Democrats will likely ‘waste millions’ of dollars battling President Donald Trump’s executive orders and actions in court with little success to show for it, according to University of California, Berkeley law professor John Yoo.
Trump ‘will have some of the nation’s finest attorneys defending his executive orders and initiatives, and the Democrats will waste millions of dollars losing in court,’ Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel, told Fox News Digital on Tuesday when asked whether there are efforts of ‘lawfare’ against Trump in his second administration.
‘I expect that Trump will ultimately prevail on two-thirds or more of his executive orders, but the Democrats may succeed in delaying them for about a year or so,’ Yoo said.
The Trump administration has been hit by at least 54 lawsuits in response to Trump’s executive orders and actions since his inauguration on Jan. 20. Trump has signed at least 63 executive orders just roughly three weeks into his administration, including 26 on his first day alone.
The executive orders and actions are part of Trump’s shift of the federal government to fall in line with his ‘America First’ policies, including snuffing out government overspending and mismanagement through the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), banning biological men from competing in women’s sports and deporting thousands of illegal immigrants who flooded the nation during the Biden administration.
The onslaught of lawsuits come as Democratic elected officials fume over the second Trump administration’s policies, most notably the creation of DOGE, which is in the midst of investigating various federal agencies to cut spending fat, corruption and mismanagement of funds.
A handful of Democratic state attorneys general and other local leaders vowed following Trump’s election win to set off a new resistance to his agenda, vowing to battle him in the courts over policies they viewed as harmful to constituents. Upon his inauguration and his policies taking effect, Democrats have amplified their rhetoric to battle Trump in the courts, and also to take the fight to ‘the streets.’
‘We are going to fight it legislatively. We are going to fight it in the courts. We’re going to fight it in the streets,’ House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., said in January of battling Trump’s policies.
‘Our biggest weapon historically, over three years alongside the Trump administration, has been the bully pulpit and a whole lot of legal action, so my guess is it will continue,’ New Jersey Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy said the day after Trump’s inauguration.
Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, said at a protest over DOGE and its chair, Elon Musk, earlier in February, ‘We are gonna be in your face, we are gonna be on your a–es, and we are going to make sure you understand what democracy looks like, and this ain’t it.’
The dozens of cases come after Trump faced four criminal indictments, on both the state and federal level, in the interim of his first and second administrations. Trump had railed against the cases — including the Manhattan trial and conviction, the Georgia election racketeering case, and former special counsel Jack Smith’s election case and classified documents case — as examples of the Democratic Party waging ‘lawfare’ against him in an effort to hurt his re-election chances in the 2024 cycle.
Yoo, when asked about the state of lawfare against Trump now that he’s back in the Oval Office, said the president’s political foes have shifted from lawfare to launching cases to tie up the administration in court.
‘I think that what is going on now is different than lawfare,’ he said. ‘I think of lawfare as the deliberate use by the party in power to prosecute its political opponents to affect election outcomes. The Democrats at the federal and state level brought charges against Trump to drive him out of the 2024 elections.’
‘The lawsuits against Trump now are the usual thrust and parry of the separation of powers,’ Yoo explained. ‘The Democrats are not attacking Trump personally and there is no election. Instead, they are suing Trump as President to stop his official policies.
Yoo said the Republican Party also relied on the courts in an effort to prevent policies put forth during the Obama era and Biden administration, including when President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law in 2010, or his 2012 immigration policy, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Republicans also challenged the Biden administration in court after President Biden attempted to forgive student debt through executive action in 2022.
‘Turnabout is fair play,’ Yoo said of groups suing over various administrations’ executive actions or policies.
‘What makes this also different than the law is that now Trump controls the Justice Department,’ he added, explaining that Democrats will spend millions on the cases, which will likely result in delays for many of the Trump policies but will not completely thwart the majority of them.
A handful of the more than 50 lawsuits have resulted in judges temporarily blocking the orders, such as at least three federal judges issuing preliminary injunctions against Trump’s order ending birthright citizenship.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked on Wednesday during the press briefing whether the administration believes the courts have the authority to issue such injunctions. Leavitt appeared to echo Yoo that the administration will be ‘vindicated’ in court as the cases make their way through the judicial system.
‘We believe that the injunction actions that have been issued by these judges, have no basis in the law and have no grounds. And we will again, as the president said very clearly yesterday, comply with these orders. But it is the administration’s position that we will ultimately be vindicated, and the president’s executive actions that he took were completely within the law,’ Leavitt said, before citing the ‘weaponization’ of the court systems against Trump while he was on the campaign trail.
‘We look forward to the day where he can continue to implement his agenda,’ she said. ‘And I would just add, it’s our view that this is the continuation of the weaponization of justice that we have seen against President Trump. He fought it for two years on the campaign trail — it won’t stop him now.’
