There was a time when Americans worried about an imperial presidency.
Perhaps we should also be asking whether we are witnessing the rise of an imperial judiciary.
That question has once again moved to the center of American politics because of U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani, the Massachusetts federal judge who has repeatedly intervened in President Donald Trump’s effort to impose new requirements on mail-in voting ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Talwani has blocked portions of the President’s executive order.
She has blocked the Postal Service from implementing portions of the administration’s policy.
And now the Trump administration has gone back to the United States Supreme Court, asking the justices to allow the new Postal Service rules to take effect.
But beneath the political arguments over Donald Trump and mail-in voting lies a much larger question.
Exactly how much power should one federal district judge possess?
The Easy Answer Isn’t Good Enough
Whenever a federal judge blocks something a president does, supporters of that president inevitably complain about an “activist judge.”
Democrats did it when Republican-appointed judges blocked Biden administration policies.
Republicans do it when Democratic-appointed judges block Trump administration policies.
That doesn’t get us very far.
Judicial review is not judicial activism.
Federal judges have both the authority and the responsibility to determine whether presidents are acting within the Constitution and laws enacted by Congress.
If a president exceeds his constitutional authority, we should want a federal judge willing to say so.
That principle must apply regardless of whether the president’s name is Trump, Biden, Obama or anyone else.
But there is another side to that constitutional equation.
Judges have limits too.
And that is where the Talwani controversy becomes considerably more interesting.
One Judge Versus the President
Consider what has happened.
President Trump issued an executive order seeking significant changes involving mail-in ballots.
Talwani concluded that portions of that order exceeded presidential authority.
Her central constitutional argument is hardly frivolous.
The Constitution gives states significant responsibility for conducting elections while giving Congress authority to alter certain election regulations.
It does not explicitly assign the president an independent power to rewrite election procedures.
Talwani therefore concluded that the president could not simply create powers for himself that the Constitution had assigned elsewhere.
That’s a serious constitutional argument.
But something else should make Americans uncomfortable regardless of their political affiliation.
A single unelected federal district judge can issue an order capable of stopping an elected president’s policy from operating far beyond the courtroom in which the case was brought.
Think about the enormous power contained in that sentence.
One judge.
One courtroom.
A policy affecting an entire nation.
That doesn’t automatically make the decision wrong.
But it should make us ask questions.
Who Is Checking Whom?
We constantly hear about checks and balances.
Congress checks the president.
The president checks Congress.
The judiciary checks both.
But our discussions increasingly seem to stop there.
Who checks the judiciary?
The obvious answer is the appellate courts and ultimately the Supreme Court.
And the Talwani litigation provides an interesting illustration of exactly that process.
Talwani previously blocked portions of Trump’s executive order.
The Supreme Court subsequently lifted one of those barriers, concluding that the states’ challenge at that stage was premature.
Importantly, however, the Supreme Court did not definitively declare Trump’s underlying policy constitutional.
The Postal Service subsequently finalized its rule.
Talwani intervened again.
And the administration is now back before the Supreme Court.
That distinction matters.
It would be unfair to say that Talwani is simply defying a Supreme Court ruling that declared Trump’s policy lawful.
The Supreme Court hasn’t done that.
But the continuing judicial ping-pong illustrates something increasingly common in American government:
Major national policies can spend months moving between a president, a district judge, an appeals court and the Supreme Court before anyone knows what the law actually is.
That is not an insignificant problem.
The Presidency Isn’t the Only Institution Capable of Overreach
For years, conservatives have complained about judicial activism.
Liberals have often responded that what conservatives call activism is simply judges enforcing constitutional protections.
Sometimes they’re right.
But liberals should consider the opposite scenario.
Imagine a Democratic president wins the White House.
The Valley Viewpoint 