Why Republicans plan to impeach judges who haven’t done anything wrong

Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.

Republicans in the House and Senate were quick to follow Donald Trump's March 18 orders to impeach federal judges who ruled against his illegal actions.

But when pressed about which high crimes and misdemeanors the judges committed to warrant such an extreme measure, Republicans had no good answer.

Instead, the only "crime" they came up with was that the judges didn't let the lawless president trample over the Constitution to do whatever he wants, whether that be deporting immigrants without due process; letting co-President Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency bros access sensitive government systems, shut down federal agencies, and chaotically fire federal employees; or remove health data from government websites because it was tangentially related to “gender identity.”

For example, CNN host Kasie Hunt asked Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio what “high crimes or misdemeanors” these judges committed. 

Jordan replied with what can only be described as verbal diarrhea. 

“All I’m saying is, if you’re acting in a political fashion and not just following the law, the ruling on the law, and I would argue that frankly just his ruling in and of itself, remember the Constitution is pretty clear, Article II Section I, very first sentence, says the power in the executive branch shall be vested in a president of the United States. The president has the authority,” Jordan said.

Of course Jordan left out that Article III of the Constitution says that judicial power extends to “all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States”—which is what the judges were doing when plaintiffs argued that the Trump administration was violating U.S. laws while carrying out its destructive agenda.

Rep. Brendan Gill of Texas, who filed articles of impeachment against the judge who tried to stop Trump’s illegal deportations of Venezuelan immigrants (an order the Trump administration ignored), was also asked which impeachable offenses the judge committed—and had a terrible response.

“This is for usurping the executive's authority, for demeaning the impartiality of the court by making a politicized ruling, and forcing a constitutional crisis,” Gill said on Newsmax. “That is a high crime and misdemeanor.”

Other Republicans also backed Trump and Musk’s call to impeach judges who rule against the administration.

“America is a Republic, not a dictatorship of the judiciary. It's time to get rid of the political activists masquerading as judges and re-establish proper separation of powers,” Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida wrote in a post on X. “That's why I'm proud to announce that I will be joining my colleagues in impeaching ALL the activist judges who are unconstitutionally blocking President Trump's agenda.”

And Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said he was going to introduce a law that would ban judges from being able to order nationwide injunctions.

“District Court judges have issued RECORD numbers of national injunctions against the Trump administration - a dramatic abuse of judicial authority. I will introduce legislation to stop this abuse for good,” Hawley said, without acknowledging that maybe it’s because no other administration has ever initiated so many lawless actions that violate the Constitution.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley didn’t explicitly say he supported impeaching the judges, but he made it clear he believes what the judges did was wrong—and will use his powerful committee to go after those judges.

“Another day, another judge unilaterally deciding policy for the whole country. This time to benefit foreign gang members,” Grassley wrote in a post on X. “If the Supreme Court or Congress doesn’t fix, we’re headed towards a constitutional crisis. Senate Judiciary Cmte taking action.”

And it seems that Musk read Grassley’s comment as being supportive of impeachment, because after Trump’s demand to impeach the judges, Musk donated to Grassley and six other Republicans who have supported the effort to boot them, The New York Times reported.

From the Times’ report:

Mr. Musk contributed on Wednesday to Representatives Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Brandon Gill of Texas. He also donated to Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, according to two of the people briefed on the matter.

“This is a judicial coup,” Musk wrote on X of a court ruling that blocked Trump from banning transgender people from the military. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

Of course, it takes 67 senators to impeach—a fact you’d think Musk, who Trump and Republicans have framed as a genius, would know.

Ultimately, this impeachment effort is futile.

Even if House Republicans somehow succeed in impeaching these judges, there is no way that Democratic senators would vote to convict and remove them in an impeachment trial.

The end result of this ridiculous posturing: making judges fear for their own safety as they receive death threats for their legally sound rulings, thanks to Republicans’ vile rhetoric.

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It’s now an impeachable offense to rule against the president

Republicans are dying to impeach lower court judges who have ruled against the Trump administration, an unprecedented attack on the judiciary. Meanwhile, over at the judiciary, Chief Justice John Roberts is utterly unable to meet the moment. 

There’s a tiny problem with the Republican impeachment plan. Much like the president, federal judges can only be impeached for “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” It’s right there in Article II of the Constitution. But Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas, cares nothing for your silly constitution and wants to impeach Judge James Boasberg for the high crimes and misdemeanors of issuing a ruling the administration doesn’t like. 

Gill is not a paragon of legislative accomplishment. Before coming to Congress this year, Gill was mostly known as an election denier and the son-in-law of fellow election denier Dinesh D’Souza. Gill has desperately tried to distinguish himself in the crowded field of GOP legislators willing to do unhinged things to get Trump’s attention. Hence, he introduced a bill that would remove Founding Father Benjamin Franklin from the $100 bill and replace it with President Donald Trump. 

Too bad that Rep. Joe Wilson, famous for yelling “You lie!” at President Barack Obama during the State of the Union, already introduced a measure to create a new $250 bill and slap Trump’s face on that. 

Just as he was not the first legislator who suggested debasing U.S. currency, Gill also wasn’t the first House member to call for impeachment of a lower court judge. That honor goes to Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona, who introduced articles of impeachment against Judge Paul Engelmayer nearly a month ago because Engelmayer blocked the Department of Government Efficiency teens from burrowing into Treasury Department records. 

But Gill did win the race to demand Judge James Boasberg be removed from the bench because Boasberg blocked—or tried to block—the administration from summarily deporting over 200 Venezuelans who Trump alleged are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Boasberg’s order to stop those deportations was met with outright defiance by the administration, which did it anyway. 

While Gill’s articles of impeachment say that Boasberg committed high crimes and misdemeanors, Gill’s appearance on Newsmax on Wednesday gave away the game. When asked what crime the judge committed that would fit under “high crimes and misdemeanors,” Gill came up with, “This is for usurping the executive’s authority.”

NEWSMAX: For impeachment you have to have "high crimes and misdemeanors." What crime did the judge commit? REP. BRANDON GILL: This is for usurping the executive's authority

Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) 2025-03-19T15:46:46.502Z

Even if it were true, which is definitely not the case, it’s unclear how that would count as a high crime or misdemeanor for which impeachment is appropriate. First, intruding upon the executive's authority, however that might irritate Trump, is not actually a crime. The remedy for Boasberg exceeding the bounds of his authority is that the administration gets to appeal to a higher court and argue about it there. 

By the time Gill drafted his impeachment articles, he had reworked his theory into a claim that Boasberg had “willfully use[d] his judicial position to advance political gain” and “attempted to seize power from the Executive Branch and interfere with the will of the American people.” Gill then said Boasberg had created a “created a constitutional crisis.”

The House has rarely impeached judges, but usually, it does so when a judge is convicted of an actual crime, made false statements, shown improper favoritism, was drunk on the bench, or abused the power to hold someone in contempt. None of that happened here. 

All that happened is that Boasberg made a ruling in which he interpreted the Constitution and United States law to determine whether the administration should be temporarily blocked from deporting people. This was based on what can charitably be called a novel legal theory about the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives the president wide latitude to deport non-citizens during times of war.  

Prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 16, 2025.

Trump says he has the sole authority to designate non-state actors, like Venezuelan gangs, as enemy aliens who have invaded, and we are therefore at war. Then, he can deport any migrant who he believes falls in that category without any due process. 

Judge Boasberg’s ruling, despite being spun by the right as massive overreach, was appropriately cautious. All Boasberg did was issue a 14-day temporary restraining order, freezing deportations for just two weeks while the parties continued to litigate. The notion such a minimal restriction on the administration’s actions constitutes a judicial overreach so outrageous is absurd. 

While Gill is doing the president’s dirty work over in the House, Trump is whipping the MAGA faithful into howling for Boasberg’s removal. Meanwhile, Elon Musk is bribing, er, donating to GOP legislators who back impeachment, just to remind them who really runs the show. 

All of this adds up to a pretty comprehensive assault on the integrity and authority of the judiciary. However, the man who has been head of the judiciary for nearly 20 years, Chief Justice John Roberts, could not muster even a few strong words about it. Here is the entirety of Roberts’ weak sauce statement:

"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."

This is a nothingburger. It doesn’t specify who is yelling for impeachment. It says nothing about how attacks on individual judges are beyond the pale. It doesn’t address the administration’s belief it is not bound by lower court orders.

But the news media always grades Roberts on a curve, eager to pretend he is evenhanded rather than a staunch partisan who invented complete immunity for Trump. So they are calling this statement so short that it could fit in a tweet, a “rebuke” of Trump and an “extraordinary display of conflict” between the two branches. 

Trump certainly didn’t see it as a rebuke, gloating on Fox that, “Well, he didn’t mention my name in the statement. I just saw it quickly. He didn’t mention my name.” 

This is not the behavior of someone who is chastened, who intends to respect the federal courts, or who will stop calling for the impeachment of judges. 

Roberts has a front-row seat to the administration’s destruction of the constitutional order. He has the unique power to call this out in a meaningful way. Whether he’s unable to do so because he’s feckless or because he has no problem with the administration’s approach doesn’t matter. Either way, he’s helping deepen the real constitutional crisis we’re facing. 

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Judges fear for their safety as GOP melts down over legal losing streak

Federal judges are receiving death threats and have expressed serious concerns about their safety, following attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump, the Republican Party, conservative activists, and right-wing media.

The climate is so hostile, even right-wing judges are being targeted.

For instance, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister received an emailed threat that a pipe bomb had been placed in her mailbox. The email turned out to be a hoax. The threat came after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration, who was attempting to withhold payments from the U.S. Agency for International Development for work that had already been completed.

Federal judges are receiving pizza deliveries at their homes as part of an intimidation campaign, to let the judges know that their private home addresses are known. A bulletin from the U.S. Marshals Service noted, “We assess that these incidents are related to high-profile cases that have received extensive media coverage and public interest.”

Judge John C. Coughenour, who ruled against Trump’s attempt to abolish birthright citizenship, told The New York Times he had been targeted for a “swatting” attack—a false police report of a crime at his residence that led to a police response. Coughenour also said he received a mailbox bomb threat, which was a hoax.

The Trump administration is on a losing streak in multiple federal courts, as judges again and again say the actions of Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency, and figures like GOP financier Elon Musk are breaking the law or overstepping their legal authority. An analysis by the Washington Post determined that since Trump was sworn in for his second term, he has lost a case every four days.

Trump has gone on the attack instead of accepting his losses like other leaders.

“If a President doesn’t have the right to throw murderers, and other criminals, out of our Country because a Radical Left Lunatic Judge wants to assume the role of President, then our Country is in very big trouble, and destined to fail!” Trump wrote Thursday on Truth Social.

 Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

Trump has also promoted conservative influencers who have targeted judges ruling against the administration.

He isn’t alone. House Republicans have begun the process to impeach judges for insufficient devotion to Trump, while Musk has said it is “necessary” to remove those officials. Conservative media like Fox News has amplified the crusade, with attacks on the judiciary in service of Trump.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who leads the Supreme Court’s conservative bloc and has been a reliable pro-Trump vote, nonetheless expressed concerns about the right’s actions (without directly naming Trump).

“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,” he wrote in a statement.

Trump’s team has been ignoring rulings and defying orders at a pace that the courts are struggling to keep up with, and now those judges are in the conservative movement’s crosshairs.

In all likelihood, the situation will continue to escalate.

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House Republicans rally around ‘idiotic’ plan to punish judges

Egged on by wannabe dictator Donald Trump, House Republicans are pushing GOP leadership to let them embark on impeachment proceedings against federal judges who dare to rule against their Dear Leader—a time-consuming and destined-to-fail effort that harms the rule of law and could even wound the Republican Party in elections moving forward.

Multiple Republican lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against four federal judges who recently ruled against the Trump administration.

“Congress has the constitutional power to impeach rogue activist judges—and we intend to use it,” Republican Rep. Brendan Gill of Texas, who filed articles of impeachment against a federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to turn around planes that were deporting alleged Venezuelan immigrants to a gulag in El Salvador, wrote in a post on X.

House Republicans are pushing for the impeachments to move forward even as Politico reported that some GOP lawmakers view the effort to be “idiotic.”

“You don’t impeach judges who make decisions you disagree with, because that happens all the time,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told Politico in early March. “What you do is you appeal, and if you’re right, then you’re going to win on appeal.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts

Even Chief Justice John Roberts warned that impeachment is not the way to handle disagreements with judicial decisions.

“We are going to keep the impeachments coming,” Republican Rep. Andy Ogles Tennessee wrote in a post on X. Ogles himself filed articles of impeachment against a judge who ordered the Trump administration to restore websites it had taken down to comply with Trump's executive order targeting “gender ideology extremism.”

But complicating things for Republican leadership is that Trump blessed the impeachment efforts on Tuesday, saying that the judge who tried to block his effort to deport immigrants without due process is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."

“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!! WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Trump wrote in a deranged Truth Social post.

Co-President Elon Musk, who has threatened to fund primary challenges to Republicans who don’t do what Trump says, also wants judicial impeachments.

“This is a judicial coup. We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” Musk wrote in a post on X on Tuesday after another federal judge ruled against the Trump administration, this time on its attempted ban of transgender troops.

Given that GOP leaders acquiesce to all of Trump's wants, no matter how immoral or unconstitutional, his demand puts them in a difficult place of having to choose what’s right or to make their Dear Leader happy. 

“Everything is on the table,” Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, told Politico. An unnamed spokesperson to House Speaker Mike Johnson also told Politico that judges “with political agendas pose a significant threat” and that Johnson "looks forward to working with the Judiciary Committee as they review all available options under the Constitution to address this urgent matter.”

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson

But as aides for Johnson publicly said all options are on the table, top GOP aides privately admitted the impeachment route is stupid and will take up time the House needs to pass the rest of Trump’s destructive and unpopular agenda.

“It’s never going to happen,” an unnamed senior Republican aide told Politico. “There aren’t the votes.”

Plus, forcing Republicans to vote on impeachment could be politically damaging for the GOP.

Polling from February—when Republicans began crowing about impeaching judges who ruled against Trump—showed that voters want Trump to follow court orders.

"This court issue is a big loser for Trump," CNN's Harry Enten wrote in a post on X, referring to a Washington Post poll from February. "The belief that Trump must follow court orders is more popular than Mother Teresa: 84% of all adults, 92% of Dems, 82% of Indies & 79% of the GOP."

Other polls have similar findings, including an NBC News survey released Wednesday. It found that a plurality of voters (43%) believe the president and executive branch have too much power, as opposed to the 28% who believe the Supreme Court and judicial branch have too much.

The cherry on top of this for GOP leaders is that their members would be taking potentially damaging votes on impeachment for nothing. The charges would be disposed of in the Senate, where there is no way on earth that two-thirds of the chamber would vote to convict and remove judges. Republicans have just 53 votes there. To impeach a judge, they’d need 14 Democrats to also join in. 

But never put it past Republicans to do stupid things in the name of subservience to Trump.  

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The Recap: DOGE threatens world peace, and Texas makes first arrest for abortion

A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know.

Now they're coming for judges who dare to enforce the law

“There needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments,” said super legitimate government official Elon Musk.

Unqualified DOGE bro leads raid on agency dedicated to world peace

It’s not the first time these goons have tried to shut down a congressionally funded entity.

Texas makes first arrest under state’s terrifying abortion ban

The state continues to be a leader in oppressing women.

RFK Jr.'s anti-vaxx stance is jeopardizing cancer treatments

Meanwhile, the measles outbreak continues to ravage Texas.

Agriculture head touts falling egg prices—but farmers are still scrambling

“There may be some bumpy times ahead.”

Cartoon: My other car

It might be time to ditch the Tesla …

Oh great, QAnon nut Michael Flynn is back, just like Trump promised

At least that’s one promise he didn’t break, though we wish he did.

Watch Ted Cruz fanboy over Elon Musk in super cringey interview

Maybe he’ll be Musk’s plus-one to Mars.

Click here to see more cartoons.

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Whoopi Goldberg Suggest Democrats ‘Impeach’ SCOTUS Justices To ‘Balance Stuff Out’

On Tuesday’s episode of “The View,” Whoopi Goldberg suggested that Democrats make the unprecedented move of impeaching Supreme Court justices, saying that this would restore balance on the Supreme Court.

Goldberg Suggests Democrats ‘Impeach’ SCOTUS Justices

Goldberg said this while the panel on the ABC talk show was discussing the Supreme Court confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett by the Republican-led Senate the day before.

“I think her appointment is really going to change the way the Supreme Court is going to not only handle cases but the way the Supreme Court is going to look going forward,” cohost Sunny Hostin said. “We all know the Republican Party has been packing the Supreme Court for decades. They’ve been packing the judiciary for decades.”

“Trump has put now three justices on the Supreme Court and just dozens and dozens of judges on the federal judiciary,” she added. “I think what we’ll see is perhaps the Democrats unpacking the Supreme Court, so there’s more of a balance.”

That’s when Goldberg chimed in with her own bright idea.

“Or some impeachments which is possible with Supreme Court judges. They also can be impeached,” Goldberg said.

“There are lots of ways to shift this,” she added. “One could impeach judges that have not stuck to the rules of being judges on the Supreme Court. That’s been done several times. There’s a lot of ways to balance stuff out.”

Pelosi Flirts With Idea Of Packing Supreme Court

This comes after Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) flirted with the idea of expanding the Supreme Court during an interview with MSNBC.

“Should we expand the court?” Pelosi asked. “Well, let’s take a look and see.”

“But not — and that relates to the nine district courts, maybe we need more district courts as well,” she added. “And one other thing we need, we need for these justices to disclose their holdings.”

RELATED: Pelosi Flirts With Packing Court And Suggests ‘Maybe We Need More District Courts’

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), a self-described Democratic Socialist who has become the face of the far-left side of her party, has let it be known that packing the court is something she will be fighting for if Joe Biden wins this election.

“Expand the court,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted on Monday. “Republicans do this because they don’t believe Dems have the stones to play hardball like they do. And for a long time they’ve been correct. But do not let them bully the public into thinking their bulldozing is normal but a response isn’t. There is a legal process for expansion.”

RELATED: AOC Demands Democrats ‘Expand The Court’ After Amy Coney Barrett Confirmed

This piece was written by James Samson on October 28, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Mayor de Blasio Pledges To Take Swift Action Against NYPD Cop Caught Praising Trump
Kayleigh McEnany Addresses Whether Trump Has Asked DOJ To Investigate Bidens
Hollywood Liberals Lose Their Minds Over Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation

The post Whoopi Goldberg Suggest Democrats ‘Impeach’ SCOTUS Justices To ‘Balance Stuff Out’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

If You Are Thinking About Voting For Biden In 2020, Read This First

I don’t think former vice president and current Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden will win in November, but let me predict what the Democrats will do if they win the White House and Congress in the fall.

They will enact hate speech legislation making it a crime to publicly utter hate speech. How bad can that be, you might ask? Well, it will be a crime to criticize or question affirmative action. To suggest that the culture of the ghetto has something to do with the problems of the ghetto.

To suggest that the racial disparities in incarceration might be due to crime rates, all that will be a crime. Only officially approved speech about race will be permitted. To encourage the Supreme Court to get with the program, the Democrats will haul out an old favorite and threaten to pack the Court. That will be the new normal.

MORE NEWS: Snoop Dogg Decries Black Conservatives As ‘The Coon Bunch’ In Instagram Post

ONE PARTY RULE

Democrats will aggressively pursue “one-party rule” by co-opting the election system. “Mail-in ballots for every registered voter” even though 358 counties in this country have more registered voters than people of voting age. Voter fraud will become rampant and the Democrats will establish one-party tyrannical rule.

They will co-opt the Judicial system by adding two liberal judges to SCOTUS so that NOTHING they want will be deemed unconstitutional.

We will become a communist vassal state of China.

TEARING DOWN HISTORY

Tearing down statues is not a metaphor.  The cancel culture warriors aim to expunge the very ideas that those people bequeathed to us.  The devaluation of Confederate generals is not the goal of this movement. If it were, statues of Washington, Grant, Teddy Roosevelt, St Junipero Serra, and other members of our founding fathers would not even be considered for outrage.

But Candidate Joe wants the normal of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Lyndon B. Johnson, Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama, and Rosa Parks.  Does he not understand that without the ideals and the system if the government left to us by those men whose memory he wants to be erased there would have been no Rosa Parks, LBJ, Obama, or King.

MORE NEWS: Shootings In New York City Skyrocket By 205% After The NYPD Disbands ‘Anti-Crime’ Unit 

And if the nihilists succeed, there never will again.  The best that I can say for Candidate Joe is that he is a fool!

FULFILLING CAMPAIGN PROMISES

I have serious doubts that Joe Biden is going to deliver on many of his promises for his purported version of normal. I just can’t see this man as someone who cares about social justice or the economic inequities in this country. Even a guy who is more honest like Obama has flipped flopped so many times on gay marriage.

All politicians lie, but Biden is the type of guy who will tell the truth to the center-right or his Wall Street friends rather than the left so honestly there really isn’t a good reason to vote for Biden even if you care about social justice.

Remember, incumbents are hard to vote out and you will be stuck with Biden for eight years.

THE CLEAR CHOICE IS TRUMP

President Trump’s four years have been filled will 92% negative coverage by the media, consistent illegal leaks of classified information from U.S. government employees, an unscrupulous coup attempt by the outgoing administration and its FBI/CIA/DNI/DOJ leaders, a corrupt Special Counsel investigation, and a phony impeachment.

MORE NEWS: Charlie Daniels Was A Fierce Culture Warrior Who Took Conservatism To The Heartland

And yet, during all of this, the President worked tirelessly to bring us a roaring economy, renewed U.S. manufacturing, rebuilt military, energy independence, reduced illegal entry at the southern border, record low unemployment rates and more. Imagine what he could have done if he hadn’t had to fight his own government to do what’s right for the American people.

The Deep State still exists, and we need four more years for him to defeat it.

HERE’S A STARK REMINDER

A serious reminder to those of you voting a mere four months from now; for many years, many of us fought or served as a shield to save you from the murderous socialist slave states, and if you blunder into becoming one under the Democrats, there will be nobody to bail you out.

WAYNE’S RECOMMENDATIONS

 

The post If You Are Thinking About Voting For Biden In 2020, Read This First appeared first on The Political Insider.

When it comes to packing the federal courts, McConnell and Trump have no shame—and no principles

Focusing on the long-term—especially about matters of governmental and political process—isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do in the middle of a pandemic. However, Republicans never seem to think it’s the wrong time to push every button made available to them in their quest to gain as much power as possible. No matter what constitutional or historical norms they have to trample on, Donald Trump and his party are determined to create a conservative judiciary at the federal level that will endure for a quarter-century or more.

Let’s start, however, with what’s going on in 2020. Moscow Mitch—Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that is—has been doing things the Founders likely never envisioned when they wrote our Constitution. He, along with allies, have been making calls to aging conservative jurists on the federal courts, reminding them that the clock is ticking—on Trump’s time in the White House, on the Republicans’ hold on the Senate, and, most appropriately given his embrace of the nickname “Grim Reaper,” on their very lives. McConnell has been urging them to all retire ASAP so that he and The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote can put as many young whipper-snappers as possible into lifetime seats on the federal bench, seats they’ll hold long past a Sasha Obama presidency.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently called McConnell out on this blatant manipulation of the process: “Senator McConnell knows he can’t achieve any of his extreme goals legislatively, so he continues to attempt to pull America to the far right by packing the courts.”

As The New York Times notes, some progressives have made statements urging justices to stay in their positions so that Trump can’t appoint their successors, but McConnell has achieved a new low by targeting individual judges and asking them to retire. This ask is a nasty one, on par with greedy heirs rooting for wealthy relatives to die sometime before 2010 came to an end ... just so they could dodge the temporarily-repealed estate tax.

McConnell here is repeating, in private, sentiments that members of his party such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley publicly expressed in the run-up to the 2018 midterms: “If you are thinking about quitting this year, do it yesterday. If we have a Democrat Senate, you’re never going to get the kind of people that are strict constructionists.”

For anyone confused, “strict constructionists”—i.e., conservative judges who claim that all they do is look to the plain text of the Constitution when making their rulings—is really just a fancy term Republicans use in public to give a more objective veneer to their preferred judicial approach, which almost always—coincidentally, of course—comes down on the side of the powerful. In other words, characterizing conservative judges as strict constructionists sounds less political than saying that they are right-wing ideologues who vote just like Rush Limbaugh would—even though the latter is the truth.

Republicans are being quite systematic about this whole affair. Their efforts are supported by a private organization called the Article III Project, named after the part of the Constitution that establishes lifetime tenure for federal judges, subject to impeachment and removal if they fail to live up to the standard of “good behaviour” laid down therein. This group exists to “fight for the confirmation of President Trump’s judicial nominees.”

The helpful folks over at A3P—that’s their clever moniker—want to clear out as many existing judges as possible. They’ve identified 90 who were appointed by a previous Republican president and who, based on their age and how many years they’ve served, either qualify or will qualify by year’s end for something called senior status.

According to the court system’s rules, those who take senior status now rather than outright retire allow Trump to put another, younger conservative in their place just as if they had retired. But judges on senior status get to keep drawing their full salary, hire clerks, and hear a reduced caseload. If this sounds bananas to you, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s the best of both worlds for those senior judges and for Republican leaders who want to increase their imprint on the judiciary. Thanks to A3P’s work, McConnell has a long list of people to target and a very attractive offer to make them.

McConnell and Trump have made a great effort to, in the senator’s words, “leave no vacancy behind.” They have placed 51 judges onto the U.S. Court of Appeals in Trump’s first three years (and 191 federal judges overall, as well as two on the Supreme Court), compared to 55 in Barack Obama’s entire eight years in office, and 62 during George W. Bush’s presidency. Trump has now named more than one-quarter of all sitting U.S. Appeals Court justices.

A good chunk of those new appellate judges—more than one out of three—took a spot previously held by a Democratic-appointed justice, thus shifting the bench hard to the right. Particularly noteworthy is the contrast between the diversity of the judges Obama appointed—only 31% of whom were white men, compared to 67% for Trump. For reference, somewhere around 40-45% of lawyers are white males, and white males constitute around 30% of the overall U.S. population, according to census data.

The New York Times conducted an in-depth analysis earlier this month of these Trump judges and found that they differ “significantly” from those nominated by either Obama or G.W. Bush. Regarding their activities prior to being nominated by Trump, they had been “more openly engaged in causes important to Republicans, such as opposition to gay marriage and to government funding for abortion.” They were also more likely to have been political appointees and made political donations. Even more alarming has been their impact after taking up their new positions:

When ruling on cases, they have been notably more likely than other Republican appointees to disagree with peers selected by Democratic presidents, and more likely to agree with those Republican appointees, suggesting they are more consistently conservative. Among the dozen or so judges that most fit the pattern, The Times found, are three Mr. Trump has signaled were on his Supreme Court shortlist.

While the appellate courts favor consensus and disagreement remains relatively rare — there were 125 instances when a Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion or dissent in a split decision — the new judges have ruled on disputed cases across a range of contentious issues, including abortion, immigration, L.G.B.T. rights and lobbying requirements, the examination shows.

Sen. McConnell has long been clear about the level of importance he places on reshaping the federal judiciary. "There are over 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us for confirmation, and among the most important—in fact, I would argue, the most important—confirmations we have are lifetime appointments to the judiciary," McConnell told NPR. "Obviously, this is my top priority."

McConnell’s success in placing conservative judges on the federal bench during Trump’s tenure is a direct result of his actions in the final two years of Obama’s presidency. After Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015, they basically just stopped approving his nominees. The Brookings Institution noted the “unprecedentedly miniscule number of confirmations” that were carried out in those two years under McConnell’s leadership. That’s why there were 103 open seats on the federal bench for Trump to fill when he was inaugurated.

Without question, the most important of those openings was on the Supreme Court. McConnell ensured that seat remained open for almost a full year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia by denying a hearing, let alone a vote, to President Obama’s nominee, U.S. District Court Chief Justice Merrick Garland. Garland was a moderate about whom Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch had said in 2010: “I have no doubts that Garland would get a lot of (Senate) votes. And I will do my best to help him get them.” However, Hatch did not keep his word in 2016. Oh, and during the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh, he pretended like the Garland nomination never happened. That’s what you call a double back-flip worth of bullshit.

Additionally, Garland was 63 years old when Obama nominated him, so his age itself served as a kind of compromise when compared to, for example, the nomination of 43-year-old Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush to a lifetime seat on the highest court back in 1992.

The way McConnell and Co. abused the established process when they essentially ignored a presidential nomination to the Supreme Court also qualifies as unprecedented, despite widely debunked Republican protestations to the contrary. As The New York Times editorial board wrote shortly after the 2016 election, the seat in which Justice Neil Gorsuch now sits is a “stolen seat.” Encouraging a mass wave of retirements in order to give Trump an even more outsized imprint on the federal judiciary would, if it succeeds, represent another form of theft.

All of this—from the blocking of Garland to the personalized arm-twisting aimed at getting judges to give up their seats in the coming months before it’s too late—reflects a level of cynicism and rejection of principle that has defined the contemporary Republican Party going back to even before Trump took it over. Principles? To Republicans, those are for suckers, i.e. Democrats.

Our Constitution’s authors were, generally speaking, not naive. They didn’t trust easily—they created the Electoral College because they didn’t trust the people to directly elect our president. However, the Framers failed to anticipate how the rules they wrote into the Constitution might be abused. They likely did not imagine that the Senate’s charge to provide “advice and consent,” as laid out in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution, would lead to the kind of treatment with which the nomination of Judge Garland was met. The Framers never planned for Mitch McConnell.

Because of what he has done, Democrats are faced with a choice if and when they retake the White House and the Senate. Do they act in kind, and similarly game the system? Or do they take the high road, which would allow Republicans to hold on to their ill-gotten gains in the judicial branch? Keep in minds they all too often use those gains to further tighten their grip on power through judicial rulings on, for example, matters like voting rights or gerrymandering.

There’s only one way out of that dilemma: namely, to fundamentally alter the process so that it could not be gamed so easily. We need to get rid of lifetime tenure for federal judges, from the Supreme Court right on down the line. There are many different proposals out there, most of which focus on term limits for the highest court, but McConnell’s most recent actions make clear that such limits are necessary at lower levels as well. I haven’t seen polling done on term limits for all federal judges, but Supreme Court term limits are quite popular, with Democrats, Republicans, and independents all expressing similar levels of support.

To be sure, it would not be easy to implement such changes, as they would require a constitutional amendment. Nevertheless, such changes are necessary because any process that is based on principles, for example the idea that life tenure for justices is necessary to ensure that they'll be independent and removed from politics, will be abused by Republicans who have no principles at all.

Our democratic system must be governed by processes that prevent abuse by the unprincipled. As I’ve written before, Republicans seem to be taking their cues from young adult fiction of all places, leaning on the values of Harry Potter’s nemesis, Lord Voldemort—derived from Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who has inspired everyone on the right from Hitler to today’s white nationalists (even if they all get him wrong, but that’s another story): “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly wrote that McConnell’s recent “outreach” to aging Republican judges indicates that he is “running scared” because “he is aware that his party will soon be out of power.” I rarely hope that McConnell is right about anything.

This time, however, Moscow Mitch and I are completely on the same page.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)