Below is my column in The Hill on the latest controversy from the chambers of Judge Indira Talwani. While the court could be upheld in halting the executive order on mail-in balloting in this case, Talwani is one of a number of jurists who have been habitual blockers of executive reforms and policies. For forum-shoppers, Talwani has in the past proven to be something of a one-stop option. Her record reaffirms the rationale for justices in using the emergency docket, or so-called “shadow docket” to deter gaming the system.
Here is the column:
This week, the Trump administration found itself in a familiar position: facing an injunction from Judge Indira Talwani of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Indeed, it had just secured an order from the Supreme Court on its emergency docket lifting her earlier injunction on the U.S. Postal Service requiring voting lists to confirm U.S. citizenship.
The case against the executive order on mail-in ballots has reasonable arguments on both sides, although (as I have said previously) the challengers are likely to prevail in defeating the rule or at least delaying the policy until after the midterm elections. The Constitution gives states the primary responsibility over “the times, places, and manner of holding elections.”
However, the U.S. Postal Service is a federal agency, and the federal government does have a role in the funding and regulation of federal elections. More importantly, the Trump administration is arguing that it is not barring mail-in voting but merely imposing “modest informational requirements.” Non-citizens cannot vote in federal elections, and the new rule “does not displace a single state election law. And it need not and should not prevent a single voter from voting by mail.”
The controversy over Talwani is not necessarily the merits of her decision that the rule convenes the constitutional framework. Indeed, the Supreme Court did not rule on the merits and could well rule in favor of her interpretation. The controversy is the pattern of sweeping injunctions by Talwani and a few other judges.
Litigants have been accused of forum-shopping by going to liberal, Democratically appointed judges to prevent Trump policies from being implemented in a wide array of areas, including immigration, elections, reduction in government bureaucracies, and foreign aid.
Like her colleague in Boston, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy, Talwani is viewed by many as a one-stop-shop judge for forum-shopping. Both have issued hair-trigger injunctions, and both have been repeatedly reversed.
Talwani was reversed on Aug. 24 for imposing an injunction against the mail-in balloting policy. Her injunction was taken to be premature and without a legal injury, since the administration had not issued a formal rule. The truth is, the challengers had her at hello. She did not wait for a showing of a cognizable injury before issuing another injunction, because the decision appeared made before the case hit her own docket.
Previously, Talwani showed the same inclination in other cases. For example, she issued an injunction against revoking the humanitarian parole program for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Her order was lifted on appeal.
She also issued an injunction to stop the Trump Administration from defunding Planned Parenthood. That order was also set aside on appeal.
Regardless of the outcome of this latest injunction, Talwani has offered the strongest case in favor of the expanded use of the emergency docket, also known as the “shadow docket.” Liberal law professors and litigants have bewailed the expanded use of this docket at the Supreme Court to resolve cases without the need for a long briefing and oral argument. However, judges like Talwani have created legitimate concerns of the gaming of the system to harness or freeze new policies. This is why the “shadow docket” has become more prominent.
This year, confidential memoranda were leaked from the court on the use of the emergency docket and published by the New York Times. It was only the latest such strategic leak from a court that was once the paragon of confidentiality and civility.
The internal exchanges of the justices were illuminating as to the majority’s underlying reason for allowing this fast-track review. The immediate issue was a move by the Environmental Protection Agency to impose unlawful regulatory burdens on electric utilities despite a countervailing earlier ruling in Michigan v. EPA. Chief Justice Roberts believed (as did many) that the EPA was using the ongoing litigation to force utilities to spend billions of dollars to comply with new regulations that the Supreme Court had already rejected.
“In other words,” Roberts wrote, “the absence of stay allowed the agency to effectively implement an important program we held to be contrary to law.”
As with the national injunctions that plagued the Trump administration in its first year, this tactic was all too familiar. Litigants would go to liberal judges in Washington, Boston, and other blue cities to secure injunctions that would take years to fully litigate. That approach effectively allowed individual judges to pursue their own preferred policies or to prevent a president from carrying out promises made during an election. At most, the president might have a year left after these cases slogged through the conventional appellate process. It is an administrative version of the old adage that “justice delayed is justice denied.”
What concerned the justices was that many of these injunctions directly contravened earlier precedent, exposing the cynical purpose of these orders. For a president to be able to carry out major changes, he had to run a gauntlet of hundreds of judges, any one of whom could effectively negate reforms. In response, the Supreme Court ramped up the use of the emergency docket and cracked down on national injunctions, quickly reversing the rapidly increasing number of injunctions against the Trump administration.
With the midterm elections rapidly approaching, the odds favor challengers in either running out the clock or prevailing on the merits on the mail-in ballots. But Talwani and some other judges have reinforced suspicions of the Roberts court that some courts are willing allies of partisan groups in seeking to gum up the system.
Ironically, Roberts is one of the most likely conservative justices to be concerned with the Trump administration’s effort to force election integrity reforms on the states. Either way, it is the shadow of these judges, not the docket, that is casting the most ominous concern for many of the Supreme Court justices.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the best-selling author of “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
She, Boasberg, and others are A CLEAR & PRESENT DANGER TO OUR REPUBLIC and should be impeached.
Boasberg should be labeled a co-conspirator (sedition, insurrection could apply too) in several on going cases.
“She, Boasberg, and others are A CLEAR & PRESENT DANGER TO OUR REPUBLIC and should be impeached.”
A few more months and there will be lots of impeachments. The Orange Shitgibbon, Mullin, Hegseth, Blanche, Homan…
“Litigants have been accused of forum-shopping by going to liberal, Democratically appointed judges to prevent Trump policies from being implemented in a wide array of areas, including immigration, elections, reduction in government bureaucracies, and foreign aid.”
Wasn’t there a change to randomly-assigned federal judges?
Turns out the 2025 Judicial Conference adopted random assignment of judges to cases. But then individual District Courts and Appellate Courts asserted “local control” as a means to circumvent the new rule. They created a maze of exceptions and loopholes. This shows the tenacious political corruption within the Federal Court system — confronted with public outrage over judge-shopping by Plaintiffs’ lawyers, they announced a new rule that they could simply ignore!
Chief Justice Roberts could put his foot down. He’s a weakling.
How do you equate “exceptions and loopholes” as a “maze”? All the rest is just a rewrite that you posted a million times before.
Go wake up George will ya? At least he can entertain, you just bore.
Talwani & Murphy are highly politicized individuals whose “Behaviour” is “not good”, temperament not judicial.
“[S]hall hold their Office during good Behaviour”.
Which standard derives from “lifetime appointment during good behaviour”; but neither rule can truthfully be reduced to simply “lifetime appointment” (without perpetrating a self-enriching fraud).
What “Congress may from time to time ordained and establish” it can “defund, dissolve and defrock”. There is no permanence in “may” or “from time to time”.
A judicial appointment is not an unqualified entitlement; as with any aspect of our legal system there are standards which should be upheld by each of the individual appointee, the Congress, and the supreme Court as the “one Supreme Court”. … No Impeachment process is necessary to address “bad Behaviour” in the form of “politicization”, “gaming the system”, “participation in ‘forum shopping'” (aka lack of independence and likely involving collusion and ex parte communications), … other.
Defund, Dissolve, Defrock.
A successful impeachment requires 67 Senators for removal. The activist judges know this will not happen.
Typical Turley. He accepts that the good lady judge is quite possibly right in her interpretation of the law and constitution regarding federal efforts to interfere with elections. He accepts that even the partisan Republican SCOTUS quite possibly agree with her on the law and constitution. But… but… he has to slag her off nevertheless.
Heavens above, the Democrats might have indulged in forum shopping! Which of course Trump and his winged monkeys like Blanche never do. They never pursue the BBC in, say, a Florida court over a programme not seen in Florida. They do not move suspect criminal members of ICE to Texas to try to prevent them facing justice. They do not remove evidence in a homicide case from a state to protect their thugs.
This is why the rest of the world looks at the USA and sees a justice system that is almost as corrupt as anything Stalin could have dreamt up.
For non-lawyer you sure know how to make a fool of yourself.
Well, lawyers like Turley and Thomas and Alito and Gorsuch are exquisite at showing themselves to be fools…
You forgot Jackson, the one wearing a mask when she travels and who’s been shredded by SCOTUS twice for being criminally stupid. See you soon….
Given she is part of SCOTUS, she has not been “shredded” by SCOTUS. Moron. What has happened is that one of the conservative patsies has got upset with her. Does not mean that she was right or wrong.
Ahm… not mean right or wrong? She was publicly castigated by 5 judges. I guess that makes her wrong and you a moron. Hurry back as soon as you find soothing moronic to say.
Fools? Only a fool would make a statement like that without facts. Got any? But heck, that’s what we come to know from anons.
Says “Mack”, whoever he or she may be… You are definitely a fool to resort to that argument about “anonymity”. Even Turley is not Turley, but some first year intern looking for extra credit.
Who wrote anything about anonymity? Try harder.
“In other words,” Roberts wrote, “the absence of stay allowed the agency to effectively implement an important program we held to be contrary to law.”
Even Turley gives the reason here why her injunction is necessary and appropriate now, because a failure to stop the USPS would allow them to implement effectively (no split infinitives please, Mr Roberts) an important programme held to be contrary to law.
If SCOTUS does not agree with the judge, it should have done its bloody job and ruled on the legal basis of the earlier injunction, not hiding behind nonsense about the case being brought too early. Other proper legal systems in democracies do not allow irreparable harm to be risked over the niceties of allowing courts to meander along without regard for the reality of what is happening.
Because of the blue slip rule, all federal judicial appointments in Massachusetts must be approved by Markey and Warren.
Far left Fascists are using every means to delay and obstruct the Trump administration. I can only imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if the other side had used these tactics to delay Obama’s policies, or Biden’s policies. I hope leftwing Fascists are ready because I hope that the other side has learned a lesson and uses these same endless obstructionist tactics when a Democrat is in the White House.
Again, I can find no phrase in the Constitution that grants each and every one of America’s 677 District Court judges veto power over the President of the United States.
The Constitution doesn’t even mention District Court judges, although it ended up allowing for the possibility of their creation.
That will be the constitution that gives the President zero, zero role in the administration of elections. Trump is self-evidently acting ultra vires.
Zero? But the good ole Constitution does as executive of the USA and the 27 states who Ahave adopted the SAFE as policy.
Acting ultra vires huh? So paddle him.
The USPS falls under the authority of the executive branch. They have the authority and responsibility to guard against facilitating fraud by the postal service. As Turley pointed out, the executive order does not interfere with the states authority w/r/t to the conduct of elections. Dems just oppose any attempt to secure the sanctity of elections.
The Constitution doesn’t even mention District Court judges,…. try federal statutes. And you MAGAots wonder why MAGA is failing.
Federal Statutes: The Judiciary Act of 1789 established the structure and jurisdiction of the district courts.
28 U.S. Code: This code outlines the roles, responsibilities, and procedures for judges and the administration of the courts.
Really: the modern left, due to their hubris/insanity, have no idea how bad they have made themselves look to anyone who isn’t a hate-filled troll. Granted, they also don’t care and will continue to attempt to take everything by force. These judges are a pox on a free society. They serve a party, not we the people.
Living rent free ….
they also don’t care and will continue to attempt to take everything by force. … talk about a troll, you’re oblivious to the machinations of the Trump administration in taking over elections laws that are the domain of the states and congress.
Jimmy is the dumb Magaot on the blog.
I know … geezzzzzz
If the Dems pack SCOTUS the reliance on the shadow docket will go away. The Dems will be able to pass whatever they want without worrying about judicial review. The Constitution will no longer protect the public from an overbearing government. SCOTUS is our last line of defense.
SCOTUS is our last line of defense.
No. My 3ooo rounds and is.
Destroy MAGA through lawfare. Love MAss. judges.
COMMIE
PEDO
yes you sure are
So says the pedo boy
You’re a double pedo
That is also destroying Democracy and insurrection. No wonder as a communist you would cheer that.
Got proof?
Shakespeare may have been on to something ….