Photo: Win McNamee/Getty Images
Thanks to the abject subservience of Republicans in Congress and the powerlessness of Democrats, it’s been obvious for a while that the federal courts represent the only challenge to the Trump agenda of mass firings and terminations of federal programs, mass deportations of immigrants, and other radical steps beyond the traditional scope of presidential powers. Thus, unsurprisingly, MAGA world is full of talk about impeaching the judges getting in their way. Elon Musk led the way, as Democracy Docket noted earlier this month:
Billionaire Elon Musk in recent weeks has raged in a blizzard of social media posts at federal judges who have ruled against his efforts to disembowel the government and executive orders issued by President Donald Trump.
“This evil judge must be fired!” he said last month on his social media platform while sharing a photograph of a judge. “The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” he said in another post last week.
Congressional Republicans, of course, have leapt onto the crazy train, as the New York Times observed:
House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges whom they portrayed as impediments to Mr. Trump, accusing them of acting corruptly in thwarting the administration.
“If these partisan judges want to be politicians, they should resign and run for office,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, in filing articles of impeachment against Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judge, who was placed on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had temporarily barred those working for Mr. Musk’s government review team from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records. …
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in a social media post that “corrupt judges should be impeached and removed” after earlier suggesting that rulings against the administration smacked of a ‘judicial coup.”
And now, Trump himself has lost his mind over D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg’s attempted interference with his administration’s deportation of Venezuelans. Initially the Justice Department just asked the court of appeals that supervises Boasberg to reassign the case to another judge. But its boss in the White House wants him removed from the bench entirely, as he demanded in an unhinged Truth Social post:
This “can no one rid me of this meddlesome judge?” cry of anguish drew an immediate response from Trump’s faithful servants in Congress, as The Hill reported: “Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced a resolution to impeach U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who over the weekend ordered the Trump administration to halt deportations of Venezuelans whom it said were gang members.”
There was enough smoke here that Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts felt constrained to advise the world in a March 18 statement that impeaching federal judges because you don’t like their rulings is not appropriate:
For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.
The contrast in tone between the president and the chief justice did not go unnoticed by attorney Ken White at Bluesky:
Trump: the streets will run like rivers with the blood of my enemies.
Their heads on spikes will adorn Congress and every federal building and court.
Chief Justice Roberts: Actually the GSA is in charge of federal court decorations in consultation with the judicial counsel
But more to the point, any impeachment drive aimed at federal judges who annoy Trump isn’t going to go very far, at least under the current U.S. Constitution. It would take every bit of Trump leverage available to get articles of impeachment aimed at a judge through the closely divided U.S. House. And as Politico reports, House GOP leaders view the idea as an annoying “distraction,” even though they dare not denounce it publicly:
[P]rivately there is dread inside Johnson’s leadership circle about the prospect of having to pursue messy, certain-to-fail impeachments that could ultimately backfire on the GOP’s razor-thin majority.
“It’s never going to happen,” said a senior House Republican aide. “There aren’t the votes.”
But the bigger reason it isn’t happening involves the Senate: As Democrats learned after impeaching Trump himself twice, getting the two-thirds vote necessary for a conviction (and removal from office) in the Senate against the wishes of one of the two major parties is well-nigh impossible. Perhaps some of the machers of Team Trump don’t understand that:
This is a judicial coup.
We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people. https://t.co/arUq1FApRq
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2025
It’s 67 senators to convict, and that’s on impeachment articles first passed by the House.
Ignorance aside, what’s the point of all the impeaching judges talk? It’s probably designed to intimidate judges who may fear for their lives if not for their lifetime appointments, while giving MAGA yahoos a big if not exactly new enemy to deplore. There is, after all, an ancient history in this country of populist politicians of both the left and the right fulminating against the unelected tyrants of the judiciary. The more alarming possibility, however, is that Trump, Musk, and congressional Republicans are laying the groundwork for a future refusal to obey court orders. Then we’ll have the constitutional crisis that has always loomed over the reign of a president who believes he embodies the nation and stands above all laws.
