In a bombshell interview, Sen. Chuck Grassley made it clear that he is fed up with district judges getting in the way of President Trump’s policies and provided examples of gross judicial overreach, doubling down on the urgency to pass a bill that will stop judges from abusing their power.
For context, on March 31, 2025, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) introduced the Judicial Relief Clarification Act of 2025, a bill created to limit federal court orders that lead to universal injunctions that go beyond the role of district judges intended by the U.S. Constitution. Following the bill’s introduction, Sen. Grassley appeared on Fox News several times to slam judicial overreach and reassert the importance of the bill.
Explaining the goals behind the Judicial Relief Clarification Act, Sen. Grassley told Fox News, “We would limit the injunction that a judge could do to his district and to the parties before the court, as opposed to a national injunction that would apply it to the other 92 districts around the United States.” He added, “This would keep judges from being policymakers. It would have them just making judicial decisions for the party before them.”
In addition, Sen. Grassley clarified that the act was proposed to handle potential judicial overreach, saying, “Our legislation would also go on to another step if it’s necessary to speed up the process of appeal if people disagree with it. But we need to have judges do the case and controversy, those are words from the Constitution, and not deal with policymaking, and not have one of 700 district judges make a decision that applies throughout the United States.” He added, “We should have bipartisan support for this.”
In the same interview, Sen. Grassley was asked for his opinion on Presidnet Trump’s recent tariffs on countries throughout the world, to which the senator replied, “Well, it might surprise the people in this country that we have a political leader that was elected by a big margin, both electoral and popular, and he’s carrying out a promise he made in the election to bring manufacturing to the United States, and increasing tariffs is part of it.”
Continuing, the senator expressed his belief that the tariffs would bolster the economy around the globe, saying, “I hope the end result of the tariffs is, by putting on reciprocal tariffs, it moves other countries to bring their tariffs down. And I think if we had less tariffs throughout the world, we’d have a stronger not only U.S. economy, but we’d have a stronger world economy.”
In addition, in a subsequent Fox News interview on May 5, 2025, Sen. Grassley added that universal injunctions were “unconstitutional” and an “abuse of judicial power,” adding, “Just this past week, a D.C. district judge issued a universal injunction blocking the president’s executive order requiring voter ID or proof-of-citizenship prior to voting in national elections.”
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Concluding the interview, Sen. Grassley said that he was devoting his energy to working “with my colleagues to advance my critical Judicial Relief Clarification Act (JRCA) and put an end to universal injunctions.” In addition, Sen. Grassley said that allowing judges to act as policymakers is “very dangerous” and implored Supreme Court Justices to “take action” in response.
Watch Sen. Grassley weigh in on judicial overreach:
Featured image credit: screengrab from the embedded video