The Justice Department Sues All The Federal Judges In Maryland

Summary

Summary of NPR Politics Podcast Episode: "The Justice Department Sues All The Federal Judges In Maryland"

Overview

In the July 9, 2025 episode of The NPR Politics Podcast, NPR's political reporters delve into an unprecedented legal showdown: the U.S. Justice Department's decision to sue all federal judges in Maryland. This bold move has stirred significant controversy, raising questions about the separation of powers, judicial independence, and the current administration's approach to the judiciary.

Background of the DOJ's Lawsuit

The episode opens with Carrie Johnson outlining the origins of the lawsuit. In May 2025, the Chief Judge of the District of Maryland implemented an order that froze deportation cases involving migrants who filed habeas petitions challenging their deportation. This temporary 48-hour pause aimed to allow judges ample time to assess the legal arguments and individual circumstances of each case.

However, this judicial intervention did not sit well with the Justice Department. Carrie Johnson explains:

"The Justice Department basically says that these courts are infringing on the executive branch's core power with respect to national security, the border and immigration. [00:03:19] They argue in this lawsuit, which is pretty unusual, that the judges in Maryland are basically violating congressional limits that have been put on district courts." [Carrie Johnson, 03:19]

The DOJ contends that district courts like Maryland's overreach their authority by making final decisions on deportation matters, a domain traditionally reserved for the executive branch.

The Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia

Central to the dispute is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident who was deported to El Salvador by administrative order. Questions arose regarding whether Garcia received proper due process during his deportation, leading to legal battles that escalated to the Supreme Court. Although Garcia has been returned to the United States and is now facing multiple criminal charges, the strength of the DOJ's case remains questionable.

Legal Analysis and Historical Context

Rob, one of the podcast's contributors, provides historical context, noting that the DOJ's lawsuit against an entire federal district court is extraordinarily rare. He references a similar case from 1995 involving Rhode Island, highlighting the uniqueness of the current situation:

"The Trump DOJ says they have found at least one case where the Justice Department has sued an entire court before, and that actually happened back in 1995 involving the U.S. attorney in Rhode Island." [Rob, 07:13]

Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, criticizes the Maryland court's automatic implementation of temporary pauses in deportation cases:

"These temporary pauses are supposed to be extraordinary, but what the Maryland court has done is to kind of make them automatic. So he has a big problem with it." [Carrie Johnson quoting Andrew Arthur, 05:13]

The Trump Administration's Stance on the Judiciary

The episode delves into the broader context of the Trump administration's strained relationship with the judiciary. Mara Liasson discusses President Trump's history of criticizing judges and his preference for an empowered executive branch:

"Donald Trump feels that his branch of government, the executive branch, should be stronger and more powerful than the two other branches, Congress, which is pretty much abdicated, and the judiciary. And that's why he keeps on attacking judges and now he's suing them." [Mara Liasson, 09:06]

This antagonistic posture extends beyond rhetoric, with efforts to undermine judicial independence becoming more pronounced.

Impact and Responses from the Legal Community

The legal community has expressed alarm over the DOJ's lawsuit. Andre Davis, a retired judge from Maryland, shared his concerns:

"In a normal course of business, if the administration or the Justice Department didn't like something a judge had done, it would have a back and forth, it would ask the judges for a meeting, it would lodge an appeal. But in this case, the Justice Department actually sued all of them and the clerk, too." [Carrie Johnson quoting Andre Davis, 11:25]

Furthermore, the creation of the nonprofit group Keep Our Republic—comprising 50 retired judges—highlights the growing unease within the judiciary about potential executive overreach and threats to judicial autonomy.

Future Implications and Potential Developments

Looking ahead, Carrie Johnson anticipates significant developments:

"The new judge hearing this case against the Maryland judges has called for a hearing in mid August. ... it could get all the way back up to the Supreme Court, which, by the way, despite President Trump's criticism of lower court judges this year ... the Trump administration is largely winning at the Supreme Court level." [Carrie Johnson, 13:26]

Mara Liasson raises a critical question about the balance of power:

"Are we on a slippery slope to having a very different form of government, one with an all-powerful unchecked executive or not? ... Will the judiciary, which is the branch that's supposed to tell the executive if he's actually executing the laws faithfully, push back against him?" [Mara Liasson, 13:26]

The outcome of this legal battle could set significant precedents for the relationship between the executive branch and the judiciary, with implications for future administrations and the integrity of the U.S. legal system.

Conclusion

The NPR Politics Podcast's episode on the DOJ's lawsuit against Maryland's federal judges provides a comprehensive analysis of a landmark case that sits at the intersection of immigration law, executive power, and judicial independence. As the case progresses towards a mid-August hearing and possibly higher courts, the nation watches closely, recognizing that the resolution could reshape the dynamics between America's branches of government.

Notable Quotes:

• Carrie Johnson (03:19): "The Justice Department basically says that these courts are infringing on the executive branch's core power with respect to national security, the border and immigration."

• Rob (07:13): "It's outrageous that they actually named individually, in their official capacities, all 15 judges of the court. And so you have to ask yourself, what is going on here? What kind of performance? Who is the audience for this?"

• Mara Liasson (09:06): "Donald Trump feels that his branch of government, the executive branch, should be stronger and more powerful than the two other branches, Congress... and the judiciary."

• Mara Liasson (13:26): "Are we on a slippery slope to having a very different form of government, one with an all-powerful unchecked executive or not?"

Key Points Covered:

• The Justice Department's unprecedented lawsuit against all federal judges in Maryland.
• Background on the legal case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and its implications.
• Historical context comparing the current lawsuit to past instances.
• Analysis of the Trump administration's adversarial stance towards the judiciary.
• Responses from the legal community and the formation of advocacy groups.
• Potential future outcomes and their impact on the separation of powers in the U.S. government.

This detailed summary encapsulates the episode's critical discussions, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with a comprehensive understanding of a pivotal moment in American politics and law.

Transcript

[Carrie Johnson]

The House of Representatives has approved a White House request to claw back two years of previously approved funding for public media. The rescissions package now moves on to the Senate. This move poses a serious threat to local stations and public media as we know it. Please take a stand for public media [e-mail] thank you.

[Ashley Lopez]

Hey there, it's Ashley. Before we get started, I have a quick favor to ask. We want to hear from you. Send us your timestamps of what you're getting up to, whether you're out and about or just hanging out. Record a voice memo on your phone and send it to npr politicspr.org with the subject line timestamp, and we might just use it on the show. And if you need a reminder of what a timestamp sounds like, just listen right now.

[Rob]

Hi, this is Rob waiting at Dulles.

[Carrie Johnson]

Airport to fly to Portugal, where I'll be competing with my border collie, Taifon, in the Senior Agility World Championships. Wow.

[Ashley Lopez]

This podcast was recorded at 12:55pm Eastern Time on Wednesday, July 9, 2025.

[Carrie Johnson]

Things may have changed by the time.

[Rob]

You listen to this podcast, but I'll hopefully be coming home with ribbons and.

[Carrie Johnson]

Definitely with my best boy.

[Ashley Lopez]

Aw, I love it. Dog people activated. That is so exciting.

[Carrie Johnson]

I want an update on that. The competition for sure.

[Ashley Lopez]

I didn't know that senior dogs have their own thing. That makes a lot of sense, though. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.

[Carrie Johnson]

I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Ashley Lopez]

And today we're talking about an unusual move by the Justice Department to sue all of the federal judges in Maryland. Carrie, this is your reporting. Can you explain where this is all coming from and why, specifically Maryland?

[Carrie Johnson]

Yeah, sure. So back in May, the chief judge in the District of Maryland issued an order basically saying for for any migrant who filed a habeas petition with the court, basically challenging the legality of their deportation. That case would be frozen for 48 hours to give the judges in Maryland time to consider the legal arguments and the status of that person. And all of this came down in the wake of the deportation of the Maryland man, Kilmer Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department later admitted was deported to El Salvador in an administrative. There have been a lot of legal clashes about whether he got proper due process, what exactly he did or didn't do. But what it appears to be is that these judges in Maryland basically wanted to put a temporary pause a 48 hour pause on any deportation so they could get their arms around the facts of these cases.

[Mara Liasson]

What happened to Kilmara Abrego Garcia, that.

[Carrie Johnson]

Legal fight is still going on. After a lot of back and forth, including a trip all the way up to the Supreme Court. That case is now being fought in multiple states. Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now back in the United States, but he's being detained and the Justice Department is charging him with multiple criminal offenses. He's fighting those charges. And there are some questions about the strength of that case.

[Mara Liasson]

And what is so unreasonable about 48 hours? What is the big principle that they think the courts violated?

[Carrie Johnson]

Well, you know, the Justice Department basically says that these courts are infringing on the executive branch's core power with respect to national security, the border and immigration. And they argue in this lawsuit, which is pretty unusual, that the judges in Maryland are basically violating congressional limits that have been put on district courts. District courts are not supposed to be making these final calls with respect to deportation to begin with. They say. They say the judges themselves are disregarding their own process for adopting rules for courts. And basically they just say they're way, way, way overreaching. You know, DOJ says it's really been used in at least 12 cases so far, and it's a big problem for the Justice Department. So they want it to stop. Hmm.

[Mara Liasson]

Well, you know, the executive branch does have a lot of leeway with immigration decisions traditionally. So what is the role of the court? It's not an immigration court. What's the role of the Maryland court in dealing with these cases?

[Carrie Johnson]

I think we're going to find out as a result of this lawsuit. But I reached out to a guy named Andrew Arthur. He's a fellow at the center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for limits on immigration. Here's what he had to say about this case.

[Rob]

It's an aggressive move by the doj, but arguably this is an aggressive move by the district court. I'm not aware of any other court in any other context that has issued a standing order on injunctive relief like this. Congress has limited the authority of district courts to issue orders in immigration cases. Section 242 of the Immigration and Nationality act attempts to transfer all appeals of administrative immigration orders to the circuit courts.

[Carrie Johnson]

And Arthur basically told me that these temporary pauses are supposed to be extraordinary, but what the Maryland court has done is to kind of make them automatic. So he has a big problem with it.

[Ashley Lopez]

Well, Kerry, I mean, to what extent has something like this happened Before.

[Carrie Johnson]

Well, let me first say that this is super unusual. The Justice Department has sued this entire federal district court bench in Maryland. And normally, in a normal case, when a judge is sued by, say, a prisoner who's appeared before the judge, the Justice Department is the one that's defending the judge in this case, the DOJ is the one doing the suing. So the judges have had to go and find their own lawyer, and they found an awfully good one. His name is Paul Clement. He was the Solicitor General under President George W. Bush. He's been doing a lot of pro bono work in a lot of cases this year involving kind of touchstones with respect to the Trump administration. And this is so odd that the Justice Department also sued the clerk of the court in Maryland. So the clerk of the court is now kind of prohibited from doing any kind of, like, administrative tasks, like with the docket. So they've had to transfer this case to Roanoke, Virginia, to Judge Thomas Cullen, who was appointed by President Trump in his first. And everything is gonna have to go through a special procedure because this is so odd to begin with. But despite all the talk about this being unprecedented, which I've heard a lot from lawyers around the country, the Trump DOJ says they have found at least one case where the Justice Department has sued an entire court before, and that actually happened back in 1995 involving the U.S. attorney in Rhode Island. His name is Sheldon Whitehouse. That name may be familiar to you because he's currently a sitting Democratic senator from Rhode Island. And that case revol the court in Rhode island imposing kind of a rule that would make the Justice Department take extra steps before it wanted to issue a subpoena to a lawyer.

[Ashley Lopez]

All right, we're going to take a quick break. More in a moment.

[Rob]

This is Eric Glass on this American Life. Sometimes we just show up somewhere, turn on our tape recorders, and see what happens. If you can't get seven cars in 12 days, you got to look yourself in the mirror and say, holy cow. What, are you kidding me? Like, this car dealership trying to sell its monthly quota of cars, and it is not going well.

[Ashley Lopez]

I just don't want one balloon to.

[Rob]

A car balloon the whole freaking place so it looks like a circus.

[Carrie Johnson]

Real life stories.

[Rob]

Every week this summer on Planet Money Summer School, we're learning about political economy. We're getting into the nitty gritty of what government does with things like trade, taxes, immigration, and healthcare. So politics and economics, which are taught.

[Carrie Johnson]

Separately, they shouldn't be separated at all.

[Rob]

I think you have to understand one.

[Ashley Lopez]

To really appreciate the other.

[Rob]

So what is the right amount of government in our lives? Tune into Planet Money Summer School from npr, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Carrie Johnson]

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[Rob]

Game is Netflix's most popular show of all time and it just wrapped up its final season and we're here to help you unpack that bloody finale. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ashley Lopez]

And we're back. Mara President Trump and his administration have criticized judges rulings before and throughout his time in office. But pursuing legal action against the judges themselves, it seems like a whole other thing. How does this tie into the Trump administration's like, sort of general attitude towards the judiciary?

[Mara Liasson]

Donald Trump has attacked the judiciary and individual judges almost at every turn. I mean, he's talked about unelected judges. He feels that the Justice Department was weaponized against him in his first term, and he has yet to actually defy the Supreme Court. But he doesn't have a whole lot of respect for judges except for the ones that he appointed to the Supreme Court. Or for, you could argue the rule of law. I mean, that TikTok case, which is so interesting, law that was passed by big bipartisan majorities, upheld by the Supreme Court, he's ignored it. He was allowed to have one extension before he had to obey the law, and he took that and now he's issued more extensions and doesn't seem to care. So I think in general, Donald Trump feels that his branch of government, the executive branch, should be stronger and more powerful than the two other branches, Congress, which is pretty much abdicated, and the judiciary. And that's why he keeps on attacking judges and now he's suing them.

[Carrie Johnson]

I think one of the reasons why this new lawsuit by the Justice Department against these federal judges in Maryland has gotten so many lawyers concerned is that it's coming at a time when threats of violence against judges are up this year and when many people, including multiple members of Congress and some people inside the Trump administration, have actually called for impeachment of federal judges who are basically doing their jobs and they don't like the decisions these Judges have made. So the climate is quite tense right now. And I talked about that with Andre Davis. He actually sat on the district court in Maryland and the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals before he retired. And Judge Davis told me he found out about this lawsuit by the Justice Department when he was on a plane headed to North Carolina with a number of other judges who had actually been sued. They were all going to some big time judicial conference. And here's what he said about the case.

[Rob]

It's outrageous that they actually named individually, in their official capacities, all 15 judges of the court. And so you have to ask yourself, what is going on here? What kind of performance? Who is the audience for this?

[Carrie Johnson]

Judge Davis told me that in a normal course of business, if the administration or the Justice Department didn't like something a judge had done, it would have a back and forth, it would ask the judges for a meeting, it would lodge an appeal. But in this case, the Justice Department actually sued all of them and the clerk, too. And he says that really represents a broader breakdown in the communication and respect that the executive branch has for the judiciary. In fact, things have gotten so tense that there's a nonprofit group called Keep Our Republic, and they've actually created a group of retired judges, there are 50 of them now, including Judge Davis, to speak up about some of these issues. Because if. If you're a sitting judge, you can't ethically talk about these kinds of issues. So Judge Davis told me they're trying to be a voice.

[Ashley Lopez]

Yeah. Well, Carrie, what happens next and what are you going to be looking out for as this case, or I guess several cases, work its way through the courts?

[Carrie Johnson]

The new judge hearing this case against the Maryland judges has called for a hearing in mid August. So a lot more will happen then. And, you know, these issues are so tense that it may be that whatever happens here, the losing side appeals, and it could get all the way back up to the Supreme Court, which, by the way, despite President Trump's criticism of lower court judges this year for ruling against him, and we should say that lower court judges appointed by Democratic presidents and by Republican presidents have ruled against him in many situations, the Trump administration is largely winning at the Supreme Court level. So if this case gets that high, high, and given how much deference the Supreme Court has given to the executive branch on issues involving immigration and national security, there could be some reason for the Trump administration and the DOJ to feel good about this case.

[Mara Liasson]

Yeah, I mean, what I'm watching is definitely what the Supreme Court does. That's the final arbiter here. And the president has said that he will always follow Supreme Court decisions. He is very confident that the Supreme Court will rule for him. So I guess the question I have about cases like this is are we on a slippery slope to having a very different form of government, one with an all powerful unchecked executive or not? Or will the judiciary, which is the branch that's supposed to tell the executive if he's actually executing the laws faithfully, that's why he's called an executive, will push back against him? And that's the big question of the Trump era. And we're going to find the answer out hopefully in a couple months.

[Carrie Johnson]

Yeah.

[Ashley Lopez]

All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics.

[Carrie Johnson]

I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department.

[Mara Liasson]

And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

[Ashley Lopez]

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast.

[Rob]

You know those things you shout at the radio or maybe even at this very NPR podcast on NPR's Wait, Wait, don't tell me. We actually say those things on the radio and on the podcast. We're rude across all media. We think the news can take it. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, don't tell me. Wherever you get your podcasts, this message comes from Square. Your favorite neighborhood spots are using Square to do everything from covering cash flow gaps to expanding to new locations. Wherever your business is growing, Square meets you there. Go to square.com go NPR to learn more.

[Ashley Lopez]

Pop culture happy hour. NPR's easy, breezy, laid back pop culture podcast has brought you the best in culture for the past 15 years.

[Rob]

That means we spent the last 15 years talking about what exactly?

[Carrie Johnson]

Bad reality TV? Actually good Marvel movies?

[Rob]

Actually awful Marvel Movies, Reaping pop music, prestige dramas, Netflix slop.

[Carrie Johnson]

That's 15 years of buzzy pop culture chit chat. And here's to many more with you along for the ride. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on.

[Ashley Lopez]

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