The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in Trump v. CASA, Inc., released Friday, finally put the brakes on the reckless abuse of nationwide injunctions by lower courts—and has Democrats in full meltdown mode. The left’s favorite judicial weapon just got neutered, and the hypocrisy is impossible to ignore.
The liberal wing of the court didn’t do itself any favors, either. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent was so horrible that Justice Amy Coney Barrett felt compelled to call it out in the majority opinion.
But Justice Elena Kagan’s credibility also took a direct hit. In a stunning display of judicial flip-flopping, Kagan’s own words from 2022 have come back to haunt her, exposing the left’s all-too-familiar habit of changing the rules when it suits their political objectives.
Nationwide injunctions have been the left’s go-to tactic for derailing conservative policy at the stroke of a single judge’s pen. Under Trump, district judges from deep-blue enclaves repeatedly issued sweeping orders to block administration policies nationwide at an unprecedented pace, no matter how tenuous the legal grounds.
Despite all the apocalyptic rhetoric, there’s no doubt that the left’s current position on nationwide injunctions is purely political—and Justice Elena Kagan accidentally proved it.
How? Well, Justice Kagan, who dissented in this case, was singing a very different tune just a couple of years ago. Back in 2022, when President Biden was in the White House and conservatives were the ones seeking relief from his executive orders, Kagan was openly skeptical of nationwide injunctions.
“This can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stuck for the years that it takes to go through a normal process,” she said.
That’s not some out-of-context paraphrase—it’s her own words, on the record.
Hellbound and Down 