Alex Marlow: Lawfare Judges Making Unprecedented Efforts to Shut Down Trump’s Agenda

Three weeks into President Donald Trump’s second term and the Democrat Party is rudderless.

They lack compelling, charismatic leadership. They are rapidly losing ground in the culture war that they dominated for so long. They don’t have any favorable issues or narratives that are breaking out into the broader cultural consciousness. Their tried-and-true tactic of public shaming and cancelation couldn’t even keep the young DOGE employee known as “Big Balls” out of a job.

However, there is one element of the activist left that still poses a significant threat to the Donald Trump and his agenda, and that is lawfare. Many of the same elements of our system of justice that were used to harass, bankrupt, and even try to jail President Trump in years past are still in place and are already being weaponized against MAGA right now.

Here are several activist judges who are trying to take control of the government for the Deep State as we speak.

Judge Angel Kelley, U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Joe Biden

Yesterday, Kelley granted a restraining order against National Institute of Health (NIH) funding cuts. The Trump administration had moved to capped indirect costs, i.e. reimbursements for “overhead” expenses on university research, at 15 percent. This is fundamental to the Trump administration’s agenda of slashing waste, but it was met with strong pushback from the universities. Judge Kelley immediately stepped in on their behalf.

Kelley has a history of judicial activism, and this is hardly a secret. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said in 2021 that Kelley “has made it a personal mission to bring about change through her role on the bench.” This is entirely accurate.

For starters, her career has been defined by Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) practices. Biden boasted that DEI was a factor in her appointment, highlighting her African American and Asian American ancestry as part of his administration’s “push to expand diversity on the federal bench.” She openly uses DEI criteria in hiring. “Diversity is very important to me,” she said during a Berkeley Law Judges-in-Residence program. “I want people who bring different life experiences and diversity can mean any number of things — race, gender, geography, socio-economic, work experience, all of it.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) stated that she said, “there is systemic racism in almost all systems, particularly the court system,” echoing critical race theory.

She also participated in the “China Judicial Exchange,” which is affiliated with the People’s Court of China, according to a report.

She has had a number of controversial and noteworthy decisions as well:

• She ruled that a police officer did not have a right to First Amendment protections when he criticized a bill called “the George Floyd Act” on his personal Facebook page; the officer called Floyd a criminal in the post. She cited the bogus Black Lives Matter talking point that “the vast majority of protests were peaceful, yet departments across the country met many of those same protests with tear gas, arrests, flash grenades, and more-sometimes with fatal consequences for demonstrators.”
• She dismissed a complaint from a Tufts University student who sued the university for a tuition and fees due to canceled in-person classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• She dismissed a case brought by 19 people alleging personal injury and distress against the Boston Public Health Commission requiring proof of COVID-19 vaccination to “enter indoor entertainment, recreation, dining and fitness establishments.”
• She dismissed a religious discrimination case brought by a hospital employee “who was terminated for not being vaccinated.” The First Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the ruling. Kelley claimed that the plaintiff failed to demonstrate a sincerely held religious belief.

Kelley also has been known to take a “soft on crime” approach. In February 2024, for example, she sentenced a FedEx driver who stole and sold three guns from packages to six days in prison and 250 hours of community service. Stolen firearm convictions can carry a 10-year prison sentence and fines can be up to $250,000 per offense.

All of this history suggests Kelley is a woke judge with a history of judicial activism, and she is standing in the way of a portion of Trump’s agenda.

But she’s not alone.

Senior Judge Amy Berman Jackson, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Barack Obama

Jackson recently made news by temporarily reinstated the fired head of the Office of the Special Counsel, Hampton Dellinger, a Biden appointee. She is known as a clear partisan with a long history of attacking Trump and his Republican allies. She presided over the Russian collusion case and multiple January 6 U.S. Capitol riot cases, where she built a reputation for opining on her judicial philosophy for an hour or more even during “procedural courtroom check-ins,” according to CNN.

She’s also “known for her sharp criticism of the Trump administration’s moves,” according to the New York Times in an article about the 40-month sentence she gave Roger Stone. She’s passed out prison time to J6 defendants like baseball cards.

Prior to becoming a judge, Jackson donated at least $1,500 to Democrats.

Chief Judge John J. McConnell Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island, nominated by President Barack Obama

A Democrat donor, McConnell is attempting to block another spending freeze from Trump and is even taking the extreme approach of threatening administration officials with criminal charges if it is not reversed.

But McConnell is more than just a typical Democrat, he’s a committed activist, as the Daily Caller reported:

While he was in private practice as an attorney until 2009, McConnell donated hundreds of thousands to Democratic campaigns and political action committees, including 2008 presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama, according to Federal Election Commission records. He also donated over $8,000 to Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s 2006 senate campaign.

He not only worked at the ACLU, but he was on the board of directors for the Rhode Island branch of Planned Parenthood for four years.

“The scale of McConnell’s political giving sets him apart from most other judges nominated during the Trump and Obama administrations,” according to Roll Call:

In the last 30 years, he contributed half a million dollars to federal political committees, more than any other judge nominated by Presidents Barack Obama or Donald Trump. About $190,000 went to members of Congress. At least $200,000 more went directly to the Democratic Party and its state affiliates, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records.

He contributed nearly $12,000 to Whitehouse and almost $9,000 to Rhode Island’s senior senator, Democrat Jack Reed. As his home-state senators, both had the power to propel or torpedo his nomination. Whitehouse was on the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2011 and voted on McConnell’s confirmation to the federal bench that year. McConnell had also made contributions to top Democratic leaders such as Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Richard J. Durbin; and to Sen. Al Franken, who also voted on McConnell’s confirmation.

A person with this level of partisanship ought to be recused from any cases that are remotely political in nature.

Senior Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, nominated by President Bill Clinton

 Kollar-Kotelly boldly stood against Trump’s efforts to cut government excess by blocking DOGE from “obtaining access to certain Treasury Department payment records,” which handles an estimated 90 percent of federal payments.

The judge is known for having sentenced seven pro-life activists to federal prison in a particularly cruel fashion. The husband of activist Paula “Paulette” Harlow, 77, whom Kollar-Kotelly sentenced to prison, was thoroughly rebuked by the judge when he emphasized that his wife was dying and plead for mercy and leniency. In response, Kollar-Kotelly suggested that Harlow “make every effort to stay alive” as part of the “tenets of your religion.”

Nasty.

In 2017, Judge Kollar-Kotelly blocked enforcement of the Trump’s transgender military ban, maintaining that the plaintiffs “have established that they will be injured by these directives, due both to the inherent inequality they impose, and the risk of discharge and denial of accession that they engender.”

Judge Paul A. Engelmayer, of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, nominated by President Barack Obama

Engelmayer blocked DOGE’s access to the Treasury Department payment system. In his ruling, Engelmayer forbade all political appointees including the Treasury Secretary(!) from accessing Department of Treasury data.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) explained the ruling on my podcast, “The Alex Marlow Show.”

“The ruling is just four pages long. It appears to me to be all boilerplate, pretty generic language with zero substantive legal analysis,” Lee said.

“It was issued ex parte, meaning the Trump administration lawyers weren’t allowed to argue, they weren’t even in the room,” he added, noting that the aggressive ruling came down with apparently only activist leftists in the room.

“This is a really aggressive order that,” Lee explained, because “in essence” it implies that “Scott Bessent simply occupies a ceremonial role without real power.”

Pure lawfare.

Senior Judge George O’Toole Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, nominated by President Bill Clinton

O’Toole has already tried to buck Trump two to significant ways.

First, he blocked Trump’s federal government employee buyout even after 65,000 federal workers had already taken the offer. This prolonged a pause on the deferred resignation program.

He also temporarily blocked the transfer of trans women (aka biological males) to men’s prisons. This ruling rebuffs part of Trump’s “two sexes” executive order from taking full effect. This also prolongs “trans” prisoners’ access to “gender-affirming care.”

Chief Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales, of the U.S. District Court for the District of New Mexico, nominated by President Barack Obama

Gonzales made headlines by blocking the deportations of Venezuelan criminals to Guantanamo Bay. 

He was once a political operative working for New Mexico Democrat Sen. Jeff Bingaman as his legislative assistant. Though it was more than 20 years ago, during that time, Bingaman supported a myriad of political positions that were contrary to the MAGA world view, including:

• Voting no on increasing penalties for drug offenses (1999)
• Voting no on spending international development funds on drug control (1996)
• Voting no on abstinence education (1996)
• Voting no on capping foreign aid (1999)
• Voting no on allowing more flexibility in federal school rules (1999)
• Voting no on strengthening the trade embargo against Cuba (1996)
• Voting yes on $17.9 billion to IMF
• Voting yes on allowing more foreign workers into the US for farm work (1998)
• Voting no on requiring a super-majority for tax increases (1998)
• Voting no on a “partial-birth/late-term abortion” bill that would have prohibited “any individual from knowingly performing a procedure, in which a fetus is partially delivered before it is aborted.” (1997)

The pattern is clear: these are political operatives using the judicial system to pass de facto legislation that blocks elements of the Trump agenda. Maybe some of this will get overturned, but it gums up with works and undermines the agenda of the democratically elected president.

Though the players are largely unfamiliar to the general public, they are performing essentially the same function as the Lisa Monacos, Jack Smiths, and Alvin Braggs of the world.

These lawfare judges are without question the most pressing and urgent threat to MAGA.

They will use whatever means necessary to stop Trump in his tracks.

Whether the White House can effectively fight through them will be the defining factor of the next four years of American life.

Alex Marlow is the Editor-in-Chief of Breitbart News and a New York Times bestselling author of Breaking Biden and Breaking the News. He is the host of  “The Alex Marlow Show” podcast produced weekdays by Breitbart News and Salem Podcast Network. You can subscribe to the podcast on YouTube, Rumble, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify. You can follow Alex on Facebook, Instagram, and X at @AlexMarlow.