Trump’s first year back in office has been anything but quiet. He moved fast, relying heavily on executive orders to push through the policies he campaigned on, and that aggressive approach immediately ran into resistance from the courts. What’s interesting, though, is what happened next at the higher levels of the judiciary.
According to Chad Mizelle, a former senior Justice Department official, rulings against the Trump administration by district court judges are being overturned or put on hold on appeal at a dramatically higher rate than what we saw under President Biden. During Biden’s four years, only nine district court rulings against his administration were later overturned on appeal, averaging a little over two per year. By contrast, Mizelle says that in Trump’s first year back in office, district judges issued 133 rulings against the administration that were either stayed or overturned on appeal. That’s not a small difference — it suggests that many of these initial rulings simply aren’t holding up once they face closer scrutiny.
Trump allies argue this points to a deeper problem: district court judges acting more like policymakers than neutral referees. Senior administration officials have been blunt, accusing some judges of judicial activism and of stepping beyond their constitutional role by interfering with the president’s Article II authority. From a conservative perspective, that concern isn’t new. For years, Republicans have warned about unelected judges using nationwide injunctions to block policies they disagree with, even before a case is fully argued.
To be fair, the legal landscape during Trump’s second term is unusual. The sheer volume of executive orders he signed in his first year — targeting government spending, illegal immigration, and DEI programs put in place under Biden — naturally led to an explosion of lawsuits. Many of these cases didn’t seek final judgments right away. Instead, they asked for temporary restraining orders or preliminary injunctions to freeze policies before courts could fully consider them. Those temporary rulings are almost always appealed, which helps explain why appellate courts and the Supreme Court have been so active.
Still, the outcomes matter. In June, the Supreme Court narrowed the ability of district judges to issue sweeping “universal injunctions” that block a president’s policies nationwide. That 6–3 decision was a major win for the separation of powers, reinforcing the idea that a single district judge should not be able to halt federal policy for the entire country.
The Trump administration has also had notable success at the Supreme Court, particularly through emergency appeals on what’s often called the “shadow docket.” Critics don’t like the term, but the reality is that these rulings have allowed the administration to move forward with key policies, from changes to military service rules to cutting off federal funding tied to DEI initiatives. Mizelle has claimed Trump’s success rate at the Court is around 90 percent, largely driven by these emergency decisions.
Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed those numbers in a Cabinet meeting, noting that the administration has already been sued 575 times — more than every administration since Reagan combined. Yet despite that barrage of litigation, she pointed out that the Supreme Court has ruled in Trump’s favor in the vast majority of cases.
From a conservative standpoint, this pattern reinforces a familiar argument: many of the early legal blocks against Trump’s agenda appear more political than constitutional. While lower courts may slow things down, higher courts — especially the Supreme Court — have repeatedly affirmed the administration’s authority to govern. That doesn’t mean every Trump policy will ultimately prevail, but it does suggest that the constitutional balance of power is reasserting itself after years of judicial overreach.
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