Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) vowed to file legislation stopping federal district judges from ruling on orders issued by President Donald Trump. He claims it’s outside of their jurisdiction—but the Constitution disagrees.

On Wednesday, Hawley appeared on The Charlie Kirk Show to slam district judges who have issued injunctions against the Trump administration’s acts, including the mass firings of federal workers and the rollback of DEI initiatives.

“These are district courts, local federal courts, that are saying, ‘I’m not just going to issue an order that says what the executive branch can or cannot do in my district, I’m going to issue an order that binds the executive branch for the entire nation,'” Hawley said.

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“That is not a power that I think district courts have… what needs to happen is one of two things: Either the Supreme Court needs to intervene and make clear there’s only one court that can issue rules for the whole country, that’s the Supreme Court, that’s why we only have one of them. And or, if they won’t do that, Congress needs to legislate and make clear that district courts do not have the ability to issue these kinds of injunctions.”

Sen. Josh Hawley SLAMS local district court judges issuing national injunctions on the Trump admin, calls for SCOTUS or Congress to intervene:

"These are district courts, local federal courts, that are saying, 'I'm not just going to issue an order that says what the executive… https://t.co/e1lzI3cSP5 pic.twitter.com/0KzcpkkxnW

— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) March 19, 2025

On Thursday, Hawley vowed on X (formerly Twitter) to file legislation that would strip power from district court judges, keeping them from issuing these sorts of injunctions.

“District Court judges have issued RECORD numbers of national injunctions against the Trump administration – a dramatic abuse of judicial authority. I will introduce legislation to stop this abuse for good,” he wrote, declining to include any details on what that legislation may look like.

Article III of the U.S. Constitution lays out the American judicial system. While the Supreme Court is the final authority, it is primarily an appellate court—meaning that lower courts make initial rulings which are then appealed up the chain. The Supreme Court can only be the original court in cases involving “Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party,” the Constitution reads.

District Courts are the lowest level of federal courts, and there are 94 of them throughout the U.S., with each state getting at least one, as well as the District of Columbia. Much like the state courts, district courts hear criminal cases—when federal crimes have been committed—as well as civil cases. Civil cases deal with legal and constitutional conflicts; the type of cases Hawley is referring to here.

As an example, let’s look at the recent case involving Trump’s attempt to ban transgender people from serving in the military. In a case like this, the judge can issue an injunction, which puts Trump’s order on hold, until it can be heard by the courts.

It all starts with a lawsuit—in this case, Talbott v. Trump. Talbott was initially filed by six active service members and another two people who wanted to enlist. The plaintiffs said that Trump’s executive order would keep them out of the military illegally; the defendant, the Department of Justice, disagrees, saying the order is legal.

Whether or not to issue an injunction is up to the particular judge. If the judge declines to issue an injunction, the government could continue to act on Trump’s EO. In this particular case, U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes put an initial injunction on the order earlier this week. This keeps everything in a holding pattern; transgender people can remain in the military until the case is decided.

Given Reyes’ comments, it’s likely that she will rule that the EO is illegal. If the Justice Department chooses not to appeal the ruling, it will stand just as if the Supreme Court ruled on it. Of course, this is unlikely—the DOJ will almost certainly appeal. The case then heads to one of the 13 appellate courts.

Appellate courts review the original ruling. Often, both sides are given a brief time to argue their case—usually 15 minutes, according to the official U.S. Courts webpage—but not always. Sometimes, appellate courts look only at the written briefs in the case. Unlike district courts, appellate courts are ruled over by a panel of judges rather than just one.

The judicial panel will decide whether or not the original judge made an error in legal reasoning. The appellate court can decide whether to let the decision stand, to overturn it, or to send the case back to the district courts.

In this case, if Reyes rules in favor of the plaintiffs, and the appellate court upholds her ruling, the injunction keeping trans people in the military still stands. If the appellate court overturns the ruling, the injunction may still stand, if the plaintiffs decide to appeal. If the plaintiffs don’t choose to appeal, then the injunction would be lifted and Trump’s EO would be reinstated.

Either party can file a “writ of certiorari”, which asks that the Supreme Court to decide the case. So, in Talbott, it’s likely that either way the appellate court rules, either the DOJ or the plaintiffs would ask the Supreme Court to weigh in. The injunction would still stand until the Supreme Court either declines to take the case, or ultimately rules on it. At that point, whatever the Supreme Court decides would stand.

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A woman who says she used to work at UnitedHealthcare said that her supervisors would laugh when she would cry at her desk about being forced to deny claims.

Natalie Collins appeared on NewsNation Prime on Saturday after a video she made went viral on TikTok. In the original viral video, she talked about her time working as a customer service representative for UMR, a division of UnitedHealthcare. She said the company taught her “so many different ways to deny” claims.

@motherskeeperdoula2023

Replying to @junedoulaservices My medical claim story with UMR. It was horrible working for them. Horrible management that were out for blood and money.

♬ original sound – Mother’s Keeper Doula

In the original viral video, Collins talks about working at UMR for about nine months, with two to three months spent in training. The bulk of the video is about her dealing with a woman who had lost her husband to pancreatic cancer. UnitedHealthcare was refusing to pay her claims and had sued her. Collins said that the claims totaled more than $400,000, and that the company expected the client—a newly single mother with five children—to pay it. Collins said when she finally got approval to apply some funds for this case, she did so and immediately resigned.

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She went into more detail about her time working at UnitedHealthcare in the Saturday night interview with NewsNation host Natasha Zouves. Collins describes being told to “get the client off the phone as fast as we could.” She also says the company would use ways to reroute claims back into a processing queue to delay payment as long as possible.

“If [the client wasn’t] liking what we were saying from the script, then we would just call a supervisor, and they would stand behind us. And while I was crying, they were laughing,” Collins said.

“You would actually cry on the job sometimes?” Zouves asked.

“Oh my gosh, it was—it was so sad. It was so heartbreaking. I was the bad guy every single day. Does that not feel good to anyone? Like that doesn’t feel good to me,” Collins replied, later saying she didn’t feel like she was there to help people.

“It was just a sad building all around,” she said.

UnitedHealthcare’s business practices have been in the news this month following the December 4 killing of the company’s CEO Brian Thompson. The shooter wrote “Deny, Defend, Depose” on the empty shell casings of the bullets that killed Thompson, in an apparent reference to Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Play Claims and What You Can Do About It, a 2010 book by Jay M. Feinman about the healthcare industry. A backpack linked to the shooting was filled with Monopoly money.

The suspect in the shooting, Luigi Mangione, has pled not guilty. He faces 11 charges, including weapons charges, murder and committing a terrorist act. A recent Associated Press/NORC poll showed that 69% of adults believe that health insurance companies’ policies to deny claims while making record profits was at least partially responsible for Thompson’s death.

UnitedHealthcare says Mangione did not have an account with the company, according to NBC News.

Image by Tony Webster via Wikimedia Commons

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has blocked Robert Roberson, a man given a death sentence based on the discredited “shaken baby syndrome,” from testifying at the Texas House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.

Roberson’s execution date was set for October 17, but the Texas Supreme Court granted a stay of execution so he could testify, according to the Austin Chronicle. Roberson was scheduled to testify on December 20, but Paxton filed a motion on the 19th, telling prison officials to ignore a subpoena issued by the House committee, declaring it invalid.

Roberson was due to testify about the state’s “junk science law.” That law is supposed to provide new trials when a person is convicted based on flawed forensic evidence, according to the Texas Tribune. However, critics allege the law rarely actually allows new trials, the Chronicle reports. The committee was supposed to hear Roberson’s story to help determine if the law is ineffective.

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Roberson was convicted in 2003 of capital murder following the death of his 2-year-old daughter, according to Newsweek. At the time, a doctor said the girl had died from “shaken baby syndrome,” defined as head trauma due to shaking. Shaken baby syndrome has been controversial since it was first coined. Biomechanics scientists say that shaking a baby can’t create a force strong enough to cause the type of trauma seen in these sorts of cases, according to the New Jersey Monitor. It’s often used as a catchall type diagnosis, when a baby dies but has no other signs of abuse.

In Roberson’s case, the child had been chronically ill, Newsweek reported. She had a fever and respiratory issues, which likely caused her death.

Other cases based on shaken baby syndrome have been overturned. This includes a 2000 case in Dallas, where Andrew Wayne Roark was initially sentenced to 35 years in prison in the death of his girlfriend’s 13-month-old. The Texas Supreme Court overturned Roark’s conviction this year about a week before Roberson was due to be executed, according to KERA-FM.

Despite this, Texas officials have declined to address Roberson’s case. Though Gov. Greg Abbott pardoned four people this week, Roberson was not one of them, according to the Houston Chronicle. In October, Paxton called attempts to delay Roberson’s execution “eleventh-hour, one-sided, extrajudicial stunts that attempt to obscure the facts and rewrite his past,” according to the Tribune. At the time, Abbott agreed, saying the House had “stepped out of line” in its attempts to delay execution so Roberson could testify.

Last year, Paxton was impeached by the state House on 20 separate articles of impeachment. The Texas Senate, which skews Republican 19 to 12, voted to acquit. The charges mostly centered around allegations Paxton used his position to help a campaign donor under investigation by the FBI for fraud.

A new date for Roberson’s execution has not been set.

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