(The Federalist)—After the Trump Administration exposed the numerous fatal flaws underlying a federal judge’s order requiring the government to continue funding Planned Parenthood, the court entered a revised order to keep the cash flowing to the abortion giant. But rather than correcting any errors, the revised Temporary Restraint Order (“TRO”) reveals the court’s outrageous overreach — that of an imperialist judge, one might even say.
Late Friday, Massachusetts federal judge Indira Talwani, a Barack Obama appointee, dissolved the TRO she had entered earlier in the week against the Trump Administration. Mere hours after Planned Parenthood filed suit against the Department of Health and Human Services, challenging Congress’s decision in the Big, Beautiful Bill to no longer fund abortion providers, Judge Talwani issued a TRO. That 5:15 p.m. Monday TRO failed to provide any legal justification for her decision requiring the Trump Administration to continue disbursing Medicaid funding to all Planned Parenthood organizations.
The Trump Administration responded with a Motion to Dissolve the TRO, stressing that “a TRO cannot issue without complying with a series of mandatory procedural requirements” and that Judge Talwani “ignored those most basic criteria.” Accordingly, the Trump Administration argued in its Motion, “[t]he Court must therefore dissolve its TRO as soon as possible.”
In entering the TRO, Judge Talwani clearly violated federal rules by, among other things, entering the order on an “ex parte” basis, meaning she granted the TRO before providing the government an opportunity to respond. Ex parte TROs are only permissible if “irreparable injury, loss, or damage will result to the movant before the adverse party can be heard in opposition.” But there was no exigency that required Judge Talwani to issue the TRO at 5:15 p.m., as opposed to setting a hearing for that time to allow the government an opportunity to present its case in opposition.
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