‘I’m for it’: Johnson endorses impeachment for judges who rule against Trump
The speaker was previously cool to the conservative push to oust judges who rule against the administration.
Speaker Mike Johnson now supports the push inside his party to bring impeachment articles against judges perceived as antagonistic of President Donald Trump’s agenda — a notable shift for the Louisiana Republican who over the summer sought to squelch such effort.
“I’m for it,” Johnson told reporters at his weekly news conference Wednesday, responding to the question of whether he would endorse impeaching judges who have ruled against the administration.
A symbol of this ongoing effort has been James Boasberg, a U.S. district judge who ruled last year that the Trump administration’s abrupt deportation of 137 men violated their due process rights and defied court orders to keep them in U.S. custody.
Trump allies and Hill conservatives have argued Boasberg is an activist who ought to be ousted from the bench. Johnson, over the summer, tried to tamp down the enthusiasm among hard-liners to remove him.
But judicial impeachment cries among House and Senate Republicans have flared up again in recent weeks. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) has written to Johnson urging him to take up impeachment proceedings against Boasberg, while the Judiciary committees of both chambers have held hearings on the matter broadly.
Judicial activist Mike Davis also spoke with the Republican Study Committee earlier this month about the mechanics of impeaching Boasberg. Though he acknowledged that the party does not have the votes to impeach or remove Boasberg or others, Davis advised lawmakers to put the judge through the process as a punishment.
Johnson also acknowledged Wednesday that “impeachment” would be “an extreme measure” and “we’ll see where it goes.”
He added, however, that “some of these judges have gotten so far outside the bounds of where they’re supposed to operate [that] it would not be, in my view, a bad thing for Congress to lay down the law, so to speak, and … make an example of some of the egregious abuses.”
House GOP leaders are struggling to strike a deal with conservative hard-liners allowing the government funding package to advance, according to two people granted anonymity to discuss the private talks.
The Rules Committee recessed Wednesday evening without a path forward, with senior Republicans hoping to reconvene the panel by 9 p.m. The hard-liners want a raft of amendments, and GOP leaders appear likely to allow several to move the $1.2 trillion bill forward.
So far, however, the process has been “moving very slowly,” according to another person with knowledge of the talks.