’s policies.
Federal judges have been halting President Donald Trump’s actions at a rapid pace. In many cases, the courts are questioning whether the firings of federal workers, the freezing of federal funds and the shuttering of long-running federal offices are unlawful actions by the executive branch and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
Before Tuesday’s hearing, the GOP House Judiciary Committee posted a letter that chair Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent to the House Appropriations Committee asking it to include “language in upcoming funding bills that would limit the ability of rogue judges to misuse nationwide injunctions.”
House Republican leaders say all options are under consideration as they rush to rein in judges.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said in his opening statements for the hearing that there’s been a “major malfunction” in the judiciary. He called the judges’ rulings a “new resistance to the Trump administration.”
“The federal judiciary isn’t interpreting the law; it is impeding the presidency,” Issa said.
However, Rep. Hank Johnson, a Democrat from Georgia, said Trump’s actions have been “authoritarian, dictatorial” and an “unprecedented use of presidential power to instill fear, intimidate, exact revenge against and punish those who dare to stand up to him.”
“A climate of fear and trepidation has descended upon the nation,” Johnson said, adding that Americans are afraid for the state of democracy.
One witness, Kate Shaw, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Penn Carey Law School, told lawmakers the Trump administration has lost in federal courts overseen by judges appointed by both the Democratic and Republican Parties.
This “broad consensus,” Shaw said, makes it clear that the rulings are not because of disagreements with Trump’s policy choices but because many of the challenged actions have been taken “without regard for, and often with outright contempt for, both statutes and the Constitution.”
“In my view, the premise of this hearing, that courts have overreached or transcended the limits of their authority, and that this overreach calls for some response, is badly mistaken,” Shaw said.
Former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich, another witness, argued in front of lawmakers that a lot of these issues should be hashed out in Congress, not micromanaged by “random single judges.”
Legislators also heard from Cindy Romero, a woman who said she was a victim of criminal activity perpetrated by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua while living in Aurora, Colorado. One of the legal challenges the Trump administration is facing is over the deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.