WASHINGTON: The White House accused judges on Wednesday of “usurping” executive power in its latest broadside against federal courts whose rulings have gone against President Donald Trump’s administration.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged there had been a “concerted effort by the far left” to pick judges who were “clearly acting as partisan activists” to deal with cases involving the Republican’s actions.
“Not only are they usurping the will of the president and the chief executive of our country, but they are undermining the will of the American public,“ Leavitt said at a daily briefing.
Leavitt in particular lashed out at District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension over the weekend of deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants carried out under an obscure wartime law, calling him a “Democrat activist.”
Trump’s administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport the alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador as part of its mass deportation program of undocumented migrants. Their names or alleged offenses have not been made public.
Trump personally called for the judge’s impeachment on Tuesday, saying Boasberg was “a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”
The Yale-educated Boasberg, 62, was first appointed to the bench by president George W. Bush, a Republican, and later named a district court judge by Obama, a Democrat.
Trump’s comments drew a rare public rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,“ Roberts said.
Boasberg, in an order in the deportation case on Wednesday, also issued a pointed reminder to Justice Department lawyers that court rulings are to be obeyed.
“As the Supreme Court has made crystal clear, the proper recourse for a party subject to an injunction it believes is legally flawed… is appellate review, not disobedience,“ he said.
Assault on democracy’
Federal judges are nominated by the president for life and can only be removed by being impeached by the House of Representatives for “high crimes or misdemeanors” and convicted by the Senate.
Impeachment of federal judges is exceedingly rare and the last time a judge was removed by Congress was in 2010.
Trump, in an interview aired on Fox News Channel’s “The Ingraham Angle” on Wednesday, said the chief justice “didn’t mention my name in the statement.”
“But many people have called for (Boasberg’s) impeachment,“ he said. “He actually said we shouldn’t be able to take criminals, killers, murderers, horrible, the worst people, gang members, gang leaders… out of our country.
“Well, that’s a presidential job,“ Trump said. “That’s not for a local judge to be making that determination.”
Judges have dealt Trump a number of setbacks in recent weeks as his administration pursues its wholesale overhaul of the federal government.
Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship has been blocked by the courts and a judge on Tuesday ordered an immediate halt to the shutdown of the main US aid agency by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On the same day, another judge suspended the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.
The South African-born billionaire Musk railed against what he called a “judicial coup” in posts on his social network X.
“We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,“ Musk said, misstating the process and the actual number of senators required — 67.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller also lashed out at the judiciary, accusing it of waging an “assault on democracy.”
“District court judges have assumed the mantle of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security and Commander-in-Chief,“ Miller said on X.
Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has a history of attacking the judges who presided over his civil and criminal cases.
But Trump’s administration now appears bent on a showdown with the judiciary as he asserts extraordinary levels of executive power.
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