What if I told you that when federal district judges issue injunctions blocking President Donald Trump’s policies in a judicial insurrection, they were the ones breaking the law?

No, it’s not just because these judges are effectively usurping the authority of the president over the executive branch. It’s more clear-cut than that.

When Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., issued an order demanding the Trump administration return reputed members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to the U.S., he wasn’t just making immigration policy—he was violating a black-and-white rule laid down by the U.S. Supreme Court.

It’s called the Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c). Here’s what it says:

The court may issue a preliminary injunction or a temporary restraining order only if the movant [that is, petitioner] gives security in an amount that the court considers proper to pay the costs and damages sustained by any party found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained. The United States, its officers, and its agencies are not required to give security.

What does that mean? It means that when the ACLU files a lawsuit against the Trump administration and asks the judge to issue an order forcing Trump to turn around, in midflight, the planes deporting violent gangbangers, the ACLU has to put up or shut up.

The ACLU has to put down a “security” payment when asking for the court order, just in case a later judge strikes down the order after it already cost the government money to follow it.

This commonsense requirement isn’t a Trump wish list item. It’s a rule with the force of law. //

So, why isn’t the Department of Justice formally asking judges to enforce this rule?

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression may give a hint at the answer.

“Courts have long recognized exceptions for public-interest litigation, especially when it comes to those seeking to protect constitutional rights,” FIRE’s Ronnie London explained.

Perhaps the Justice Department is unwilling to press its rights on this issue because groups such as FIRE would like a public-interest exception.

Still, Hans von Spakovsky, a senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, told The Daily Signal, “There is no exception.”

Daniel Huff, who worked as an attorney in the first Trump White House, wrote about the issue for The Wall Street Journal.

He called the “public interest” exception “made-up” and “subjective.”

“This elitist conceit presumes that it is in the public interest to exempt activists from standard legal rules so they can block actions ordered by the president, for whom 77 million Americans voted,” Huff wrote.

He cited no less a judge than since-deceased Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, when she served on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

In National Kidney Patients Association v. Sullivan (1992), a district judge tried to invoke public interest to waive the security payment. A panel of the D.C. Circuit, which included future Justice Ginsburg, rejected the claim outright: “This completely overlooks a key purpose of the bond … to make plaintiffs consider the damage they may inflict by pressing ahead with a possibly losing claim.”