Some see politics as a pendulum, swinging one way then lazily drifting back to the other.
Politics also could be seen as circular, as in what comes around goes around.
Democrats may soon learn this, much to their chagrin.
A federal judge in Texas recently blocked one of President Joe Biden’s actions to throw open America’s borders.
Specifically, Judge Drew Tipton, appointed by President Donald Trump, hit the pause button on Biden’s executive order halting all deportations of illegal immigrants for 100 days.
Tipton did so in response to a lawsuit filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican.
Paxton had argued that Texas and the Department of Homeland Security had a deal, struck as the clock ran down on the Trump administration, that mandated the feds to discuss with the state any changes to immigration policy.
Biden simply disregarded the agreement.
But Tipton, who blocked the deportation pause for two weeks, found that “the threat of injury to Texas outweighs any potential harm to Defendants and the public interest is served and protected by the issuance” of a temporary restraining order.
The kicker is that Tipton’s ruling applies across the country.
Now, in days of yore, like before Trump became president, a district judge’s ruling held little, if any, weight outside of his or her jurisdiction.
But Trump emerged as a special case among presidents, as Democrats challenged policy after policy in friendly courts.
In a February 2019 speech, Assistant U.S. Attorney General Beth Williams noted, “Before 1963, no court in this country had issued such a broad injunction, and they were exceedingly rare until President Reagan took office.”
“Even after that, by Justice Department estimates, courts issued an average of only 1.5 nationwide injunctions per year against the Reagan, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations, and 2.5 per year against the Obama administration,” she added.
“In President Trump’s first year in office, however, judges issued a whopping 20 nationwide injunctions — an eightfold increase. This matches the entire eight-year total of such injunctions issued against President Obama during his two terms. We are now at 30, matching the total number of injunctions issued against the first 42 presidents combined.”
Just one year later, that number had nearly doubled to 55, according to a speech by Deputy U.S. Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen.
Rosen also picked up on a peculiar trend with nationwide injunctions.
“Nearly one-third of the nationwide injunctions issued in the last three years came from courts in California,” he said. “Conversely, in two-thirds of the states, no nationwide injunctions have been issued at all.”
Rosen suggested that those who sued the Trump administration were “forum-shopping” for friendly liberal judges – mostly, when not in California, in places like Washington state, Oregon, Hawaii, Maryland, and New York.
Or, Rosen added, “perhaps this phenomenon is connected with newer or less experienced judges, as more than two-thirds of the nationwide injunctions issued during the current administration came from district judges appointed after January 2009.”
That is, they were appointed by President Barack Obama – and apparently susceptible to injecting politics into the law.
One day, fair historians will look back on issues such as this, two nearly purely partisan impeachments, spying by political opponents, and other norm-crushing behaviors by Democrats and determine that Trump didn’t wreck the system; that was done by those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome.
That aside, though, it seems Attorney General Paxton learned well from the Democrats’ “forum-shopping.”
And perhaps, if other GOP attorneys general does likewise, we can expect all those judges Trump appointed to copy their blue-state Democratic counterparts, and tap the brakes on Biden’s aggressive efforts to remake the country.