When Courts Rule Like Kings, Impeachment Is The People’s Remedy

Federal judges are not monarchs. They do not govern us by divine right, nor are their decrees beyond rebuke. They are, like every officer of the United States, creatures of law. Their power is contingent, their authority derivative, and their conduct subject to constitutional discipline. That is why, in the face of an unprecedented campaign by rogue federal judges to obstruct President Trump’s duly enacted agenda, the House of Representatives must exercise its solemn authority to impeach.

Some will object, immediately and reflexively: But impeachment is for high crimes and misdemeanors! But removal is unlikely! But won’t this politicize the judiciary? The answers are, respectively: not exclusively, that is beside the point, and it already is. The House does not need the Senate to convict in order for impeachment to have an effect. The process itself is the punishment, a public airing of misconduct, a subpoena of judgment, a political cost imposed on those who treat the robe as a resistance uniform.

By June 2025, fewer than five months into Trump’s second term, federal judges had issued at least 40 injunctions halting administration policies. Among them: mass federal employee layoffs, targeted deportation drives, emergency executive orders, and funding freezes. Even after the Supreme Court’s June 2025 decision in Trump v. CASA curtailing the abuse of nationwide injunctions, lower court judges have found novel ways to circumvent the ruling. They accomplish this by exploiting class action certifications, novel readings of the Administrative Procedure Act, or redefining the scope of alleged harm. This judicial creativity is not harmless innovation, it is sabotage by robe.

Consider Judge Susan Illston of the Northern District of California. In May 2025, she halted Trump’s executive order mandating mass layoffs of redundant federal employees across 21 agencies. Illston issued a nationwide injunction despite knowing it would not withstand scrutiny. On July 8, 2025, as expected, the Supreme Court struck her down, but the damage was done: a two-month delay to a signature reform, billions of dollars wasted, and headlines reinforcing the narrative that the policy was unlawful. There were no consequences for her.

Or Judge Brian Murphy of South Dakota, who blocked deportations of violent criminal migrants to South Sudan putting the lives of federal agents at grave. Despite the administration’s clear statutory authority under the Alien Enemies Act and INA provisions, Murphy’s injunction kept these individuals in the US for over a month, during which one committed a serious assault. Again, SCOTUS intervened, lifting the stay. Again, no consequences.

Worse still is Judge Joseph Laplante in New Hampshire, who on July 10 issued a new nationwide injunction against Trump’s birthright citizenship reform (EO 14160) by certifying a nationwide plaintiff class of all US-born children after February 20, 2025. Laplante knew full well that the Supreme Court had rejected universal injunctions. He did it anyway, by disguising it as class-wide relief. It was a cynical, calculated defiance of binding precedent.

And what of Judge Brian Cogan of the Eastern District of New York? On July 1, he blocked the Trump administration’s lawful termination of Temporary Protected Status for Haitian immigrants, arguing that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem lacked authority to wind down TPS and pretended he didn’t know the definition of the word “temporary”. Cogan cited procedural lapses under the APA, a favorite tool of the resistance bench, and again cloaked his injunction in class-wide terms. But the real motive was clear from his opinion: personal disdain for the administration’s immigration priorities. Cogan’s rhetoric dripped with contempt, not judicial restraint.

Judge Randolph Moss of the DC District Court offered another display of imperious overreach when he enjoined Trump’s southern border asylum restrictions. Like Laplante and Cogan, Moss used the class-action pretext to impose what was, functionally, a nationwide bar on enforcement. His argument? That the President could not declare an emergency to restrict asylum seekers, even when the law permits him to do exactly that. Congress had spoken. The President had acted. The judge had overruled both.

Now comes the most brazen: Massachusetts Judge Indira Talwani, who on July 3 ordered the federal government to fund Planned Parenthood, notwithstanding a law passed by Congress expressly prohibiting such funding. Trump had signed a budget rider stripping Medicaid dollars from the abortion giant. Yet Talwani, with Orwellian flair, directed the Department of Health and Human Services to “take all steps necessary” to continue funding it anyway. This is not just lawless. It is impeachable. Congress controls the purse, not Judge Talwani.

At the epicenter of this judicial revolt is Judge James E. Boasberg, Chief Judge of the DC District Court, who has managed to seize nearly every case involving Trump, from deportations to classified documents to administrative orders. His record? Uniform hostility. His method? Self-assignment and procedural gamesmanship. His function? Gatekeeper of the Resistance.

This pattern reveals more than ideological bias. It signals institutional decay. When judges become political actors, impeachment becomes a constitutional necessity. As Alexander Hamilton observed in Federalist No. 81, the judicial branch “must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm for the efficacy of its judgments.” But when the judiciary usurps the role of the executive, Congress must reassert equilibrium.

To be clear, impeachment need not lead to removal to serve its purpose. As with many political tools, its power lies in its deployment. The moment a federal judge must hire counsel, answer subpoenas, and explain themselves before the House Judiciary Committee on national television, the deterrent function is fulfilled. Other judges will take note. Few crave notoriety for the wrong reasons. Fewer still relish being compared unfavorably to Alcee Hastings.

This is not without precedent. In 1804, the House impeached Samuel Chase, a Supreme Court Justice, for injecting partisan venom into his decisions. Though acquitted by the Senate, Chase’s case chilled overt partisanship on the bench for decades. The Founders gave Congress the sword of impeachment precisely because no branch should be beyond accountability.

Critics will protest that such actions would erode judicial independence. But what they mean is judicial supremacy. And that doctrine is foreign to our Constitution. Courts interpret law, they do not nullify the political branches at will. When they abandon this restraint, they abandon legitimacy.

As Justice Scalia warned in Morrison v. Olson, unchecked judicial power becomes “a black-robed supremacy.” We are seeing the consequences. A president reelected with a clear mandate is stymied at every turn by unelected lawyers in lifetime posts who answer to no one but themselves. If Congress will not impeach, it may as well abdicate.

Let us be precise. The House should begin proceedings against the worst offenders: Illston, Murphy, Laplante, Cogan, Moss, Talwani, and Boasberg. The criteria should be clear: serial defiance of Supreme Court precedent, repeated reversals by higher courts, novel or bad-faith interpretations of law that sabotage executive function, and transparent abuse of procedural mechanisms to achieve political results. This is not a purge. It is accountability.

Ultimately, the Constitution provides tools to restore balance. Impeachment is one. Jurisdiction stripping is another. Appropriations discipline a third. But the one that resonates most with the American people is this: a televised reckoning with judges who defy the rule of law while hiding behind it. That spectacle, rightly conducted, will do more to restore faith in our institutions than any ten-point reform plan.

Federal judges are not philosopher-kings. They are public servants. When they forget that, the people, through their representatives, must remind them. Impeachment is not a threat. It is a duty.

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