White House says US judges ‘usurping’ Trump’s authority

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The White House on Wednesday accused judges of “usurping” executive power following a series of rulings against Donald Trump’s administration, including one that sought to block the deportation of Venezuelan migrants that had angered the president.

Press spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there had been a “concerted effort by the far left” to appoint judges who “have clearly behaved like partisan activists” to cases tied to the Republican administration.

“They are not only usurping the will of the president and the chief executive of our country, they are also undermining the will of the American people,” Leavitt said at her daily press briefing.

Leavitt in particular lashed out at US District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension of deportation flights over the weekend under an obscure wartime law, calling him a “democratic activist.”

The Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan gang members as part of its mass deportation program of illegal immigrants.

Trump personally called for the judge’s impeachment on Tuesday, arguing that Boasberg was “a troublemaker and a troublemaker, unfortunately appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”

Boasberg, 62, a Yale graduate, was initially appointed to the district court by George W. Bush, a Republican, and later appointed to the district court by Obama, a Democrat.

Trump’s comments prompted an unusual public rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement with a judicial decision,” Roberts said.

In an order issued Wednesday in the deportation case, Boasberg also repeatedly reminded Justice Department lawyers that court decisions must be respected.

“As the Supreme Court has made abundantly clear, the proper remedy for a party subject to a court order that it believes is legally defective … is appellate review, not disobedience,” he said.

“Assault on Democracy”

Federal judges are appointed for life by the president and can only be removed through impeachment by the House of Representatives for “high crimes or misdemeanors” and conviction by the Senate.

Impeachment of federal judges is extremely rare, and the last time Congress removed a judge was in 2010.

Trump renewed his attacks on Boasberg on his social media account, Truth, on Wednesday, though he did not repeat his call for impeachment.

“If a president doesn’t have the right to remove murderers and other criminals from our country because a lunatic judge from the radical left wants to take office, then our country is in serious trouble and doomed to fail,” he said.

The judges have dealt Trump a series of setbacks in recent weeks as his administration pursues a sweeping 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 Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the nation’s main aid agency.

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That same day, another judge suspended the Pentagon’s ban on transgender people serving in the military.

South African billionaire Musk criticized what he called a “judicial coup” in posts on his social media platform X.

“We need 60 senators to remove the judges and restore government by the people,” Musk said, misrepresenting the process and the actual number of senators needed: 67.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller also lashed out at the judiciary, saying that “district court judges have assumed the role of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Secretary of Homeland Security, and Commander in Chief.”

“This is madness. This is pure anarchy. This is the gravest attack on democracy. It must stop, and it will stop,” Miller declared in X.

Trump, the first convicted felon to serve in the White House, has a history of attacking the judges who have presided over his civil and criminal cases.

But the Trump administration now appears determined to confront the judiciary by asserting extraordinary levels of executive power.