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Immunity, Injunctions, and Impunity: The Death of Judicial Power in Trump’s America By Tony Pentimalli Let’s stop pretending this is normal. The House GOP just slipped a dagger into the back of the judicial branch—and barely anyone noticed, let alone flinched. In the shadow of the Supreme Court's devastating July 2024 ruling granting Donald Trump sweeping immunity for “official acts,” House Republicans are working to eliminate two of the most powerful tools courts have to hold government officials accountable: contempt enforcement and nationwide injunctions. These aren’t tweaks to legal process. They’re structural demolitions. They clear a path for authoritarianism dressed in legal procedure, and they come while the country is still catching its breath from the last blow. Buried in the 2025 reconciliation budget bill, House Bill 8772—introduced by Sen. Jim Banks of Indiana—lies a quiet clause with catastrophic consequences. It prohibits federal courts from holding government officials in contempt unless plaintiffs post a financial bond. This requirement, almost never used in public interest cases, would mean that if a judge orders the government to stop violating your rights, and the government ignores it, you’d have to pay out of pocket just to make the court enforce its own ruling. This isn’t hypothetical. During Trump’s first term, his administration was held in contempt multiple times—most notably in 2018, when it defied court orders to reunite separated migrant families. U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw threatened detention for ICE officials, and the enforcement worked. If this new law passes, the next administration could defy those same rulings without consequence. The courts would be paralyzed. We’ve already seen what that looks like. In March 2025, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an emergency verbal order directing the Trump administration to recall deportation flights carrying over 260 Venezuelan asylum seekers. The administration ignored it. The planes continued, and those migrants were sent to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned in the notorious Terrorism Confinement Center. Homeland Security claimed the order came too late or wasn’t legally binding, even as video showed the planes still grounded when the ruling was issued. Judge Boasberg threatened contempt. The administration shrugged. Among the deported was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident mistakenly identified as a Venezuelan national. He had lived in the U.S. for more than 15 years, was married and employed, and was in the process of renewing his work permit when he was swept up during a raid. Denied due process, he was put on a flight to a country he had never visited. His American family has not heard from him since. This is the future the GOP is writing into law—a government that violates constitutional rights and walks away untouched because the courts have been stripped of the power to intervene. And it doesn’t stop there. On May 15, the House Judiciary Committee advanced H.R. 8124—the so-called “No Rogue Rulings Act”—which would ban federal district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions. These injunctions have long served as a vital check on executive overreach, halting unlawful federal policies before they can do widespread harm. They were used to stop Trump’s Muslim ban, protect DACA recipients, and block Medicaid work requirements that violated basic health protections. Republicans claim this bill restores judicial humility. In truth, it removes judicial protection. Without nationwide injunctions, victims are trapped in a patchwork of legal shields, where justice depends entirely on geography. A federal judge in California may rule a federal policy unconstitutional, but if you live in Texas, that decision won’t protect you. Imagine a pregnant woman in a red state denied a medically necessary abortion after being raped. A federal judge might rule the denial unconstitutional, but if they can’t issue a nationwide injunction, the ruling won’t apply across state lines. Your rights would hinge on your ZIP code. Laurence Tribe, professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, warned that the contempt limitation “effectively handcuffs the judiciary.” He called it a clear sign that Trump and his allies “no longer accept the rule of law as binding on them.” These changes are happening in an environment where Trump, now in his second term, boasts about jailing political enemies, threatens the press, and treats federal courts as obstacles rather than arbiters. In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court’s 6–3 majority gave him broad immunity for acts deemed “official,” even when abusive. It was a devastating precedent, erasing centuries of legal accountability with a single stroke. When the deportation case known as J.G.G. v. Trump reached the Supreme Court in April, the justices didn’t rule on the administration’s defiance. Instead, they issued a 9–0 procedural decision, stating the challenge must be refiled in Texas, where the migrants were held. The executive stonewalled justice. The judiciary answered with a procedural shrug. There has been one notable exception. In A.A.R.P. v. Trump—where the initials represent an anonymized plaintiff, not the senior advocacy organization—the Supreme Court ruled 7–2 that the administration’s expedited deportation process under the Alien Enemies Act violated due process. The Court found that giving detainees just 24 hours’ notice before removal, often without legal representation or adequate information, “surely does not pass muster.” Deportations were halted, and the case was sent back to the Fifth Circuit for further review. That decision was a flash of judicial independence in an increasingly dark legal landscape. But it came under a law that never should have been revived. The Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798 as part of John Adams’s infamous Alien and Sedition Acts, was originally used to target French nationals during a manufactured wartime panic. A dusty relic of America’s authoritarian flirtations has now been reawakened to justify mass expulsion in 2025. This is how the system erodes—one ignored order, one hollowed-out check, one extinguished safeguard at a time. And if this sounds familiar, it should. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán gutted judicial independence using nearly identical methods. In Turkey, Recep Erdoğan purged the courts to make them compliant with executive rule. Both used the framework of democracy to slowly dismantle it. While America slides toward that same fate, the media mostly yawns. The New York Times buried its coverage. CNN ignored it. MSNBC ran one segment, then pivoted to celebrity gossip. Civil rights groups like the ACLU and Protect Democracy have raised the alarm, but the story still hasn’t broken through. Nationwide injunctions and contempt enforcement aren’t obscure legal tools. They helped desegregate schools, block voter suppression, protect immigrants, and defend reproductive rights. They aren’t optional. They are foundational. The courts are being weakened. The guardrails are being removed. The president is being armored. And none of it is an accident. If these changes succeed—if contempt is neutered, injunctions are banned, and immunity becomes gospel—then the last true check on presidential abuse will collapse. The courts won’t save us. They won’t be allowed to. But we’re not powerless. Call your lawmakers. Fund the watchdogs. Amplify the truth. The judiciary cannot defend democracy if democracy doesn’t first defend the judiciary. *Tony Pentimalli is a political analyst and commentator fighting for democracy, economic justice, and social equity. Follow him for sharp analysis and hard-hitting critiques on Facebook and BlueSky @tonywriteshere.bsky.social