Turley says one case shows how far judges will go to undermine Trump’s authority

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Friday on “The Ingraham Angle” that a federal judge temporarily blocking one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders on federal funding created one of the most “problematic” cases challenging the president’s authority.

On Thursday, Obama-appointed Judge William H. Orrick in Northern California temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order to withhold funds from cities and counties refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. While on Fox News, guest host Kayleigh McEnany asked Turley about the judicial pushback against Trump’s crackdown on illegal migrants, asking whether the president has the legal authority to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities.

“Well, the astonishing thing, of course, is they’re now coming by the gross. I mean, we’re getting three a day. They’re increasing,” Turley said. “The Supreme Court has repeatedly said they want to stop national injunctions. They’ve tried to rein in judges a bit, including a judge in D.C. that should never have taken a case to begin with.”

“But we’re now seeing three of these come down in a single day. The one in San Francisco, I think, is very problematic,”  Turley added. “I think the judge pulled the trigger too fast. You know, this is a judge who said, ‘No, you cannot withhold money from Sanctuary Cities.’”

While Trump has pushed for his second administration to fulfill his vow of conducting mass deportations of illegal migrants from the U.S., sanctuary cities in Democrat-led states have taken legal action against the administration. In response, the Department of Justice filed its own lawsuits, with Attorney General Pam Bondi suing places like Chicago, Cook County and the state of Illinois in February over their sanctuary policies for illegal migrants.

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“But the executive order told his cabinet, Trump’s cabinet, ‘I need you to look at this, evaluate it, and tell me if they’re interfering with federal enforcement, and then to withhold funds’. There’s a lot of runway between here and there in determining what they’re going to do. This judge just went ahead and said, ‘I’m stopping everything,’” Turley said.

On Thursday, former New Mexico Democrat Judge Jose “Joel” Cano and his wife Nancy Cano were taken into custody by federal officials for their alleged connection to an illegal migrant arrested on their property. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) said to the Daily Caller News Foundation that Cano was charged with “tampering with evidence,” while Nancy was charged with “conspiracy to tamper with evidence as part of an ongoing HSI-led criminal investigation.”

The following day, Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan was also arrested by federal authorities after the FBI began investigating allegations that she helped hide a migrant charged with violence from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

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