Some of these uber-progressive federal district court judges certainly love getting out over their skis, rewriting or completely disallowing every last tenet of the rules and regulations the Trump administration has put in place to try to cut waste, fraud, and abuse across all aspects of the federal bureaucracy.
I realize I am well into my dotage and things aren't as sharp as they used to be, but I truly do not remember this level of judicial activism when the Biden administration was doing the exact opposite - weaponizing the various agencies and departments of the federal government through rules and regulations in order to strip Americans of their rights and restrict their standard of living. Anybody want to enlighten me where I have misremembered the good old days of these women protecting us from, say, a rampaging Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), a rogue Department of Homeland Security (DHS), or an authoritarian Health and Human Services (HHS) forcing experimental medications and draconian living conditions down our throats over a pandemic born from, maybe, a bio-weapons laboratory they themselves were financing?
Yeah. I mean, where were Judge *checks notes* Amy Berman Jackson and Judge (this is for #realz, I swear) Sparkle Sooknanan a couple of years ago?
Not protecting freedom's side, tell you what.
But lemme tell you what - they are here for whatever stupid excuse will jam up a Trump initiative to square programs away and keep the Dem base literally fat, dumb, and voting happy.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was always on Trump's radar for restructuring and revision, especially when he tapped uber health guru Robert Kennedy Jr to be HHS secretary. You knew whatever happened with the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) administration of the food subsistence programs was going to be done hand-in-glove with an eye to not only tightening up eligibility and rooting out fraudsters already in the program as well as the lax oversight of the states in their own dispersal of the funds, but emphasizing healthy food purchases with tax dollars was going to take priority. Which is exactly what happened when the Big Beautiful Bill passed.
In January of this year, the states were able to ask USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins for food restriction waivers.
'Restriction waivers' meant no more crap food purchased with SNAP benefits, aka tax dollars.
...They were already quaking in their boots when talk surfaced of his counterpart at the Department of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, being willing to work with him on revamping the purchase parameters of the sacrosanct Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in order to restrict recipients to sustenance food.
Well, that's happened. States are now able to ask the USDA for waivers to exclude soda, candy, junk food, etc., from SNAP benefits. So far, eighteen states have done so and are restricting SNAP purchases of junk foods and/or soda in some manner.
The Trump Administration is leading bold reform to strengthen integrity and restore nutritional value within the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
USDA is empowering states with greater flexibility to manage their programs by approving SNAP Food Restriction Waivers that restrict the purchase of non-nutritious items like soda and candy. These waivers are a key step in ensuring that taxpayer dollars provide nutritious options that improve health outcomes within SNAP...
Holy smokes, wasn't there some caterwauling, but if people in states granted waivers wanted a Big Gulp and a box of Pop-Tarts, they were doing it on their dime, not ours.
You have to know that was one oppression too far.
Remember this?
The Supreme Court just ruled that district judges can’t make nationwide injunctions, yet here we are again. pic.twitter.com/NWilp6Wasg
— Morning Glory 🇺🇸🌼🇺🇸 (@DoryBeutel) June 23, 2026
Yeah. Neither does any district court with a chance to jack up a GOP fix.
Like Judge Amy Berman Jackson.
BREAKING: Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson just BLOCKED the Trump admin from restricting SNAP benefits use for soda and candy pic.twitter.com/gDkGoxxFqw
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) June 23, 2026
Judge Jackson's fine if five-year-olds in the barrio have rotted teeth and are forty pounds overweight from the junk food they inhale. All those moms are gonna keep voting Big D.
A federal judge on Monday scrapped a set of state pilot programs intended to restrict the use of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program money to purchase unhealthy foods.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, an Obama appointee, wrote in her decision that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, who oversees the SNAP program, misapplied federal law in approving requests from states to allow them to impose limits on what participants can buy with funds from the nation’s largest food aid program. Her ruling applies to Colorado, Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee and West Virginia.
“With her solicitation and approval of the pilot projects in this case, the Secretary purports to waive not just a mere administrative or technical obstacle, but the very definition of ‘food’ as it was laid down by Congress,” Berman wrote. “Neither the USDA nor the states can force this square peg into a round hole to avoid the plain language of the statute and the requirements of 2026(k),” referencing the part of the statute that addresses projects to help improve SNAP households’ health status.
The Politico article also pulls the standard canard of there's 'no evidence to support' (I mean, what don't they use that for?) the premise that if SNAP beneficiaries are restricted to purchasing real food, their health will get better or they'll at least eat better.
Of course there isn't...YET. No one's been able to try it because of the outcry from people being denied their Sunny Delight and snack cakes, as if those were human rights rather than treats.
So this really, really good idea is going to have to go on pause and wend its way up the adjudication chain until a superior court slaps Jackson back onto her size bench again.
So dreary and so obvious a tactic.
This other case is more egregious for a number of reasons.
First and foremost, election security.
🚨 Judge Sparkle Sooknanan has struck down the Trump administration's expanded SAVE voter-verification system, ruling that federal agencies unlawfully created a centralized database containing Social Security and citizenship data to facilitate mass voter verification. pic.twitter.com/t9aGZYvfos
— SCOTUS Wire (@scotus_wire) June 22, 2026
This judge won't allow states to query the database the administration has set up for citizen verification checks.
A federal judge on Monday barred the Trump administration from letting states query a centralized national database of citizens built for checking immigration status to screen their voter rolls, finding that the repurposing of the federal data to monitor voting violated at least three laws.
In a sharply worded ruling, Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan ordered the Homeland Security Department to stop permitting states to search the data, which also incorporates Social Security records.
President Trump had ordered several agencies last year to pool data that states could use to verify citizenship. The combined data set allows state and local election officials to search immigration records stored by the Department of Homeland Security about migrants, as well as a much larger database of information maintained by the Social Security Administration.
Judge Sooknanan, a Biden appointee, wrote that the executive order had resulted in a rush by agencies to “haphazardly” adopt a system that they knew was flawed and that would flag eligible voters along with those who might have registered illegally. She warned that states were already “actively” using it to potentially purge eligible voters ahead of an election.
The lawsuit against the system was brought by the League of Women Voters.
...In November, Judge Sooknanan had initially denied a request by the groups to halt the overhaul of the SAVE system, writing that while she “doubts the lawfulness of the government’s actions,” it was unclear that the Trump administration had actually misused the data. But on Monday, she wrote that states, including Texas and Louisiana, have now started using the system to check voter registrations and had flagged eligible voters for removal.
Judge Sparkle has an activism track record.
More about Judge Sparkle Sooknanan. pic.twitter.com/ejJG8UCTgj
— Johnny Midnight ⚡️ (@its_The_Dr) June 22, 2026
Judge Sparkle Sooknanan...
Judge Sparkle decrees that America belongs to any random alien on planet earth, just like our founders intended. https://t.co/X8guI1Xrt6
— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) June 22, 2026
...is an immigrant herself, only becoming a US citizen in 2009, and still maintains a dual US-Trinidad/Tobago citizenship (REALLY?! A FEDERAL JUDGE?!), which might explain the opinion quality.
Opinion is filled with snark and invective, looks the other way on the rules regarding standing, and reads like a political op-ed. So inconsistent on what little legal analysis it does provide that it practically begs to be reversed.
— EPEC-EJ (@ErinJoyce) June 23, 2026
But here we go again, no?
And it should be NO, but it's not.
Beege ADDS: OMG - this is what we're dealing with on all sides, from Democrats in Congress to the activist judiciary, working in concert with them.
Democrat Senator Dick Durbin continues to falsely suggest that Americans are too forgetful or dumb for the SAVE America Act to be passed.
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) June 23, 2026
Shameful. pic.twitter.com/ZeX0OUcErG
Durbin's BRAIN is 'upstairs in a box in a closet.'
Editor's Note: Unelected federal judges are hijacking President Trump's agenda and insulting the will of the people.
Help us expose out-of-control judges dead set on halting President Trump's mandate for change. Join HotAir VIP and use promo code FIGHT to receive 60% off your membership.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member