Washington, D.C., has become a battleground for legal showdowns, with Judge Beryl Howell emerging as a central figure in disputes over President Donald Trump’s policies.
Howell, a Barack Obama appointee serving in the nation’s capital, has issued multiple rulings against Trump administration actions, including blocking efforts to fire agency heads, cutting federal grants, and enforcing executive orders, while most recently ordering the restoration of nearly $12 million in funding to the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on Sunday after finding a likely retaliatory motive for the cuts.
The issue has sparked intense debate over judicial authority and executive power, with critics and supporters weighing in on Howell’s string of decisions.
A few days into Trump’s second term, Howell sharply criticized a presidential proclamation pardoning defendants from Jan. 6 cases she oversaw, calling it a “revisionist myth," as the Daily Caller reports.
Her pointed opinions have drawn fire, especially when she allowed former special counsel Jack Smith to search Trump’s Twitter account, a move federal prosecutors challenged in March by alleging bias in her rulings.
Howell fired back, defending her decisions as grounded in “the facts and the law,” and accused the Department of Justice of undermining judicial integrity with personal attacks.
In May, Howell blocked an executive order targeting Perkins Coie, a law firm tied to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, which sought to review contracts and suspend security clearances—a decision now under appeal.
That same month, she ruled against Trump’s attempt to remove Democratic National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, though the Supreme Court put her decision on hold, with arguments heard in December.
Also in May, Howell deemed efforts to dismantle the U.S. Institute of Peace unlawful, only to see the D.C. Circuit reverse her, affirming the president’s broad authority to remove executive officers.
By August, Howell mandated the restoration of terminated Department of Agriculture grants, and in October, she sided with Planned Parenthood, halting requirements tied to Trump’s executive orders on gender ideology policies for teen pregnancy prevention programs.
In December, she restricted warrantless civil immigration arrests in D.C., a ruling criticized by Andrew Arthur of the Center for Immigration Studies for seemingly ignoring precedent and congressional limits on lower courts.
Yet, Howell did rule in Trump’s favor late in 2025, permitting a $100,000 fee for H-1B visa petitions, showing she’s not a one-note opponent.
Her latest decision on Sunday, ordering the restoration of $12 million to AAP, has reignited tensions, with Howell suggesting the cuts stemmed from retaliation over AAP’s opposition to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s policies.
HHS general counsel Mike Stuart countered on X, stating the funding “didn’t align with HHS’s mission or priorities,” and later blasted AAP’s lawsuit as arrogant, insisting taxpayer money must be safeguarded from waste in a Dec. 27 post.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson weighed in, touting over 20 Supreme Court victories for Trump’s policies and warning, “What the American people should be deeply concerned about is the rampant increase in judicial activism from radical left-wing judges,” while pledging to push forward with the November-voted agenda despite lower court setbacks.