WASHINGTON — Dismantling the federal government won’t be complete without upending the judicial branch — or so many conservatives argue, which is why rank-and-file Republicans are pressuring party leaders to fall in line and join White House efforts to purge the nation’s judiciary.
Before Congress left town for its two-week Easter recess, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to placate his right flank by ushering a bill restricting national injunctions through the House. Party leaders have also promised hearings.
None of that’s good enough for many rank-and-file Republicans, especially because President Donald Trump and his agency-gutting sidekick Elon Musk have tossed their support behind fringe-right proposals to impeach federal judges.
“There’s gotta be accountability,” Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) told Raw Story. “If we can't impeach them, we should defund them.”
The two-term Congressman is one of five Republicans who’ve authored seven separate articles of impeachment targeting six judges. All in the first three months of this new Congress.
Even before it came to light that Musk doled out upwards of $144,000 to far-right Republicans waging war on the judiciary, Democrats were braced. They fear this is just the beginning.
“It's House MAGA Republicans trying to curry favor from Donald Trump,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) — a senior member of the Judiciary Committee — told Raw Story. “So they'll do anything to display to him their loyalty and their willingness to do whatever he commands them to do.”
This past week, Republicans have only redoubled their impeachment efforts in the wake of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg — who’s a target of two separate articles of impeachment in the GOP-controlled House — finding probable cause for contempt of court, ruling there was “willful disregard” amongst Trump administration officials who allegedly defied a March 15 order to halt deportation flights.
While judges like Boasberg say they’re merely upholding the Constitution, to Congressional Republicans, they’re activists for even daring to defy President Trump. Even the conservative Supreme Court has been attacked.
After ruling against the Trump administration’s effort to freeze foreign aid, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was blistered by formerly fringe right commentators, and her sister even received a bomb threat. Conservatives are already up in arms after the high court stepped in this weekend and ordered the White House to halt planned deportation flights.
Republicans control the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, but that’s not good enough for today’s GOP. The party’s now maneuvering to control the nation’s courts as well.
Crime, seemingly, pays in Trump’s Washington
Musk has been the face of the Trump administration’s purge efforts, but even a billionaire’s powers are limited.
The wealthiest man in the world has been dropping millions to reshape the nation’s courts in his laissez faire, if corporate-focused image, but even Republican eyes rolled after his failed, high-profile effort to tilt the recent record-shattering Wisconsin Supreme Court contest. But, when he’s not handing out oversized $1 million checks, Musk’s been attacking the nation’s judiciary from the shadows.
Newly released campaign finance reports reveal Musk has been quietly padding Republicans’ campaign coffers. Well, at least the accounts of far-right Republicans who’ve been targeting federal judges who rule against Trump and DOGE — the Department of Government Efficiency.
Ogles, the Tennessee congressman, scored a donation from Musk after sponsoring articles of impeachment against three separate federal judges so far this year, but he denies any outside forces influenced those efforts.
“They all need to be impeached,” Ogles, who’s calling on Speaker Johnson to “defund” judges the White House doesn’t like, said. “Look, they have a right in their personal time to be activists, but when they're doing it from the bench they're not upholding their oath to the Constitution.”
But Musk’s money is nothing compared to the priceless gift Trump lavished on Ogles at the end of January — notably a week after he proposed amending the 22nd Amendment to give Trump a third term — when the Department of Justice (DOJ) withdrew their investigation into the congressman.
Federal prosecutors had a strong enough case against Ogles to convince a federal judge to okay a rare warrant for the FBI to seize the congressman’s phone as they investigated a mysterious $320,000 the congressman reported ‘loaning’ to his campaign, even as his federal disclosure forms revealed he didn’t have that kind of money.
Still, Trump’s Justice Department walked away from their own strong case.
“What do you make of accusations the Department of Justice dropped your charges so that you’d push bills like this for Trump?” Raw Story asked.
“That’s bulls—,” Ogles told Raw Story. “We have a Justice Department that was weaponized against people, and so the bogus charges are disappearing because they’re bogus.”
Democrats aren’t buying Ogles’ excuse.
“It's corrupt. There's a lot of corruption going on,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) — a former U.S. ambassador — told Raw Story. “But the cases that have been dropped, meaningful legal cases, I just don't understand — I mean, I do understand, it’s just corruption. It's criminals getting together. It’s terrible. Scary.”
It’s not just Ogles. Six federal judges are now the targets of seven separate impeachment efforts being led in the House by Reps. Eli Crane (R-AZ), Andrew Clyde (R-GA), Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) and freshman Brandon Gill (R-TX) (not to mention the two measures Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) is sponsoring to expunge Trump’s two historic first-term impeachments).
Speaker Johnson has thus far resisted impeachment calls, telling his fellow Republicans they just don’t have the votes, even as he’s left the door open for eliminating “an entire district court.”
“Everything is on the table,” Johnson told the congressional press corps a few weeks ago. “We do have authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts, and all these other things.”
Members of his own party are planning to hold Johnson to that promise.
“Do you think leadership's not being aggressive enough?” Raw Story asked.
“That’s, generally speaking, an accurate statement across the board,” Ogles said.
Who needs the speaker of the House when you’ve got the blessing of the president of the United States and his Silicon Valley sugar daddy? Not rank-and-file Republicans.
“Every day we're seeing us hit a new bottom”
It’s more than just impeachment efforts, though.
Before starting their current two week recess, House Republicans passed a measure curtailing district court judges’ ability to deliver a national — or universal — injunction, like recent ones halting the administration’s mass deportation plans, blocking Trump’s attempt to unilaterally end birthright citizenship or the slew of recent rulings protecting, temporarily at least, federal workers from mass firings.
“Democrats say you guys are just kissing Trump's a— with this and then also some members offering impeachment resolutions against judges,” Raw Story pressed the author of the House-passed bill curtailing national injunctions. “What do you make of that?”
“Well, look, this is an alternative to impeachments,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) told Raw Story. “Going to a judge to get what you want is different than going to a judge to get justice.”
Just as Biden administration officials and rank-and-file Democrats alike complained about universal injunctions — like the one halting the former president’s student loan forgiveness program — Republicans are now chaffing after a string of Trump’s sweeping executive orders have been blocked in the courts.
Despite federal district court judges’ rulings, the conservative-leaning Roberts Court has stepped in and allowed some of Trump’s controversial measures to go forward, like when Chief Justice John Roberts overruled a lower court decision to block the firings of members of the National Labor Relations Board and Merit Systems Protection Board.
That’s not good enough for House Republicans.
“Right now, the Supreme Court has not reigned in the excessively broad decisions, so it really leaves it to us to define to the court the original intent of the district judge's limitations,” Issa said.
The GOP controls both chambers of Congress, yet Republicans in this 119th Congress are going out of their way to empower the White House.
“Judges are out of control,” Rep. Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) told Raw Story. “The executive has certain privileges, just certain things, right? No matter who they are — governor, president, Democrat, Republican — so one judge is saying you can't do that, especially when it's an executive order done by the previous executive. Unless it's just blatantly unconstitutional, but that isn't the case with all those deals.”
Who defines what’s constitutional or not? Surely not today’s Democratic Party, which is locked in the minority on both sides of the Capitol.
“Very short sighted and very damaging to our system of governance in this country,” Congressman Johnson — the Georgia Democrat — said. “Those are decisions that are best left to the judges based on the litigation before the court, but it's a reaction to adverse rulings.”
“I don't know how to protect them”
Then there’s the unprecedented targeting of law firms. Trump has been ripping up federal contracts and revoking security clearances of his perceived legal foes, i.e. seemingly any firm that lined up against him or his causes.
That includes targeting Texas firm Susman Godfried by name in an April 9th executive order banning their employees from even entering federal buildings, while also canceling any contracts the firm had with the government and stripping them of their essential security clearances.
The firm’s sin? They represented Dominion Voting Systems in their $787 million defamation settlement with Fox News after the cable outlet knowingly spread lies in the wake of the 2020 election.
The firm’s also representing Dominion in a similar suit against Newsmax. Mere hours before Trump signed the aggressive executive order, a Delaware judge ruled in the firm's favor, again. Democrats fear this new front in the GOP effort to unwind the judiciary as we knew it.
“These folks are putting their finger on the scale of justice for whoever they want to put it on the scale for. They are absolving some from liability, while dipping others into the liability cesspool where there is no probable cause to do so,” Johnson, the House Judiciary Committee veteran member, said. “And so justice is being turned on its head, and my friends on the other side of the aisle are complicit in it.”
Other firms that were on the other side of the courtroom from Trump in recent years have also found themselves the target of crippling executive orders. Some are fighting the frontal assault in court, even as many others are caving to White House demands and signing agreements to placate Trump.
Earlier this month, former Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff’s law firm, Willkie Farr & Gallagher, signed off on an agreement with Trump’s White House to provide $100 million in free legal services to groups the two sides mutually care about to avoid being personally targeted by a Trump executive order.
The unprecedented assault on the legal community is sending shivers through the legal community, even as the moves have Democrats freaking out. But, at the moment, they’re seemingly powerless.
“Is there anything your party can do?” Raw Story pressed. “Or is this one of those that really makes you feel like you're the minority?”
“I don't know how to protect them without getting rid of Trump in the long run, but in the short run, the best way to do it is to encourage them to stand strong, you know, and don't be intimidated by it,” Beyer, the former ambassador, said. “All they've done is give people the legal representation that they deserve.”
Democrats like Beyer have also been left scratching their heads of late while watching Trump’s GOP, seemingly, wage war against the entire judicial branch of government.
"How would you intentionally alienate, p— off a whole 1/3 of a branch of government by saying, 'if we don't like your ruling, we're gonna go after you personally’?” Beyer told Raw Story. “The appeals process has always been there.”
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