The NPR Politics Podcast - The Justice Department Sues All The Federal Judges In Maryland

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

The Department of Justice has taken the rare step of suing all of the federal District Court judges in Maryland, after the Maryland court issued a 48-hour pause in every case where an immigrant was challenging their removal from the United States. We examine why this lawsuit is so unusual and how it fits into the Trump Administration's larger attitude toward the judicial branch.This episode: political correspondent Ashley Lopez, Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege, but a right. Learn more at rwjf.org. Hey there, it's Ashley. Before we get started, I have a quick favor to ask. We want to hear from you. Send us your timestamps of what you're getting up to this summer, whether you're out and about or just hanging out. Record a voice memo on your phone and send it to nprpolitics at npr.org with the subject line timestamp.

And we might just use it on the show. And if you need a reminder of what a timestamp sounds like, just listen right now. Hi, this is Rob, waiting at Dulles Airport to fly to Portugal, where I'll be competing with my border collie, Typhon, in the Senior Agility World Championships. Wow. This podcast was recorded at 12 55 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 9th, 2025. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this podcast, but I'll hopefully be coming home with ribbons and definitely with my best boy. hopefully be coming home with ribbons and definitely with my best boy. I love it. Dog People activated. That is so exciting. I want an update on that competition for sure.

I didn't know that senior dogs have their own thing. That makes a lot of sense though. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And today we're talking about an unusual move by the Justice Department to sue all of the federal judges in Maryland. Carrie, this is your reporting. Can you explain where this is all coming from and why specifically Maryland? Yeah, sure. So back in May, the chief judge in the District of Maryland issued an order

basically saying for any migrant who filed a habeas petition with the court, basically challenging the legality of their deportation, that that case would be frozen for 48 hours to give the judges in Maryland time to consider the legal arguments and the status of that person. And all of this came down in the wake of the deportation of the Maryland man Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department later admitted was deported to El Salvador in an administrative error. There have been a lot of legal clashes about whether he got proper due process, what exactly he did or didn't do. But what it appears to be is that these judges in Maryland basically wanted to put a temporary pause, a 48-hour pause on any deportation so they could get

their arms around the facts of these cases. Danielle Pletka What happened to Kilmar Abrego-Garcia? Danielle Pletka That legal fight is still going on after a lot of back and forth, including a trip all the way up to the Supreme Court. That case is now being fought in multiple states. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now back in the United States, but he's being detained and the Justice Department is charging him with multiple criminal offenses.

He's fighting those charges and there are some questions about the strength of that case. And what is so unreasonable about 48 hours? What is the big principle that they think the courts violated? Danielle Pletka Well, you know, the Justice Department basically says that these courts are infringing on the executive branch's core power with respect to national security, the border, and immigration. And they argue in this lawsuit, which is pretty unusual, that the judges in Maryland are basically violating congressional limits that have been

put on district courts. District courts are not supposed to be making these final calls with respected deportation to begin with, they say. They say the judges themselves are disregarding their own process for adopting rules for courts. And basically, they just say they're way, way, way overreaching. You know, DOJ says it's really been used in at least 12 cases so far, and it's a big problem for the Justice Department, so they want it to stop. Well, you know, the executive branch does have a lot of leeway with immigration decisions traditionally. So what is the role of the court?

It's not an immigration court. What's the role of the Maryland court in dealing with these cases? I think we're going to find out as a result of this lawsuit, but I reached out to a guy named Andrew Arthur. He's a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limits on immigration. Here's what he had to say about this case. It's an aggressive move by the DOJ, but arguably this is an aggressive move by the district court.

I'm not aware of any other court in any other context that has issued a standing order on injunctive relief like this. Congress has limited the authority of district courts to issue orders in immigration cases. Section 242 of the Immigration and Nationality Act attempts to transfer all appeals of administrative immigration orders to the circuit courts. And Arthur basically told me that these temporary pauses are supposed to be extraordinary, but what the Maryland court has done is to kind of make them automatic.

So he has a big problem with it. Well, Carrie, I mean, to what extent has something like this happened before? Well, let me first say that this is super unusual. The Justice Department has sued this entire federal district court bench in Maryland. And normally, in a normal case, when a judge is sued by, say, a prisoner who's appeared before the judge, the Justice Department is the one that's defending the judge. In this case, the DOJ is the one doing the suing. So the judges

have had to go and find their own lawyer, and they found an awfully good one. His name is Paul Clement. He was the Solicitor General under President George W. Bush and he's been doing a lot of pro bono work and a lot of cases this year involving kind of touchstones with respect to the Trump administration. And this is so odd that the Justice Department also sued the clerk of the court in Maryland. So the clerk of the court is now kind of prohibited from doing any kind of like administrative tasks like with the docket. So they've had to transfer this case to Roanoke, Virginia to Judge Thomas Cullen, who was appointed by President Trump in his first term. And everything is going to have to go through a special procedure

because this is so odd to begin with. But despite all the talk about this being unprecedented, which I've heard a lot from lawyers around the country, the Trump DOJ says they have found at least one case where the Justice Department has sued an entire court before. And that actually happened back in 1995 involving the US attorney in Rhode Island. His name is Sheldon Whitehouse.

That name may be familiar to you because he's currently a sitting Democratic Senator from Rhode Island. And that case revolved around the court in Rhode Island imposing kind of a rule that would make the Justice Department take extra steps before it wanted to issue a subpoena to a lawyer. All right, we're going to take a quick break. More in a moment. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.

And we're back. Mara, President Trump and his administration have criticized judges' rulings before and throughout his time in office, but pursuing legal action against the judges themselves, it seems like a whole other thing. How does this tie into the Trump administration's sort of general attitude towards the judiciary? Donald Trump has attacked the judiciary and individual judges almost at every turn. I mean, he's talked about unelected judges.

He feels that the Justice Department was weaponized against him in his first term. And he has yet to actually defy the Supreme Court, but he doesn't have a whole lot of respect for judges He has yet to actually defy the Supreme Court, but he doesn't have a whole lot of respect for judges, except for the ones that he appointed to the Supreme Court, or for, you could argue, the rule of law. I mean, that TikTok case, which is so interesting, law that was passed by big bipartisan majorities

upheld by the Supreme Court, he's ignored it. He was allowed to have one extension before he had to obey the law, and he took that, and now and now he's issued more extensions and he doesn't seem to care. So I think in general, Donald Trump feels that his branch of government, the executive branch, should be stronger and more powerful than the two other branches, Congress, which is pretty much abdicated, and the judiciary. And that's why he keeps on attacking judges and now he's suing them.

Danielle Pletka I think one of the reasons why this new lawsuit by the Justice Department against these federal judges in Maryland has gotten so many lawyers concerned, is that it's coming at a time when threats of violence against judges are up this year, and when many people, including multiple members of Congress and some people inside the Trump administration have actually called for impeachment of federal judges who are basically doing their jobs and they don't like the decisions these judges have made.

So the climate is quite tense right now. And I talked about that with Andre Davis. He actually sat on the district court in Maryland and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals before he retired. And Judge Davis told me he found out about this lawsuit by the Justice Department when he was on a plane headed to North Carolina with a number of other judges who had actually been sued. They were all going to some big time judicial conference. And here's what he said about the case. It's outrageous that they actually named individually in their official capacities

all 15 judges of the court. And so you have to ask yourself, what is going on here? What kind of performance? Who is the audience for this? Judge Davis told me that in a normal course of business, if the administration or the Justice Department didn't like something a judge had done, it would have a back and forth. It would ask the judges for a meeting. It would lodge an appeal. But in this case, the Justice Department actually sued all of them and the clerk too. And he says that really represents a broader breakdown in the communication and respect that the executive branch has for the judiciary. In fact, things have gotten so tense that there's a nonprofit group called Keep Our Republic, and they've

actually created a group of retired judges, there are 50 of them now, including Judge Davis, to speak up about some of these issues. Because if you're a sitting judge, you can't ethically talk about these kinds of issues. So Judge Davis told me they're trying to be a voice. Yeah. Well, Kerry, what happens next and what are you going to be looking out for as this case or I guess several cases work its way through the courts? The new judge hearing this case against the Maryland judges has called for a hearing in mid August. So a lot more will happen then. And you know, these issues are so tense that

it may be that whatever happens here, the losing side appeals and it could get all the way back up to the Supreme Court, which by the way, despite President Trump's criticism of lower court judges this year for ruling against him, and we should say that lower court judges appointed by Democratic presidents and by Republican presidents have ruled against him in many situations, the Trump administration is largely winning at the Supreme Court level. So if this case gets that high and given how much deference the Supreme Court has given to the executive branch on issues involving immigration and national security, there could be some reason for the Trump administration and the DOJ to feel good about this case.

Yeah. I mean, what I'm watching is definitely what the Supreme Court does. That's the final arbiter here. And the president has said that he will always follow Supreme Court decisions. He is very confident that the Supreme Court will rule for him. So I guess the question I have about cases like this is, are we on a slippery slope to having a very different form of government, one with an all-powerful unchecked executive, or not? Or will the judiciary, which is the branch that's supposed to tell the executive if he's actually executing the laws faithfully, that's why he's called an executive, will push back against him? And that's the big question of the Trump era. And we're gonna find the answer out,

hopefully in a couple months. Yeah. All right, well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason,

Senior National Political Correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.