Federal judges are, by and large, a cautious lot, not given to dramatic public pronouncements or calling attention to themselves. But now that the judiciary is under a sustained attack from the Trump administration and allies, some judges are speaking out.
During a Thursday webinar presented by the newly formed Speak Up for Justice, a nonpartisan group working to defend the judiciary, a couple of lower court judges were forthright about the threats they’ve faced after ruling against the Trump administration.
U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell, an Obama appointee, revealed that, after blocking President Donald Trump’s catastrophic funding freeze, he received 6 credible death threats, along with more than 400 threatening voicemails.
He played one during the webinar, with the caller saying, “How dare you try to put charges on Donald J. Trump,” and, “I wish somebody would fucking assassinate your ass.”
A cartoon by Clay Bennett.
Similarly, after U.S. District Court Judge John Coughenour blocked Trump’s birthright citizenship ban, he was swatted as a result of someone anonymously telling the police that Coughenour killed his wife.
From the bench, Coughenour has been forthright about Trump’s actions.
“It has become ever more apparent that, to our president, the rule of law is but an impediment to his policy goals. The rule of law is, according to him, something to navigate around or simply ignore, whether that be for political or personal gain,” he told Justice Department lawyers.
Yes, much of this stems from the Trump administration’s near-constant attacks on judges, often whipped up by Trump personally. There’s also the willingness of congressional Republicans to go along with it, including some of Trump’s more ardent supporters introducing bills calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against him.
But the Supreme Court, particularly Chief Justice John Roberts, is also at fault.
Rather than squarely addressing the fact that these threats overwhelmingly come from the right and are driven by the president, Roberts has instead offered vague, anodyne statements.
“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 said in one statement.
Yes, that’s all Roberts had to say after Trump personally called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the Trump administration to return the planes of deportees heading to El Salvador—an order the administration defied.
The Trump administration has now filed a misconduct complaint against Boasberg for private comments to his judicial colleagues, in which he expressed concern about the administration defying court orders.
The problem isn’t just that Roberts is wishy-washy about these threats, speaking about them without ever mentioning Trump by name or acknowledging that his actions are the foundation for the attacks. But he has also joined the other conservatives on the Supreme Court to give Trump whatever he wants, constantly overturning lower court rulings.
These days, separation of powers is indeed for suckers.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy is very concerned about what is happening with the courts, you guys. No, he didn’t have anything to do with it. Why do you ask?
Kennedy’s remarks came during his Thursday speech at a forum titled “Global Risks to the Justice System—A Warning to America.” He was one of several speakers, including judges from countries where authoritarian crackdowns threatened the independence of the judiciary.
The bravery of those judges most definitely did not rub off on Kennedy, who was appointed to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan. In the face of repeated and ongoing attacks on the judiciary by President Donald Trump and his administration, the best Kennedy could do was praise judicial independence, as if that exists on the nation’s highest court any longer.
In this Oct. 8, 2018, file photo, President Donald Trump watches as retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, right, ceremonially swears-in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, left, in the East Room of the White House. Kavanaugh's wife Ashley is second from right with daughters Margaret, left, and Liza.
“Judges decide issues which have political consequences, but they don’t decide in a political way,” Kennedy claimed. “We have to honor the fact that judicial independence does not mean judges are put on the bench so they can do as they like—they're put on the bench so they can do as they must.”
Come on, Tony. Your cute little deal with Donald Trump in 2018, where you personally lobbied him to choose your former clerk Brett Kavanaugh to succeed you, was step two in Trump’s transformation of the court into a conservative grievance machine, following on the heels of Justice Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation the previous year.
You were perfectly aware that opposition to abortion was one of Trump’s litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees—he even campaigned on it. You were also perfectly aware that many of his lower court picks during his first term openly held anti-LGBTQ+ views. Trump explicitly chose judges because they would rule “as they like” instead of ruling “as they must.”
Indeed, when judges do rule as they must, and Donald Trump doesn’t like it, he attacks them personally. He called for Judge James A. Boasberg to be impeached after he blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
At least 11 judges have had their families threatened with violence after they ruled against the Trump administration. Many of the threats occurred over at Elon Musk’s Nazi bar, X, where Musk himself amplified some of them. High-profile Trump supporter Laura Loomer shared a photo of Judge Boasberg’s daughter, alleging that she was helping undocumented gang members and calling for Boasberg and his daughter to be arrested and his entire family to be deported. James Boasberg was born in California to U.S. citizens, so the deportation demand is equal parts chilling and weird.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour faced both a bomb threat and a swatting incident after he ruled Trump’s birthright citizenship order was unconstitutional. During his speech, Kennedy fretted that “Judges must have protection for themselves and their families. Our families are often included in threats” without ever acknowledging who is whipping up those threats.
Congressional Republicans have attacked judges on every front. They’ve called for the impeachment of judges who block Trump’s illegal actions. The Senate tried to get a provision in the Big Beautiful Bill restricting lower courts from issuing preliminary injunctions against the government unless the plaintiff posted a bond equal to whatever the government said were its costs and damages from not being able to do illegal things right away.
Whenever conservatives want to both-sides the threats to the judiciary, they have literally one example: At a 2020 rally outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer called out Justices Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and said, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.” Roberts immediately issued a statement quoting Schumer and saying that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
But when Trump relentlessly attacks the judiciary, including routinely defying court orders, and elected officials call for judges to be impeached, the best Roberts could come up with was, “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 equally as mealy-mouthed as Kennedy’s comments that the judiciary should stand for the rule of law and “we must always say no to tyranny and yes to truth.” Notably absent is any mention of who is attacking the rule of law. Notably absent is any mention that the rule of law went out the window when the conservative majority granted Trump immunity. Notably absent is any mention of who is saying yes to tyranny and no to truth.
Kennedy doesn’t deserve praise or a cookie for these vague statements. If he genuinely cared about attacks on the rule of law, he would need to challenge his former colleagues. He would need to challenge Trump, the man he cut a deal with to get Kavanaugh a lifetime appointment. He would need to say that the threats of violence against judges only occur when they rule against the administration. He would need to call out the ceaseless attempts by GOP elected officials to knee-cap the courts.
Kennedy is not going to do any of those things, but he’s probably going to continue to make a lot of high-minded speeches. Feel free to ignore him until he tells the truth.
Late last month, in his official capacity as presiding officer of the Judicial Conference, Chief Justice John Roberts got sued by America First.
That’s the legal group that Donald Trump’s senior adviser and chief ghoul Stephen Miller founded. America First typically keeps busy by suing everyone Miller finds insufficiently racist. This lawsuit, though, is wholly designed to do Trump’s bidding.
Yes, the lawsuit that would drastically shift power from the judiciary to Trump’s White House was basically engineered by someone who works in Trump’s White House.
You’re probably wondering why this hasn’t been splashed all over every news source, particularly since it was filed almost two weeks ago. It’s a direct challenge to the authority of the judicial branch, yet there’s been nary a peep until Talking Points Memo reported on it Friday. No official statements from the court, no missive from Roberts, no Justice Sam Alito penning a whiny op-ed. Just meek silence about an existential threat.
That meek silence might not seem so distressing if the justices were always close-mouthed about challenges to the judiciary, but that’s not the case. Roberts knows how to issue statements about threats to the judiciary’s independence because he does it routinely. Alito knows how to run to the Wall Street Journal when he wants to complain.
America First’s lawsuit is ostensibly about whether the Judicial Conference of the United States and the Administrative Office of the United States Courts are subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But what it’s really about is a demand that the White House be given control over an arcane, but crucial, part of the judiciary by declaring it part of the executive branch.
Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief ghoul.
Without getting too deep into the brainworms of this theory, it goes something like this: The Judicial Conference is an agency, not a court, because it doesn’t issue decisions. Instead, it is a body that makes rules for the courts. It’s also a body that must respond to congressional oversight requests. The chief justice has the power to appoint people to committees, so, according to the lawsuit, he is “acting as an agency head.” Rinse and repeat for roughly the same argument about the Administrative Office.
You know where this is going, right? If it’s an agency, it’s part of the executive branch. If it’s part of the executive branch, it’s under the control of the president.
In theory, the lawsuit is only asking for this so that those entities would have to respond to America First’s FOIA requests, but the only way that can happen is by saying they’re part of the executive branch, because their current status as part of the judiciary makes them exempt from FOIA.
So, what power would the president gain if both were under his control? Well, the Judicial Conference manages administrative and policy issues for the federal courts.
That sounds fairly benign, but in that role, it handles complaints against federal judges and workplace harassment issues in the judiciary. It prepares plans on how to assign judges if necessary. It promulgates the regulations for financial disclosures and other ethics rules. Imagine a White House that could weaponize complaints against judges it hates while ignoring any ethical lapses by reliable favorite judges.
What about the Administrative Office? It’s what it sounds like. It provides all the administrative support for the judicial branch, including financial, technology, legislative, and program support services. It also develops the annual judiciary budget and carries out Judicial Conference policies.
Imagine a White House that completely controls how resources are distributed across federal courts or decides which program initiatives the courts can undertake. Imagine that White House slashing that funding to the bone or letting Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency run roughshod through confidential databases.
Shifting both of these over to the executive would have another effect, which is that it would undermine congressional oversight. Right now, those offices respond to oversight or investigation requests from members of Congress. In theory, those offices would still have that responsibility, but they’d be controlled by Trump toadies.
Conservatives like Trump and Miller are unhappy that Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island had the temerity to inquire into undisclosed billionaire-funded freebies received by Alito and Clarence Thomas. Those inquiries came after the April 2023 ProPublica report that Thomas failed to disclose literally dozens of destination vacations, private jet flights, and more from his billionaire buddy, Harlan Crow. The report sparked Whitehouse’s 2023 request to the Judicial Conference that it refer Thomas to the attorney general for investigation.
Justice Clarence Thomas was the subject of extensive ProPublica reporting about his failure to disclose all of the gifts he’d received from rich benefactors.
So, a close adviser to the president is puppeteering a lawsuit that would strip the judiciary of the power to oversee its own affairs and would hobble its ability to work with Congress on meaningful oversight.
But the most vocal conservative justices do not see this blatant power grab as problematic. At least, that’s what we can deduce from the fact that they’ve said nothing, despite being perfectly happy to speak out on far lesser matters.
Remember when the chief justice was so concerned that Congress not exceed its authority over the judiciary that he refused to appear before the Senate in April 2023 to answer questions about court ethics after news broke about Thomas? About a month later, he touted the judiciary’s “status as an independent branch of government under the Constitution’s separation of powers” as a reason not to allow Congress to impose any code of conduct on the court.
So what exactly does have to happen to rouse Roberts to raise the alarm? Well, apparently, a milquetoast statement from a Democratic senator.
In March 2020, while making a speech outside the Supreme Court, Sen. Chuck Schumer said of Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, “You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You will not know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Heavens! Roberts rushed to get a statement out that named Schumer, quoted him, and said that "threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
By contrast, look at the statement Roberts made after Trump went after Judge James A. Boasberg, the judge who blocked the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan immigrants.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED,” Trump declared on social media. He also called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”
And it wasn’t just Trump. Multiple elected GOP officials have introduced articles of impeachment against multiple federal judges. Trump supporters have threatened the families of at least 11 judges who have ruled against the administration.
Did Roberts call anyone out by name? Did Roberts quote Trump? Haha, of course not.
Here’s the whole of Roberts’ 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.”
That’s telling ’em, John.
What about Alito? He’s someone who has not been shy about making public statements whenever he feels attacked. When Alito learned in June 2023 that ProPublica was publishing a story about his failure to disclose a fancy vacation paid for by billionaire Paul Singer and to recuse himself from cases related to Singer’s hedge fund, he had an op-ed over at the Wall Street Journal before the ProPublica piece even ran.
Justice Samuel Alito published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to attacks reporting about him.
One month later, he was back on the op-ed pages, the subject of a fawning interview co-authored by David Rivkin Jr., an attorney who had a tax case before the Supreme Court at the time of the interview. In refusing to recuse, Alito explained that Rivkin, when writing the articles, was magically “a journalist, not an advocate.” Sure.
Alito also took the opportunity to declare that Congress can’t regulate the Supreme Court, period, because there’s nothing in the Constitution that says so. It sounds like Alito is very concerned when the other branches try to intrude on the judiciary’s authority! Oh, wait, that only applies to Democrats in Congress. Apparently, when the executive branch makes a power grab, that’s just fine.
A few years ago, the America First case would have been the sort of lawsuit only brought by the weirdest pro se litigants who were convinced that Roberts was Illuminati or some such thing. The notion that the whole of the constitutional order should be upended, that the judiciary’s administrative functions secretly belong to the executive branch, would have been treated like the nonsense it was.
Now, though, this sort of nonsense is being pushed by one of the president’s closest advisers and just happens to track the president’s goal of eradicating the independence of the other branches of government. But still, from the Supreme Court? Silence.
Injustice for All is a weekly series about how the Trump administration is trying to weaponize the justice system—and the people who are fighting back.
Would you like some good news, even if it is only a temporary dopamine hit? Of course you would. Let yourself experience the sheer joy of seeing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals treat the Trump administration’s legal arguments with precisely what they deserve—scorn.
On Wednesday, the appellate court issued a decision denying the administration’s request to overturn Judge James Boasberg’s order that blocked the Trump team from deporting migrants without due process.
The ban is a mere two weeks long, briefly halting the practice of piling migrants into planes and sending them to a brutal mega-prison in El Salvador, where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem did a cutesy media hit earlier this week. Donald Trump has justified this by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, previously used only in times of war.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem films her social media content in a brutal Salvadoran prison.
The administration found the idea of a two-week delay so outrageous, it made an emergency appeal to the D.C. Circuit, saying Boasberg infringed on the executive branch’s power regarding national security.
Things started going badly for the administration during oral argument when Judge Patricia Millett said that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act.”
Ouch.
Judge Karen Henderson, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote an opinion concurring with the decision to uphold the stay, rejecting the administration’s ridiculous argument that courts aren’t even allowed to review the government’s conduct because national security blah blah blah.
She also took the administration to task for using a random dictionary definition of “invasion” as its only support for the argument that we are somehow under attack by Venezuelan gangs, and therefore migrants can be deported.
Millett’s concurring opinion pointed out the absurdity of the administration saying it doesn’t have to comply with the temporary restraining order while simultaneously challenging the order.
“The one thing that is not tolerable,” Millett wrote, “is for the government to seek from this court a stay of an order that the government at the very same time is telling the district court is not an order with which compliance was ever required.”
The administration may take this to the Supreme Court, where Trump can see if the conservative majority will do him a solid, like they so often do, and let him keep deporting anyone he wants based on, well, nothing except the dictionary.
The judiciary rouses itself from slumber
The judicial branch finally seems to have realized that it is suboptimal for judges to be threatened with impeachment and defunding just because the president doesn’t like their rulings. There’s also the tiny problem of death threats.
It no doubt stings that the Trump administration has lost lower court battles over its unprecedented funding freeze, its mass firing of government workers, and its horrific deportations. No other administration, though, has reacted to losses in court by deciding to just rid the world of these meddlesome judges.
The judiciary has set up a task force about security and the independence of the courts. Federal judges and court clerks will make up the task force, which will help the judiciary “respond to current risks, and to anticipate new ones.”
There should be no risk to judges for ruling against Trump, and it’s appalling that it’s reached the point where a task force is needed. But here we are, and it’s good the judiciary eventually noticed.
Clarence Thomas is incandescent with rage that we can’t all have ghost guns like the founders intended
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court upheld an incredibly mild Biden-era rule about ghost guns. Ghost guns are sold as parts, not complete weapons, to be assembled by the buyer or another private party. They’re untraceable, have no serial numbers, and you don’t need a license to buy them.
A ghost gun that police seized from an organized shoplifting crime ring.
Regrettably, the regulation doesn’t ban ghost guns. All it requires is that ghost guns are treated like other firearms, requiring sellers to add serial numbers, verify buyers are at least 21, and perform background checks.
You will not be surprised to learn that Justice Clarence Thomas finds this an outrageous limitation on freedom. His dissent predictably whines about “government overreach” and contains what feels like eleventy-thousand words debating the meaning of words in the rule.
What he’s really mad about, though, is a worry that the ghost gun rule could be applied somehow to block home modification of AR-15s. God forbid.
Have you considered that the people who really need reparations in America are the Jan. 6 rioters?
When Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., isn’t protecting a GOP House member from domestic violence charges, investigating nonexistent voter fraud, or threatening law schools, he’s very busy calling for reparations for the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the Capitol.
Martin fixated on this well before Trump tapped him as the top prosecutor in D.C. Back in January 2024, he mused that he had “finally come around” to reparations and that J6 insurrectionists should get “a big pot of money, like the asbestos money we got for asbestos victims.”
Yes, literal insurrectionists who received the benefit of full due process in the judicial system are precisely the same as people who got mesothelioma thanks to breathing cancer for decades. It’s also an odd comparison because asbestos victims are paid out from private compensation funds, not the government, though veterans who were exposed during their service can apply for disability compensation.
U.S. Capitol Police security video showed Tyler Bradley Dykes, marked in red, breaking into the Capitol. He had been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for assaulting police officers.
Now Trump has picked up the torch, saying he’s thinking about establishing a government compensation fund for the very criminals he pardoned. Trump is not, of course, down with reparations for the descendants of enslaved persons.
Guess we’ve finally found something the administration will spend money on. Too bad it’s this.
Two more law firms get their turn in the barrel for … reasons
It was only a week ago that thelaw firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP rolled over and showed their tummies to Trump to get him to rescind an executive order targeting the firm.
It was inevitable that capitulation would embolden Trump, who promptly issued new executive orders targeting additional firms he has beef with, Jenner & Block and WilmerHale. These executive orders generally suspend the security clearances of firm employees, block their access to federal buildings, and drastically restrict their ability to talk to government employees.
WilmerHale was targeted because Robert Mueller worked there before and after his role as special counsel investigating Russian interference in Trump’s first election. In the case of Jenner & Block, attorney Andrew Weissmann, former deputy to Mueller, previously worked there.
Former special counsel Robert Mueller
Never mind that Mueller retired from WilmerHale four years ago, and Weissmann hasn’t been at Jenner & Block since 2021 and is now a Substacker.
Both WilmerHale and Jenner & Block sued the administration on Friday. WilmerHale’s lawsuit points out that the executive order violates the separation of powers, the right to due process, and the right to counsel.
Jenner & Block’s complaint explains that the executive order threatens not only the firm, but the legal system itself and that the Constitution “forbids attempts by the government to punish citizens and lawyers” based on their choice of clients, their legal positions, and the people they associate with.”
Trump’s attack on law firms has had the desired effect, as firms are starting to refuse to represent his opponents.
On Thursday, The New York Times reported that mega-firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom had entered into talks with the Trump administration to stave off a similar executive order. By Friday afternoon, Skadden was reportedly agreeing to give $100 million in pro bono work to administration-approved causes, which Trump called “essentially a settlement.”
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton released a statement Monday boasting about the arrest of a Houston-area midwife for illegally performing an abortion, marking the state’s first criminal charge for abortion since its near-total ban was implemented in 2022.
The morally corrupt Paxton alleged that the midwife, Maria Margarita Rojas, “owned and operated multiple clinics” around Houston, including two in Texas’ most populous county, Harris County.
The statement said that Rojas was charged with performing an illegal abortion and practicing medicine without a license. The former charge is a second-degree felony, which comes with a potential sentence of up to 20 years in prison.
One of Rojas’ employees, Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, was also arrested for the same offenses, Paxton’s office announced on Tuesday.
“In Texas, life is sacred. I will always do everything in my power to protect the unborn, defend our state’s pro-life laws, and work to ensure that unlicensed individuals endangering the lives of women by performing illegal abortions are fully prosecuted,” Paxton said. “Texas law protecting life is clear, and we will hold those who violate it accountable.”
According to The Texas Tribune, Rojas, who identified herself as “Dr. Maria,” and Ley attempted to perform an abortion on someone identified as E.G. twice in March. In a separate bail motion, the state also alleged that Rojas performed an abortion in Harris County earlier this year.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
The consequences for Rojas could be severe, with Texas law increasing the penalty for performing an abortion to a lifetime in prison. Rojas also risks getting her medical license revoked.
Similarly, Ley will likely be intensely scrutinized, especially since court records indicate that Ley is not an American citizen, but a citizen of Cuba.
“Individuals killing unborn babies by performing illegal abortions in Texas will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and I will not rest until justice is served. I will continue to fight to protect life and work to ensure that anyone guilty of violating our state’s pro-life laws is held accountable,” Paxton said on Tuesday.
Texas has one of the nation’s most extreme abortion laws, though it’s far from the only state with a ban. Notably, Texas has been at the forefront of draconian abortion restrictions, with its law being introduced to the state’s GOP-dominated legislature even before Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022.
Under current law, Texas only permits abortions in extreme circumstances—and even then it isn’t guaranteed. In 2023, Kate Cox of Texas was denied an abortion even after she received a lethal fetal diagnosis, for which her doctor said she needed an abortion to preserve her health and future fertility. As Paxton’s office threatened felony charges against any provider who dared to help her, Cox was forced to leave the state to receive the abortion care she needed.
Since then, Texas Republicans’ views on abortion have only gotten more extreme.
In December, Paxton’s office sued a New York doctor for prescribing an abortion pill to a Texas resident. And ahead of this year’s legislative session, a Texas lawmaker filed a bill that would reclassify abortion pills as controlled substances, though the measure still has not gained any traction.
A friend of Rojas’ told The New York Times that she was shocked by news of the arrest.
“She was on her way to the clinic and got pulled over by the police at gunpoint and handcuffed. She said they wouldn’t tell her what was happening. She said they took her to Austin,” fellow midwife Holly Shearman said.
Shearman, who identified herself as a conservative, said she didn’t “believe the charges” against Rojas.
“She never, ever talked about anything like that, and she’s very Catholic,” she said.
But, as feminist writer Jessica Valenti pointed out, Paxton’s office is likely to paint Rojas as a villain, regardless of the truth.
This is somewhat laughable coming from Paxton, of all people, who was impeached by the Texas House in May 2023 after he was accused of abusing his power to help a friend and political donor. He was later acquitted by the Texas Senate.
You’d think that Paxton would have bigger things to worry about, but, of course, he has his sights set on appealing to conservative voters by prosecuting a local midwife—or even running for the U.S. Senate.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday said a federal judge who attempted to block his administration from deporting hundreds of immigrants to an El Salvadoran gulag should be impeached and removed.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg halted Trump's attempt to deport without due process the alleged Venezuelan immigrants he accused of being members of a violent gang. Trump already ignored Boasberg's order to turn around the planes, which were carrying the alleged immigrants to El Salvador.
But now he wants Boasberg removed altogether, saying in a deranged Truth Social post that Boasberg is a "Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama."
"He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!" Trump wrote in his insane and lie-filled screed. "I WON FOR MANY REASONS, IN AN OVERWHELMING MANDATE, BUT FIGHTING ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION MAY HAVE BEEN THE NUMBER ONE REASON FOR THIS HISTORIC VICTORY. I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do. 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!!!"
Multiple House Republicans want to impeach judges who have ruled against Trump and his administration's other illegal actions, including those largely conducted through the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
"I’m drafting articles of impeachment for US District Judge Paul Engelmayer. Partisan judges abusing their positions is a threat to democracy," Republican Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona said in a post on X in February, after the judge blocked DOGE staffers from accessing Treasury Department data. Shortly after that post, Crane introduced articles of impeachment against Engelmayer, accusing him of violating his oath and abusing his judicial powers.
And freshman Republican Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas said this past Saturday he was introducing articles of impeachment against Boasberg.
Co-President Elon Musk replied to Gill’s post, writing in an X post that Boasberg’s impeachment is “necessary.”
Elon Musk
But this is the first time Trump has publicly blessed Republican efforts to try to remove judges who are simply interpreting and applying the laws.
Trump got on the impeachment train after Musk, who has not just called for Boasberg’s impeachment but for the disposal of multiple other judges who have ruled against Trump.
“There needs to be an immediate wave of judicial impeachments, not just one,” Musk wrote in a post on X in February.
Even the right-wing New York Post editorial board has told Republicans to cut it out with their thirst for ousting federal judges.
“It’s nothing of the kind, and cheering it only makes Musk look reckless—a reputation he doesn’t need when many DOGE actions also face court challenge,” the board wrote.
Meanwhile, the Republican impeachment efforts have led to warnings from sitting federal judges that the campaign to clear the federal bench of anyone who rules against Trump will chill the judicial branch from applying the law out of fear of retribution or even violence.
“Impeachment is not—shouldn’t be—a short circuiting of that process, and so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that,” U.S. Appeals Court Judge Richard Sullivan said at a news conference earlier in March, according to a report from Bloomberg Law.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, issued a statement condemning the calls for judicial impeachments.
"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,” Roberts said in a curt statement on Tuesday—a sign he thinks the impeachment talk is dangerous and not merely bluster.
It’s unclear if any of the impeachment efforts will make it to the House floor for a vote. But if they do, we will see just how many Republicans will shred the rule of law to blindly follow Dear Leader.
There were numerous, er, notable moments from President Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, but perhaps one of the most striking was when he turned to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, patted him on the back, and said he “won’t forget it.”
“Thank you again. Thank you again. Won’t forget it,” the president said while shaking Roberts’ hand after delivering his speech.
We don’t know exactly what Trump meant by this, considering all of the favors Roberts has done for him. After all, Roberts is responsible for authoring the decision that grants former presidents immunity from prosecution, essentially giving them power to commit crimes under the guise of “official acts” in office.
There was also the Roberts-authored ruling that narrowed obstruction charges for defendants accused of participating in the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and the time when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority usurped the Fourteenth Amendment, ruling that states could not disqualify Trump from the ballot despite the Constitution’s ban on insurrectionists holding office.
In short, Trump could have been thanking Roberts for a number of things, but the president insists that his gesture was merely routine.
“Like most people, I don’t watch Fake News CNN or MSDNC, but I understand they are going ‘crazy’ asking what is it that I was thanking Justice Roberts for? They never called my office to ask, of course, but if they had I would have told these sleazebag ‘journalists’ that I thanked him for SWEARING ME IN ON INAUGURATION DAY, AND DOING A REALLY GOOD JOB IN SO DOING!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, with “MSNDC” being a portmanteau of MSNBC and the Democratic National Convention.
Judge Juan Merchan presides over proceedings in the hush money case against President Donald Trump on May 7, 2024.
But as judges who bow to the president receive gratitude, those who don’t are met with death threats.
According to Reuters, law enforcement has warned federal judges that they are facing unusually high levels of threat as they attempt to uphold the law despite Trump and his allies’ efforts to undermine it.
Eleven judges expressed concern to Reuters about their physical security, saying that they’ve faced death threats in recent weeks.
And Musk isn’t the only one criticizing the judiciary.
In February, Vice President JD Vance posted on X that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” suggesting that Trump possesses ultimate authority.
While Roberts hasn’t been as compliant as some other members of the Supreme Court—and has even shown a willingness to break with his conservative colleagues—he’s still unlikely to serve as a check on Trump’s lawlessness.
At least two judges, Tanya Chutkan and Juan Merchan, faced threats for presiding over cases involving Trump where the verdicts were rejected by conservatives.
Meanwhile, the six Republican Supreme Court appointees, three of whom were appointed by Trump during his first term, have delivered some stunning victories in the president’s favor. And considering that conservative judges often assist Trump in his continued assault on democracy, he might have even more to thank them for in the future.
Roberts stated in December that “violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats” jeopardize judicial independence, so it would be hypocritical if he’s now helping Trump dismantle existing statutes.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Senate Republican leader who is in large part responsible for helping destroy American democracy, will announce on Thursday that he is not running for reelection, the Associated Press reported.
“Seven times, my fellow Kentuckians have sent me to the Senate,” McConnell will say in a speech on the Senate floor, according to prepared remarks obtained by the AP. “Every day in between I’ve been humbled by the trust they’ve placed in me to do their business here. Representing our commonwealth has been the honor of a lifetime. I will not seek this honor an eighth time. My current term in the Senate will be my last.”
It’s hard to pinpoint the worst things McConnell has done in office, because he’s done so many horrendous things. McConnell is responsible for breaking the Senate, weaponizing the filibuster to keep legislation from passing.
He is also responsible for stealing not one but two Supreme Court seats from Democratic presidents. In 2016, McConnell gleefully blocked former President Barack Obama from being able to fill the seat of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, refusing to give Obama’s nominee a hearing, let alone a vote on the Senate floor because he said it was too close to an election. Then in 2020, he conveniently said that rule no longer applied when Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, confirming Donald Trump’s pick to fill Ginsburg’s seat just eight days before the 2020 election.
It wasn’t just the Supreme Court that he helped stack. McConnell blocked dozens of Obama’s lower court nominees, holding those seats vacant so that Trump could fill the seats after he was elected. And he shepherded through Trump’s judicial nominees, including ones that were blatantly unqualified.
Even more galling is that when Trump won a second term in November, McConnell then cried foul when federal judges decided to no longer retire to keep Trump from choosing their replacements, accusing them of playing politics with the judiciary.
Trump and McConnell
“They rolled the dice that a Democrat could replace them, and now that he won’t, they’re changing their plans to keep a Republican from doing it,” McConnell, the master of playing politics with the judiciary, said in a speech on the Senate floor.
McConnell stepped down from GOP Senate leadership in 2024, saying it was time to pass the torch.
“One of life’s most underappreciated talents is to know when it’s time to move on to life’s next chapter,” McConnell said in February 2024. “So I stand before you today ... to say that this will be my last term as Republican leader of the Senate.”
Since then, he’s seemingly found his spine, criticizing Trump’s worst impulses and voting against Trump’s unqualified and dangerous Cabinet nominees, including now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and now-Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Yet McConnell voted for Trump in 2024, even though he thought Trump was, in his own words, a “stupid … narcissist.”
And Trump wouldn’t even be in the Oval Office now if McConnell had done the right thing in Trump’s 2021 impeachment and voted to convict Trump of inciting the insurrection at the Capitol and bar him from running for the presidency again.
McConnell believed Trump was responsible for the attack, saying that the insurrectionists, “were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.”
But McConnell voted against convicting Trump, and did not work to convince other Republican senators to vote to ban Trump from seeking federal office in the future.
Ultimately, McConnell has been a menace in American politics. He will not be missed.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito has disclosed that he had a private phone call with Donald Trump just hours before Trump petitioned the court to block his criminal sentence in his hush money case. The call raises new questions about the independence of the court and the court’s role in putting Trump above the law.
Alito claims that the call between him and Trump was about recommending one of his former law clerks for a job in the upcoming administration.
“William Levi, one of my former law clerks, asked me to take a call from President-elect Trump regarding his qualifications to serve in a government position,” Alito told ABC News.
But after the two conservative leaders spoke, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency request with the court to prevent New York from handing down a criminal sentence for him on Friday. Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts for falsifying business records when he tried to cover up payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was trying to cover up details of his affair with Daniels, preventing them from being disclosed to the public while he was running for president in 2016.
Stormy Daniels
“We did not discuss the emergency application he filed today, and indeed, I was not even aware at the time of our conversation that such an application would be filed,” Alito told ABC. He also told the outlet that he and Trump did not discuss current or possible Supreme Court cases.
But there is no independent confirmation of what was said in the phone call, nor has a recording been provided and the discussion has raised concerns about the court and corruption.
“No person, no matter who they are, should engage in out-of-court communication with a judge or justice who’s considering that person’s case,” Gabe Roth, executive director of the group Fix the Court, said in a statement. Roth also described the Trump-Alito call as an “unmistakable breach of protocol.”
Trump and Alito are ideologically aligned on conservative issues. Alito was part of the 6-3 majority on the court that overturned the federal right to an abortion in the landmark case Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Trump appointed three of the justices who voted along with Alito—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Trump has also praised the court for their decision despite the devastating effect it has had on millions of Americans.
In his personal life, an upside-down U.S. flag (a sign of distress) was flown over Alito’s house while President Joe Biden was in office, echoing other anti-Biden conservatives. The Alito family also hung an “Appeal to Heaven” flag at their beach house, a symbol used by conservative “Stop the Seal” election conspiracy theorists.
Trump has a history of exerting corrupt political influence in private phone calls.
His first impeachment came about because Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy to implicate Trump’s political rivals (especially President Joe Biden) in corruption allegations. Similarly, after he lost the 2020 election to Biden, Trump used a phone call as part of his pressure campaign to get Georgia election officials to throw out votes for Biden so he would win the race.
The Trump-Alito call comes just a few months after the conservative majority on the Supreme Court (including Alito) voted to put Trump above the law with a presidential immunity ruling, blocking him from being charged with criminal actions undertaken while he was in office.
The public has continued to express a lack of confidence in the conservative-led court. In an aggregate of opinion polls on the matter, the court only has the approval of 40% of the public while 50.3% disapprove of the body.
As Trump heads into the presidency with the court on his side, those trends are unlikely to improve.
On Tuesday evening, The Washington Post reported that President Joe Biden is preparing to announce his support for major reforms to the Supreme Court. Rather than call for immediate expansion of the court or for the impeachment of justices clearly violating the court’s toothless ethics guidelines, Biden will seek to establish term limits and an enforceable code of ethics.
Biden is also considering whether to promote a constitutional amendment to reverse the Supreme Court’s recent decision giving presidents broad immunity from prosecution.
While not offering the prospect of immediate relief from the precedent-breaking rulings of this ultraconservative court, Biden’s proposals would bring serious (and overdue) changes to the court—and they’re some of the most consequential ever put forward. The proposals also have the advantage of not being overtly partisan or created to generate a particular end, unlike court expansion. They also have the advantage of being really smart politics.
Republicans would viciously fight any Democratic proposal to expand the court. They would see any attempt by Biden to tack on four or six new justices as explicitly partisan, designed to weaken their iron grip on the court. Not only would such a proposal be immediately squelched in the Republican-controlled House, it also wouldn’t see much consideration in the filibuster-happy Senate.
When polled by Gallup in 2023, Americans were roughly evenly split over the idea of expanding the court, with 51% opposing it and 46% supporting it. But the same poll shows overwhelmingly bipartisan support both for placing an age limit on members of the court (74% support it) and for placing term limits on Congress members (87% percent support it). The reported proposal from Biden would sort of combine those two ideas, using a term limit for justices instead of an age limit. This has advantages over putting an age limit on the court because three of the four youngest justices are Trump appointees, and an age limit would allow them to remain on the court for decades to come.
And while Republicans would assail placing term limits on justices, that proposal would likely garner high enough levels of public support to make Republicans think twice. Even if they don’t, Republican leadership would be on record opposing a popular proposal, while Biden would be on record as offering an innovative solution to a widely-recognized problem.
Smart. Politics.
This is even more true for an enforceable code of ethics. A May survey from Data for Progress shows 77% of likely voters say Supreme Court justices and their spouses should be required to follow a code of ethics. Just 10% of likely voters, including only 18% of Republicans, oppose this idea. Overall, 73% felt that members of the court should be held to the same ethics standards as other federal judges. Only 17% felt that the court should be allowed to set its own ethical standards.
That’s about as good a mandate as any idea is going to get in a day when the majority of Americans oppose teaching Arabic numbers. People may not know the history of the symbols they use when paying for a burger, but they know that Justice Clarence Thomas is dirty as hell.
Republicans in Congress are sure to view any ethics proposal as a response to the escapades of Justices Thomas and Samuel Alito and their insurrection-loving wives. So would the public. However, not only do a majority of likely voters support impeaching both Thomas and Alito (after voters are informed about those justices’ ethical lapses), but putting Republicans in the position of opposing ethical guidelines is essentially the same as forcing them to stand there and declare themselves the party of corruption.
That’s also very smart politics.
Biden’s proposal for a constitutional amendment to reverse the recent Supreme Court ruling on presidential immunity is also likely to be popular. No one is particularly fond of the “Seal Team 6” scenario in which a president would be immune from having his political rivals assassinated. And it could be seen as a willingness on Biden’s part to surrender power and hold his office to higher standards at the same time that he is proposing such standards for the court.
None of this is to say that expanding the court is a bad idea. It may be the only way that the United States could gain relief from this court’s egregious rulings. Democrats should absolutely be ready to push that idea if this year’s election provides them the presidency and a majority in both chambers of Congress.
But right now, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin should be prepared to pounce on Biden’s court proposals as soon as they are announced.
There are good ideas. These are likely to be popular ideas. This is a very good fight to have in the months leading up to the election. So please, have it. Loudly and enthusiastically.
Now would be better than later. Getting this in public and forcing Republicans to react to it while the RNC is still going on would be just … peachy. Let Donald Trump deliver an acceptance speech in which he bombastically defends corruption. Put Republicans on the defense.
And deliver something the public not only wants but needs.
