Main: President Donald Trump speaks to members of the Michigan National Guard at Selfridge Air National Guard Base, Tuesday, April 29, 2025, in Harrison Township, Michigan (AP Photo/Alex Brandon). Inset: District Judge Royce Lamberth (U.S. District Court for Washington, D.C.).
A district court judge in Washington, D.C., has issued a response to recent attacks against him and his colleagues on the bench, saying that the rhetoric being directed at federal judges of late reflects a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the Constitution as well as the judiciary branch’s role in government.
The judge’s comments come as a litany of President Donald Trump’s executive orders and directives continue to be halted by judges appointed by presidents from both sides of the aisle.
Senior U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, a Ronald Reagan-appointee who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate, on Monday called out “people from both inside and outside government,” saying that they have been falsely accusing the courts of “fomenting a constitutional crisis, usurping the Article II powers of the Presidency, undercutting the popular will, or dictating how Executive agencies can and should be run.”
“The subtext, if not the headline, of these accusations is that federal judges are motivated by personal political agendas,” Lamberth wrote. “I am not a political actor, and I have no agenda to press. I believe that the same is true of my colleagues on the federal bench.”
Lamberth’s three-page overture seeking to tamp down the hyperbolic discourse surrounding courts allegedly being “motivated by personal political agendas” came at the conclusion of a 22-page order granting a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the administration from enforcing Trump’s executive order on publicly funded news organizations that operate outside of the country.
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The TRO barred the federal government from unilaterally defunding the Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), a congressionally funded news organization that provides reporting across 23 countries in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Radio Free Europe is housed by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), which is currently headed by Kari Lake, a stalwart election denier and Trump ally who is a named defendant in the case.
Though he did not mention her by name, Lamberth’s tangent about the hostilities currently facing the federal judiciary were likely a response to Lake’s comments during a Sunday appearance on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures” where she and host Maria Bartiromo railed against “federal judges trying to stop President Trump’s agenda.”
“They’re completely out of control, they’re basically usurping the power of the president” Lake said, referring to judges — including those appointed by Trump — who have halted the president’s executive orders.
“I’ve got a district who is coming after us and telling us how to run an agency,” she continued, in an apparent reference to Lamberth. She later alleged that judges who issued TROs and injunctions against the president’s executive orders “may be compromised.”
Lamberth wrote that the “media zeitgeist” does not influence his view of the law and “plays no role in any decision” he has made, but said he wanted to use his written order to “clear up some of the misconceptions that are now unfortunately permeating the national mediascape.”
From the order (emphasis in original):
For all of the ubiquitous commentary pitting the federal judiciary against the Presidency, the first branch of government — Congress — is often conspicuously absent from these conversations. It is, after all, Congress that makes the laws in this country. In this case, for example, it was Congress who ordained that the monies at issue should be allocated to RFE/RL.
Congress, however, does not make the law by itself. The Constitution provides that, for a bill to become law, it must be signed by the President. On March 15, 2025, in accordance with this constitutional design, President Trump signed the very continuing resolution that allocated the funds discussed herein to RFE/RL, as well as Voice of America and the network grantees named in the related Widakuswara case. In other words, the Court did not make the law at the center of these disputes; the people’s duly elected representatives, in the legislature and the Oval Office, did that.
Despite Lake’s hand-wringing, Lamberth concluded that “the current Congress and President Trump enacted a law allocating funds to the plaintiffs” and the executive “does not have carte blanche to unilaterally change course” without subsequent congressional approval.
“As I see it, if the defendants are aggrieved by these decisions, their problem is not with the Court, but with Congress and the President, and it is with them that the defendants should seek redress,” the judge wrote.
According to Lamberth, unlike the other two branches of government, the role of the courts is “more circumscribed” in that judges “interpret the laws and the Constitution and declare what the law is.”
“By enjoining the defendants’ efforts to dismantle the plaintiff networks, actions which I perceive to be contrary to the law, I am humbly fulfilling my small part in this very constitutional paradigm — a framework that has propelled the U.S. to heights of greatness, liberty and prosperity unparalleled in the history of the world for nearly 250 years,” Lamberth wrote. “If our nation is to thrive for another 250 years, each co-equal branch of government must be willing to courageously exert the authority entrusted to it by our Founders.”
