Meet The Judge Who Was Trump’s Biggest Legal Nemesis In His First Year

Among the many judges who overturned the Trump administration’s efforts in its first year, one judge most often opposed the president on central policy issues.

Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee in Washington, D.C., is notable for the number of rulings she has issued blocking presidential actions, including attempts to fire agency heads and cut federal grants and contracts, while making headlines for her pointed criticism of the administration in her opinions and facing frequent reversals on appeal.

Just days into President Donald Trump’s second term, Howell said she “cannot allow the revisionist myth relayed” to stand” in the president’s Jan. 6 proclamation pardoning the defendants, many of which were cases she presided over.

“No ‘national injustice’ occurred here, just as no outcome-determining voter fraud occurred in the 2020 presidential election,” she wrote. “No ‘national reconciliation process’ can begin when poor losers, whose preferred candidate loses an election, are glorified for disrupting a constitutionally mandated proceeding in Congress and doing so with impunity.

Federal prosecutors tried, unsuccessfully, to block Howell in March from hearing a challenge to one of Trump’s executive orders based on rulings that “repeatedly demonstrated bias and animosity toward the President” even before he took office. They cited his decision to greenlight former special adviser Jack Smith’s request to secretly search Trump’s Twitter account.

Howell criticized the attempt, defending his decisions as consistent with “the facts and the law.”

“When the U.S. Department of Justice engages in this rhetorical strategy of ad hominem attack, the stakes become much higher than just the reputation of the targeted federal judge,” Howell wrote in March. “This strategy seeks to call into question the integrity of the federal justice system and blame any losses on the decision-maker rather than on the errors of the substantive legal arguments presented. »

Howell then blocked enforcement in May of Trump’s order against the law firm Perkins Coie, which ordered agencies to review contracts with the firm while suspending employees’ security clearances and limiting their access to government buildings. Perkin Coie represented Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign.

“No American president has ever issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with negative actions to be carried out by all agencies of the executive branch, but, in its purpose and effect, this action draws on a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who wrote the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let us kill all the lawyers,'” Howell wrote in a May 2 ruling.

The administration is appealing Howell’s decision. The D.C. District Court did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“With more than 20 Supreme Court victories, the Trump Administration’s policies have been consistently upheld by the Supreme Court as lawful despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and illegal rulings from lower courts,” White House Press Secretary Abigail Jackson said in a statement to DCNF. “What should deeply concern the American people is the widespread increase in judicial activism by radical left judges. If this trend continues, it threatens to undermine the rule of law for all future presidencies. The President will continue to implement the policy agenda that the American people voted for in November and will continue to be vindicated by the higher courts when liberal activist judges attempt to intervene.”

The E. Barrett Prettyman United States Courthouse, for the United States District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, is seen in Washington, DC, November 3, 2025. (Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

“Not a king”

The Supreme Court stayed Howell’s decision to block Trump from removing Gwynne Wilcox, a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board, in May. The justices heard oral arguments in December to examine the broader question of the president’s ability to fire members of “independent” multi-member coalitions.

“A U.S. president is not a king – not even an ‘elected official’ – and his power to remove honest federal officers and public servants like the plaintiff is not absolute,” Howell argued in March.

Howell also ruled Trump’s effort to dismantle the U.S. Institute of Peace in May was illegal, but his decision was later overturned by the Washington, D.C. Circuit.

“As a general rule, the President may remove officers at his discretion,” a three-judge panel wrote in overturning Howell’s decision. (RELATED: Trump Admin To End Year With Impressive Record Of SCOTUS Wins – And Major Decisions Ahead)

Howell sided with Planned Parenthood in October, blocking the requirement that recipients of teen pregnancy prevention grants comply with Trump’s executive orders on gender ideology and end the indoctrination of children with “radical ideologies.” She called on the administration to restore Department of Agriculture grants that ended in August.

In December, she issued a ruling restricting agents’ ability to arrest suspected illegal aliens without a warrant in Washington, DC.

“Simply put, immigration enforcement officers may only make a warrantless civil arrest if they have probable cause to believe that a person is both in the United States illegally and poses a flight risk,” she wrote.

Its decision appears to “ignore a 1984 Supreme Court opinion and exceed the limits imposed by Congress on the lowest echelon of the federal immigration judiciary,” according to Andrew Arthur, resident scholar at the Center for Immigration Studies.

Howell closed out 2025 with a ruling in favor of Trump, allowing the president to impose a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa applications.

Still, Howell on Sunday ordered the administration to reinstate nearly $12 million in grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), likely finding “retaliatory grounds” for cutting the funds. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Here’s How a Small Group of Pediatricians Pushed a Medical Organization to Ban the Minimum Age for Sex Reassignments)

The AAP claimed the grants were terminated because of its public opposition to the policies of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., noting that the discontinued grants covered “a range of areas such as reducing sudden and unexpected infant deaths, improving rural access to pediatric care, youth and adolescent mental health, supporting children with birth defects, early identification of autism, identification of deaf and hard of hearing newborns and infants and prevention of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders.

“This is not a question of whether the AAP or HHS is right or even has the best position on immunizations and gender-affirming care for children, or any other public health policy,” Howell wrote. “This is a case about whether the federal government exercised its power in a way that paralyzed public health policy debate by retaliating against a leading and generally trusted professional membership organization of pediatricians focused on improving children’s health. »

HHS General Counsel Mike Stuart wrote on

“The arrogance behind this lawsuit is astounding – the AAP seems to believe that it is their money to spend as they please,” he wrote on December 27. “Wrong! It’s our money, and it is HHS’s duty to protect taxpayers from waste.”

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