A U.S. District Court judge has ruled that the Trump administration executive order that withholds certain funds from sanctuary cities is "unconstitutional on its face."

Judge William Orrick, considered one of the most liberal federal judges in the country, rejected out of hand the arguments made by the Department of Justice and Homeland Security. 

The Hill:

"The defendants are permanently enjoined from enforcing Section 9(a) of the Executive Order against jurisdictions they deem as sanctuary jurisdictions. Because Section 9(a) is unconstitutional on its face, and not simply in its application to the plaintiffs here, a nationwide injunction against the defendants other than President Trump is appropriate," U.S. District Judge William Orrick ruled.

The injunction comes after Orrick issued a temporary ruling in late April that blocked Trump's directive to withhold some federal funding from cities that refuse to comply fully with immigration enforcement, siding with San Francisco and Santa Clara County.

The California municipalities had sued over the order, arguing that more than $2 billion in federal funding could be at stake.

Orrick made his April decision permanent on Monday.

The Department of Justice slammed the decision in a statement, claiming the court overstepped its authority.

"The District Court exceeded its authority today when it barred the President from instructing his cabinet members to enforce existing law. The Justice Department will vindicate the President's lawful authority to direct the executive branch," said spokesman Devin O'Malley.

Orrick dismissed the federal government's argument that the "the Executive Order was meant to be far more narrow than I interpreted it, a mere directive to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice that does not seek to place any new conditions on federal funds," he wrote in statement about his ruling on the case.

"I concluded that the County of Santa Clara and the City and County of San Francisco had pre-enforcement standing to protect hundreds of millions of dollars of federal grants from the unconstitutionally broad sweep of the Executive Order," Orrick wrote.

Orrick is just the latest judge to create a spurious constitutional basis for negating executive authority.  We have seen this tactic before when judges in several jurisdictions declared the administration's executive order on the travel ban illegal.

There isn't much to be done except appeal the decision.  The DoJ could look at the judge's objections and try to rewrite the order to accommodate them, but when a judge is determined to block the executive, his options are limited only by his imagination to find new constitutional reasoning.

This is a consequence of eight years of allowing President Obama to remake the federal judiciary by naming radical leftists to federal courts.  Donald Trump's judicial picks so far have met with wide approval on the right, so we can only hope that a Republican will sit in the White House long enough to undo the damage.