President Donald Trump, over the weekend, made moves that are sure to prompt judicial scrutiny in an apparent bid to reach the Supreme Court and force the justices to opine on the scope of judicial stays that have hamstrung some of his key policies.

The Trump administration has faced a flurry of temporary restraining orders (TRO) and other judicial stays in recent weeks as district court judges move to block broad policies on a national scale. The scope and frequency of these orders have the administration fuming and seeking legal remedies to bypass them. Last week, for instance, the Department of Justice filed an emergency appeal of multiple orders, asking that the Supreme Court limit them to apply only to the plaintiff parties in each respective case.

The court previously declined to review the DOJ's request despite the vehement objections of four conservative justices. The order below demanded that the administration distribute United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funds.

"Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Associate Justice Samuel Alito wrote. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic 'No,' but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned.”

Trump's declaration nullifying pardons signed with an autopen and his administration’s resistance to compliance with a court order may present the U.S. Supreme Court — should they choose so — another chance to weigh in. The court order in question demanded the return of deported gang members, reportedly already en route to El Salvador, although ABC News is reporting that this is in some dispute. 

Trump on pardons: "VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT"

Early Monday morning, Trump declared that a number of pardons that President Joe Biden signed in his waning days in office were invalid due to the use of an autopen. Biden issued wide ranging pardons to an array of Trump’s political opponents, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the members of the House Jan. 6 Committee, and most infamously, his own son.

“The ‘Pardons’ that Sleepy Joe Biden gave to the Unselect Committee of Political Thugs, and many others, are hereby declared VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT, because of the fact that they were done by Autopen,” Trump posted Monday morning on Truth Social.

“The necessary Pardoning Documents were not explained to, or approved by, Biden. He knew nothing about them, and the people that did may have committed a crime,” Trump insisted. “Therefore, those on the Unselect Committee, who destroyed and deleted ALL evidence obtained during their two year Witch Hunt of me, and many other innocent people, should fully understand that they are subject to investigation at the highest level. The fact is, they were probably responsible for the Documents that were signed on their behalf without the knowledge or consent of the Worst President in the History of our Country, Crooked Joe Biden!” 

Use of an autopen to sign official acts has been a matter of some controversy for more than a decade. In 2011, President Barack Obama used an autopen to extend the Patriot Act leading some to question its validity. The Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, however, has issued an opinion that “[t]he President need not personally perform the physical act of affixing his signature to a bill he approves and decides to sign in order for the bill to become law.”

The Constitution doesn't address pardons and signatures

“Rather, the President may sign a bill within the meaning of Article I, Section 7 by directing a subordinate to affix the President’s signature to such a bill, for example by autopen,” it continued. The opinion is not legally binding, but has yet to face a court challenge.

Speaking Monday on the “John Solomon Reports” podcast, Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said the pardons “will end up in court, and there are going to be two issues. One, the nature of what was signed. Was it a pardon, or was it a bill from Congress, for example. And second, the nature of the autopen.”

“First, the nature of what [was] signed, if it was a bill. Here's what the Constitution says. If he approves, he shall sign it so it says, Sign it. So an auto pen would raise a real problem if he signed it by auto pen, which is not [a] real signature,” he added. “Pardons, it doesn't say anything about signing it. It says he shall have the power to grant reprieves and pardons.”

As to the types of autopens, Dershowitz described the autopen used by President Thomas Jefferson, which linked the pen he used to five others in order to make copies. “The autopen that's used by politicians today is very different. My son, for example, worked as an intern in the Senate, and he would just press a button and autopens would sign his boss's signature without his boss even knowing it,” he said. “Now, obviously, if that's what happened with the pardons, then they're not valid. “If, on the other hand, the President said, ‘Look, I'm pardoning my son. Give me something to sign,’ and they used an autopen to sign it. I suspect that pardon would be upheld.”

University of Missouri School of Law Professor Frank Bowman told Newsweek that a "pardon, once issued, cannot be voided by a succeeding president." New York University Professor Peter Shane, meanwhile, told the same outlet that "Biden's statement explaining the pardons makes clear that they are his official acts. They were not executed without his authority."

Deporting Tren de Aragua

Over the weekend, Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to foster expedited deportations of violent gang members belonging to Tren de Aragua. U.S. District Judge for the District of Columbia James Boasberg issued an order enjoining the deportations. At the time of his ruling, however, two planes were already in the air, bound for Honduras and El Salvador. Though the judge ordered the planes to reverse course, they did not do so. Initial reports insisted that the Trump administration refused to comply with Boasberg’s order, though White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt disputed that assessment.

“The Administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory,” Leavitt posted on X. “The written order and the Administration’s actions do not conflict. Moreover, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear — federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the President’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion.”

“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from U.S. soil,” she added.

The matter is sure to face appellate litigation, but in the meantime, many of those deported to El Salvador will reside in that nation’s notorious prison facilities as part of an agreement with Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele.

"These are the monsters sent into our Country by Crooked Joe Biden and the Radical Left Democrats. How dare they! Thank you to El Salvador and, in particular, President Bukele, for your understanding of this horrible situation, which was allowed to happen to the United States because of incompetent Democrat leadership," Trump posted Sunday. "We will not forget!"

Dershowitz suggested that the judicial stay presented a need for a new kind of court to take nationwide injunctions out of the hands of district judges.

“You can't have a single judge in a small town somewhere, federal judge saying the entire country is now bound by my order, which may be wrong, which may be objectionable,” he said. “Sometimes you get an order that's irreversible, that's right, you have to do something that can't be taken back. And should one judge be able to do that?”

“I think we're going to need legislation now setting up a new court,” he opined. “When you're going to seek nationwide application of a law or of an injunction, it should go to a nationwide court, and you can assemble that, for example, the court that deals with national security issues. It's one court, but it's a nationwide court. It's not just in a district, and it's a national security court, and we can pass that for injunctions that apply to a whole country.”

"I'm guardedly optimistic. Yes, President Trump is using a very ancient law from 1798 to basically expand his war powers, which basically we are suffering an invasion right now," said South Carolina GOP Attorney General Alan Wilson on the "John Solomon Reports" podcast. "When people think of being at war, they think of conventional armies on a battlefield or a nation state attacking the United States. But I remind people that Osama bin Laden, ISIS, Hezbollah, these proxy terrorist organizations for China and Russia and the Middle Eastern countries like Iran. These are not nation states. These are ideologically driven people, and they're pipelining in people who mean to hurt this country. They're a threat to the national security and the public safety of the United States. And so this is an invasion."

Active appeals and "universal injunctions"

While both matters could conceivably reach the Supreme Court, the Department of Justice has already asked them to intervene over several judicial orders, asking that they limit the scope of local district court decisions to apply only to the plaintiffs' jurisdictions.

The administration filed an emergency appeal of three cases involving Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, directing federal agencies not to interpret the 14th Amendment as granting citizenship to the children of foreigners born within the U.S. At least four federal district court judges have blocked the policy nationwide, but the administration wants the blocks to apply only to the individuals who challenged the order in each case. The court has yet to issue a ruling on the appeal, however.

Alito’s dissent in the USAID case, moreover, seems to indicate an appetite within the court’s conservative wing to address the scope of a lower court’s authority. In filing the appeals, the administration addressed the question directly.

"[Broad injunctions] compromise the executive branch’s ability to carry out its functions,” Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched."

"District courts have issued more universal injunctions and TROs during February 2025 alone than through the first three years of the Biden Administration,” she added. “That sharp rise in universal injunctions stops the Executive Branch from performing its constitutional functions before any courts fully examine the merits of those actions, and threatens to swamp this Court’s emergency docket."

Dershowitz, for his part, suggested that under specific circumstances, the Supreme Court may be inclined to narrow the authority of district judges.

“I suspect the issue will come to the Supreme Court before long, and there may be a majority now saying that no single judge can do that, except under A-B-C circumstances, and those circumstances were not met in this case,” he said. “If the right case were brought to the Supreme Court, I suspect there might be a majority ruling placing limits on what a single judge could do.”