At today's House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) spoke about alleged judicial overreach in federal courts blocking President Trump's actions.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I want to thank the gentleman from California and my co-chairman on this hearing.
00:04It's an important hearing.
00:05I thank him for his work on this issue as well as his legislation addressing the matter.
00:10And I'd like to welcome the guests who are joining us here today.
00:14Appreciate your time, obviously, particularly you, Mr. Speaker, and your great service to
00:17this country and great to have your expertise here.
00:20We thank you.
00:22And I also want to give a shout out to Cindy Romero.
00:24I met Ms. Romero last August in Aurora, Colorado, and I appreciate what she's going to be here
00:30to testify about today and her great service.
00:32So with that, I would like to take a slightly different angle as the chairman of the subcommittee
00:38on the Constitution than the direction that my friend from California took, because I
00:43want to emphasize the judicial overreach we've witnessed over the last two months and nationwide
00:48injunctions more broadly that are undermining the constitutional structure our founders
00:52so wisely envisioned.
00:55The nature of the executive branch was a primary point of contention at the Constitutional
01:00Convention.
01:01Some delegates favored a plural executive, thinking that this arrangement would better
01:06preserve liberty, but they were wrong, and our founders wisely resisted their calls.
01:11Instead, the Constitution lodges the executive power in a single president of the United
01:14States.
01:16Alexander Hamilton offered the classic defense of this arrangement in Federalist 70, emphasizing
01:20that a vigorous and energetic executive is necessary to defend our liberty from foreign
01:26threats.
01:27Hamilton rightly argued that unity in the executive was the essential ingredient in
01:31this formula.
01:33Only a single executive could act with the decision, activity, secrecy, and dispatch
01:38necessary to adequately carry out the office.
01:42And on a note, I have introduced legislation in the past called the Article I Act to try
01:46to cabin in the executive branch when it's not necessarily working directly with Congress.
01:51And I'm happy to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle on these concepts
01:54when we have these lingering emergencies, in many cases these national emergencies that
01:58date back to the 1970s.
02:00There are times for the Congress and for the legislative branch to assert itself.
02:06But the president's authority is at its zenith when we're talking about his actions as commander-in-chief.
02:13President-temporary restraining orders halting presidential actions nationwide threaten the
02:17key feature of our constitutional architecture, undermining the core premise of unity in the
02:22executive branch, the unitary executive, as we refer to it.
02:26Even the most strident proponents of a plural executive at the Constitutional Convention
02:30advocated for an executive council of three, maybe five members.
02:34Today in practice, we are governed by an executive council of 678.
02:39The nationally elected president and 677 district court judges, each of whom retains
02:44a functional veto over executive actions through their power to issue nationwide injunctions.
02:50Scholars have long understood that a hostile judiciary or even a single hostile judge could
02:54abuse its power to issue nationwide injunctions to infringe upon the lawful authority of the
03:00President of the United States.
03:01Now, that's not a partisan point.
03:03I've got numerous examples of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle who have raised
03:08these concerns.
03:10The Biden administration's Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, told the Supreme Court
03:14as recently as 2024 that, quote, a court of equity may grant relief only to the parties
03:18before it.
03:19The district court violated that principle by issuing a nationwide injunction, dot, dot,
03:23dot.
03:24In 2022, Solicitor General Prelogar asked the Supreme Court to address nationwide injunctions
03:29as permissible relief in the United States versus Texas, arguing that district courts
03:33normally, quote, should only provide relief for the benefit of the prevailing challenger.
03:38What happened there was our Democratic colleagues started realizing that when Republicans went
03:42to district courts to get injunctions against their president, that suddenly they didn't
03:45like it so much.
03:47So they were raising concerns.
03:49Justice Elena Kagan spoke out against nationwide injunctions by a single district judge in
03:5222, quote, the ability of a single judge to stop limitation of a policy across the country.
03:59She stated, in the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California,
04:02and in the Biden years, they go to Texas.
04:05It can't be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks
04:09and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.
04:13Former United States Rep Mondaire Jones introduced the Injunction Reform Act in 2022.
04:18I could go through the quotes that he offered, but I won't.
04:20I can offer those for the record without objection.
04:25In a letter to William Torrance dated June 11th, 1815, Thomas Jefferson explained who
04:29decides constitutional questions.
04:31Certainly, there's not a word in the Constitution which has given judges that power, authority
04:36to decide on the constitutionality of a law more than to the executive or legislative
04:38branches, meaning we all have an obligation and a role to do that.
04:43Questions of property, of character, and of crime being ascribed to the judges through
04:45a definite course of legal proceedings, laws involving such questions belong, of course,
04:50to them in the judiciary.
04:52And as they decide on them, ultimately and without appeal, they, of course, decide for
04:55themselves the constitutional validity of the law.
04:58In other words, our founders never intended the federal courts to have the ability to
05:02unilaterally decide constitutional questions as these judges are unelected and were never
05:07given the power to legislate from the bench.
05:10Treating the courts as the final authority on public policy grants them more power than
05:18even Madison's rejected Council of Revision proposal at the Constitutional Convention.
05:22Indeed, it happened regularly during the first Trump administration, as we've pointed out.
05:26Now in the second Trump administration, it is on steroids.
05:30As of last week, district courts had issued no fewer than 17 nationwide injunctions against
05:35administrative actions, with scores more Temporary Restraining Orders, or TROs as we call them,
05:40as barring the president from enacting the agenda upon which he was elected.
05:44Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that even the Supreme Court would wield neither
05:49force nor will over politics, indicating he never envisioned the judiciary having the
05:53final say on every political decision or action.
05:57Now these injunctions and TROs have even infringed upon what the Supreme Court has described as
06:01conclusive and preclusive presidential powers, including core presidential authorities to
06:06conduct foreign affairs and repel invasions.
06:08Now I have got numerous examples of what we've been dealing with.
06:11Just so people know, this is a 56-page summary that I've got of the 158, it might be 159
06:17now, because we're having to track them on a daily basis, lawsuits against the administration
06:22and against the president for carrying out the agenda upon which he was elected.
06:2617 injunctions, I think there are a great number more TROs.
06:30And the cases we're talking about, not going through all of them, nationwide TRO and joining
06:34the Trump administration from freezing foreign assistance funding, enforcement order requiring
06:39the administration to pay approximately $2 billion within 36 hours.
06:43It's a judge singularly acting against the president's actions.
06:47Another one, provisionally certifying a class and adjoining the Trump administration from
06:51deporting members of a foreign terrorist organization.
06:54A nationwide injunction adjoining the Trump administration from pausing, terminating or
06:57amending any equity related grants or contracts, DEI.
07:01A nationwide injunction adjoining the Trump administration from prohibiting federal funds
07:05from being spent to promote gender ideology.
07:07A nationwide TRO adjoining the Trump administration for prohibiting biological men from being
07:12housed in women's prisons.
07:13Two injunctions regarding the administration for implementing an executive order considering
07:17transgender individuals in the military, birthright citizenship, issue after issue
07:22after issue that the administration is trying to act on according to the campaign upon which
07:27he ran.
07:28One in particular has earned the scrutiny it has received.
07:31Just two weeks ago, Judge Boasberg of the District Court of the District of Columbia
07:35ordered the administration to stop the deportation of members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan
07:41gang that has terrorized cities and towns across the country.
07:44At this table, in this room, we heard testimony from Alexis Nungaray, whose daughter Jocelyn
07:50was murdered by TDA in the suburbs of Houston.
07:55Right here, we heard her powerful testimony about what that gang has done to this country.
07:59We're gonna hear from Ms. Romero today about what that gang did to her community in Aurora,
08:04Colorado.
08:05And here we have a single district judge who's asserting jurisdiction from the District of
08:09Columbia to tell the President of the United States that he cannot deport members of the
08:14violent TDA gang out of this country to keep our streets safe.
08:18That is not what is supposed to occur.
08:21Today's hearing where we'll learn from constitutional scholars and real Americans about what is
08:24wrong with the current system is a good start.
08:26We should carefully study whether Congress should push back against judicial overreach
08:29using its constitutional power to structure and fund the courts.
08:33Our Constitution did not create a plural executive or judicial tyranny.
08:37Today we're far too close to both.
08:39With that, I yield back.