JUDGES GONE WILD!

What happens when federal judges wish they were President!

Federal district judges are extremely powerful people, and judges who decide to legislate from the bench can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time. That is what we see happening in these cases. A federal judge in each case decided to substitute his judgment (i) to protect the Federal Reserve from being questioned and (ii) to stop progress by the CDC in reducing unnecessary vaccines. The judges’ decisions will greatly increase cost and delay in accomplishing what the voters demanded of President Trump.

These decisions will necessitate an appeal to the applicable federal circuit court, which we would expect to reverse both decisions. If not, the Administration will likely seek Supreme Court review. In the meantime, the effort to root out problems and maybe even corruption in the Federal Reserve is stalled—as is the effort to spare kids from unnecessary and dangerous vaccines.

This week’s Lawsplainer features two significant cases: (1) a federal court siding with the Federal Reserve to quash grand jury subpoenas, and (2) a ruling against the new CDC vaccination schedules.

Photo by HYCM Capital Market

DC Federal Judge Thwarts Investigation into Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell

In January of 2026, a District of Columbia grand jury investigation began into whether there had been fraud against the United States and false statements from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell concerning renovations of Federal Reserve buildings. According to the government, those renovations have “involved substantial cost overruns” estimated at “over $1 billion.” The renovations have been the subject of Congressional oversight and were addressed in the June 2025 testimony of Chair Jerome Powell, who may have expressed inaccuracies to Congress.

As part of that investigation, the grand jury issued two subpoenas to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (the “Board”). The subpoenas were necessary because the Board refused to cooperate with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s requests for evidence. The Board moved to quash the subpoenas, arguing their purpose was to “harass, pressure, and punish the Federal Reserve and Chair Jerome Powell until they set monetary policy the way the President wants.”

On March 13, 2026, James Boasberg,[1] the Chief Judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, issued a memorandum opinion that granted the Board’s motion to quash. Relying in large part on posts from X and Truth Social that were critical of Powell and the Federal Reserve Board – some of which were from 2019 – Judge Boasberg concluded:

“A mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning. On the other side of the scale, the Government has produced essentially zero evidence to suspect Chair Powell of a crime; indeed, its justifications are so thin and unsubstantiated that the Court can only conclude that they are pretextual.”

Judge Boasberg admitted that Trump’s social media posts and public statements that harshly criticized Powell and the Board “speaks to the motives of the President, not the U.S. Attorney’s Office.” However, he found there to be a “natural inference” that the U.S. Attorney’s Office was “responding to [Trump’s] desires.”

We believe Judge Boasberg’s opinion will fail on appeal. In support, he cites to an audit of the renovation from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) that “raised no concerns about fraud.” In its motion to reconsider, the Government points out the problem with relying on that audit: “the scope of that OIG report ended in 2020, more than a year before the renovations were approved.”

And his opinion may very well be contrary to the law. As the Supreme Court has observed, grand juries are an investigative body “charged with the responsibility of determining whether or not a crime has been committed.” U.S. v. R. Enterprises, Inc., 498 U.S. 292, 297 (1991). A grand jury “can investigate merely on suspicion that the law is being violated, or even just because it wants assurance that it is not.” U.S. v. Morton Salt Co., 338 U.S. 632, 643-644 (1950).

But Judge Boasberg twisted the law, quashing the subpoenas in part because the Government had not presented sufficient evidence that “suggests that a crime occurred.” This presented the Government with an improper task: to present evidence to justify an investigative step that was probing whether such evidence of a crime existed. In essence, Judge Boasberg ignored the well-settled law that the grand jury be accorded a presumption of regularity and that it is assumed to act within the legitimate scope of its authority.

This only adds to Judge Boasberg’s checkered past. He served on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court during the government’s FISA abuses against Carter Page, he was a harsh judge for many of those arrested after the January 6, 2021 protest at the United States Capitol, and his efforts to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt relating to the deportation of Venezuelan nationals was rejected by a federal appeals court.

Photo by Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

Federal Judge Rules Against New CDC Vaccination Schedules

On March 16, 2026, Judge Brian Murphy, who was appointed to the bench by President Joe Biden in 2024, decided he knew better than Secretary Kennedy and the CDC. He stayed the Trump Administration’s updated childhood vaccine guidelines and the Administration’s appointments to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP).

The underlying suit challenged: (1) Secretary Kennedy’s May 2025 order that the CDC remove its recommendation that pregnant women and healthy children receive the COVID vaccine; (2) the reconstruction of ACIP; (3) votes taken by ACIP in 2025 to change the committee’s official vaccine recommendations; and (4) CDC Acting Director Jim O’Neill’s January 2026 memorandum revising the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule, which reduced the number of recommended childhood vaccines and limited vaccines like Hepatitis B to only high-risk groups.

The plaintiffs contended that the Trump Administration violated the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) because its actions were arbitrary and capricious, and because the reconstituted ACIP does not comport with federal law. The Trump Administration denied violations of the APA and argued that these actions were not reviewable by the Court because they are not final decisions but rather actions that are committed to agency discretion by law.

Presented with the plaintiffs’ motion for preliminary relief, the court concluded that they were likely to succeed in showing that the reconstruction of ACIP and the January 2026 changes to the childhood vaccine schedule violated the Administrative Procedure Act. It therefore stayed the revisions to the CDC’s childhood immunization schedule; the appointment of thirteen ACIP members; and all votes taken by ACIP. The court’s memorandum and order can be found here.

The court concluded that the January 2026 memorandum, which introduced a new immunization schedule, was issued without authority and contrary to the law. It also held the memorandum was “arbitrary and capricious because it abandoned the agency’s longstanding practice of getting recommendations from ACIP before changing the immunization schedule.” The court reasoned that “the CDC cannot simply bypass ACIP in altering the immunization schedules.”

What the court ignored is that the statutes governing the HHS Secretary’s authority to advise states on vaccines make no mention of how the Secretary must exercise that discretion. Likewise, the statutes do not prohibit the Secretary from following other processes to make vaccine recommendations or from making recommendations contrary to suggestions from ACIP.

With respect to ACIP as a committee, the court found that the “newly appointed members appear distinctly unqualified” and concluded “they do not represent points of view within the relevant expert community.” Because of its own findings, the court stated that the plaintiffs were “likely to succeed in demonstrating that the reconstitution of ACIP was arbitrary and capricious.”

Typically, courts defer to agencies on issues like these. After all, who is better to judge qualifications of members of an advisory committee – a federal district judge or the agency itself? Contrary to the court’s claims, the ACIP members are highly qualified and include a former National Institute of Health Section Chief, an MIT professor with expertise in vaccine safety, a biochemist with an expertise in molecular biology and vaccine development, and an internationally recognized expert in vaccine development and immunization safety. Moreover, as a factual matter, the court was wrong to claim that members of ACIP do not represent points of view within the scientific community.

We expect an appeal of Judge Murphy’s order to soon be filed. Just this week, in another case, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit blocked his ruling that prevented the Trump Administration from deporting immigrants to nations that weren’t their home countries. The Supreme Court had previously intervened twice in that case, lifting an injunction he issued and allowing the deportation of illegal immigrants to South Sudan.

We really wish Congress would start impeaching judges who refuse to follow clear law and try to make law according to their own agenda. Making laws is the job of Congress.

---

[1] Boasberg is the same judge who ordered the plane full of deported illegal aliens to turn around mid-air when the Administration began serious deportations.