Trump Call for Impeaching Judges Fuels Showdown With Courts (2)

After a string of legal losses for his administration, President Donald Trump’s call to impeach a federal judge — and an ensuing rebuke by the US Supreme Court chief justice — is laying the groundwork for a deepening clash between the White House and the judiciary.

Hours after Trump blasted a federal judge for trying to block the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members, Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement saying that impeachment is “not an appropriate response” to disagreement with court rulings. For the Republican-appointed justice, it was a rare public signal of pushback to the president.

“This kind of public rebuke from a chief justice of a president is extremely unusual,” said Keith Whittington, a Yale Law School professor and expert on constitutional law. “It’s a very serious and pretty extraordinary ratcheting up of tension between the White House and the judicial branch.”

The relationship between the co-equal branches of government is becoming increasingly strained as the Trump administration hits back at judges who side with those challenging his executive orders on issues from immigration to federal spending and diversity initiatives.

There are more than 150 cases pending against the administration from Maryland to California — setting up multiple tests of executive power that may ultimately land in the Supreme Court that Trump helped shape. Some judges have already called out the Trump administration for not following their orders.

Such scenarios have led some legal experts to say the nation is nearing a constitutional crisis. That’s not the case unless Trump openly defies a court order, which hasn’t really happened yet, said Whittington. But if “a president were to refuse to comply with a direct court order that would certainly get us closer,” he said. “And then the question is how other institutions respond.”

Read more: What Happens If Trump Defies a Judge’s Order?

Retired Justice Stephen Breyer said on CNN Wednesday that it isn’t clear whether the country is in a constitutional crisis.

“No one really knows,” he said. “People have different views on that. And the best thing, I think, for the judges is you follow the law. You simply follow the law.”

The current dispute was triggered by Trump’s deportation of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador by invoking the seldom-used Alien Enemies Act. US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington issued an order to temporarily stop the deportation of the five Venezuelans, and later halted use of the law to deport any of the alleged gang members.

By then, the planes had already taken off, though Boasberg orally called for them to be turned around. The judge on Monday convened a hearing in Washington where he demanded answers about what exactly happened and why.

Justice Department lawyers have said the judge lacked power to order airplanes to turn around — at one point arguing the order didn’t apply because it was initially handed down orally from the bench — and has refused to answer some of his questions about the deportation flights. The department has asked a federal appeals court to take the judge off the case, saying his questions were “flagrantly improper” and presented “grave risks.”

The White House declined to comment for this article. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt doubled down at a press briefing Wednesday, saying that judges who are ruling against Trump are are acting as “partisan activists.”

“We will continue to comply with these orders and fight in court, but there is a concerted effort by the far-left to judge shop and pick judges who act as partisan activists from the bench,” she said. “We will not allow that to happen.”

Trump derided Boasberg, without specifically naming him, as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.” He reiterated his criticism in a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham late Tuesday, saying that a “local judge” shouldn’t be making determinations about deportations. “Many people have called for his impeachment, the impeachment of this judge,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Boasberg issued an order extending by one day the government’s deadline to produce additional information about the deportations. The judge said the court needs the information “to determine if the government deliberately flouted its orders issued on March 15, 2025, and, if so, what the consequences should be.”

Trump denied defying a court order on Fox News and when pressed on whether he would do so in the future, he said “no, you can’t do that.”

“However, we have bad judges,” he added. “At a certain point you have to start looking at what do you do when you have a rogue judge?”

Boasberg, the chief judge of the DC court, was nominated by former president Barack Obama and confirmed by a unanimous US Senate vote in 2011. He’s a former federal prosecutor and local judge in Washington.

Robert McWhirter, a constitutional law expert and criminal defense attorney, called the government’s argument that it can disregard the court because a ruling wasn’t issued in writing “absurd.”

“This is an example of the Justice Department playing fast and loose with the judge,” he said, noting that such tactics, coupled with Trump’s attack on the judiciary, could backfire should any of his cases go to the Supreme Court.

“I think even this Supreme Court won’t stand for that,” he said.

Court Limits

Broadly speaking, the Supreme Court offers a favorable environment for Trump as he tries to defang the federal bureaucracy and bolster presidential power.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority includes three Trump appointees. All were in the majority last year when the court gave presidents sweeping criminal immunity, undercutting a federal prosecution of him for trying to overturn his 2020 election loss. Trump denied wrongdoing and a special prosecutor later dropped the case in light of his election win.

But early signs suggest the court’s willingness to stand behind the president in his new term has its limits. The high court first declined to let him immediately fire the head of a federal whistleblower office. Trump was eventually able to carry out the firing but only because of a subsequent lower court decision.

The justices later voted 5-4 not to lift a lower court order that told the administration to quickly pay as much as $2 billion in foreign aid bills. Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett drew scorn in MAGA circles as she joined Roberts and the three liberals in the majority.

And the court set out an unusually lengthy briefing schedule — hinting at a lack of urgency — when Trump asked for clearance to start implementing his planned restrictions on birthright citizenship.

Yet Roberts had yet to make any public comments on the judiciary since Trump took office. His remarks Tuesday were the first since his annual Dec. 31 report warned that violence, threats to defy lawful judgments and other “illegitimate activity” endanger judicial independence.

Read More: US Chief Justice Rebukes Trump Call to Impeach Judges

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said Tuesday. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

Roberts’ statement came from him alone and not on behalf of the entire court. But he is in some ways the only person who can speak for the entire judicial branch, said Kent Greenfield, a constitutional law expert and professor at Boston College Law School.

“Speaking back at Trump for the judicial branch is reasserting the authority of the judiciary to say what the law is,” Greenfield said. “Judges need to keep doing their jobs and I think that’s one reason why Roberts’ statement was so important.”

Many Challenges

The dispute is just one unfolding between Trump and the courts. In some of the most high-profile cases, brought by nationwide nonprofits and civil rights groups, as well as unions and Democratic-led states, plaintiffs and judges alike have repeatedly suggested the government isn’t following court orders.

This week, a judge who ordered the administration to rehire thousands of probationary federal employees whom he ruled were fired illegally said workers in at least one agency appear to have been brought back and then placed on administrative leave in potential violation of his directive.

“This is not allowed by the preliminary injunction, for it would not restore the services the preliminary injunction intends to restore,” said William Alsup, the San Francisco-based federal judge.

Government lawyers on Tuesday disputed that the administration was trying to “skirt” the order in the California case. Administrative leave was “merely a first part of a series of steps to reinstate probationary employees,” DOJ lawyers wrote.

In a case over Trump’s spending freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funds for grants, loans and other financial assistance, a group of 19 states told a federal judge in Rhode Island on Monday that the Federal Emergency Management Agency was continuing to withhold millions of dollars in grants despite a court order lifting the freeze.

In a fight over a mass freeze of foreign aid, a federal judge in Washington criticized the government’s failure to resume spending as he ordered. A Seattle judge in another funding fight recently chided the administration’s “unreasonable interpretation” of her orders. Both stopped short of holding the government in contempt, however.

Judges have also called out the White House’s lack of transparency surrounding the activities of the Department of Government Efficiency the authority of Elon Musk, who is closely tied to the project.

A Maryland judge told a Justice Department lawyer that the administration’s explanations about Musk’s role were “highly suspicious.” This week, he ruled that challengers were likely to succeed in arguing that the billionaire exercised unconstitutional power in shuttering the US Agency for International Development.

The growing list of disputes over court orders is “part of an overall disregard on the part of the administration” for judicial authority, said Greenfield.

“These are the cracks in the dam,” he said. “Eventually if there’s enough it’s going to break.”

(Updates with comments from the White House press briefing.)

--With assistance from Kate Sullivan.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net;
Greg Stohr in Washington at gstohr@bloomberg.net;
Zoe Tillman in Washington at ztillman2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Misyrlena Egkolfopoulou at megkolfopoul@bloomberg.net

Kara Wetzel, Elizabeth Wasserman

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