By Steve Holland and Nandita Bose
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House blasted “activist” federal judges and called on the U.S. Supreme Court to rein them in on Wednesday as President Donald Trump and his allies escalated their attacks against judges who have ruled against his administration.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters it was incumbent upon the Supreme Court to take action against judges who “are acting erroneously.”
“We have judges who are acting as partisan activists from the bench. They are trying to dictate policy from the president of the United States. They are trying to clearly slow walk this administration’s agenda, and it’s unacceptable,” she said.
Her comments came a day after Trump called for the impeachment of Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who issued an order temporarily banning the administration from removing migrants from the United States under an 18th-century law that the president invoked to proceed with the deportations. The comment drew a swift rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said an appeal, not impeachment, was the appropriate response when disagreeing with a judge’s decision.
In a social media post on Wednesday, Trump called Boasberg “a Radical Left Lunatic Judge” who “wants to assume the role of President.”
Other members of the administration including Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller echoed Trump’s demand to hold the judge accountable, while tech billionaire Elon Musk complained about a different judge who has temporarily blocked the U.S. military from enforcing Trump’s executive order barring transgender people from military service.
“This is a judicial coup,” Musk said on his social media site X, calling for Congress to impeach judges.
The combative stance from the president and his team has raised concerns among some legal experts that the administration might openly defy a court order, possibly sparking a constitutional crisis. Under the U.S. Constitution, federal judges are part of a separate branch of government considered equal with the executive branch.
Trump said in an interview on Tuesday on Fox News’ The Ingraham Angle that his administration would not defy any court orders and that he was confident the Supreme Court would rule in his favor in the case over the deported Venezuelans.
The administration is eager for the deportation case – and other legal fights – to go before the nation’s high court despite Roberts’ rebuke of Trump’s demand for judges to be impeached, a senior White House official with knowledge of the strategy said.
Roberts is part of the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, which includes three members appointed by Trump during his first term in office.
“We view Roberts stepping in as him saying he is an establishment guy, this is just against the D.C. code of ethics to call for impeachment of a judge, but he will ultimately be on our side and he is,” the official said.
Trump’s administration has notched some important legal wins as it seeks to dramatically shrink the federal bureaucracy and cut foreign aid spending, but some of its major policy rollouts around immigration, spending and social issues have stalled in court.
Judges have blocked Trump’s efforts to curtail automatic birthright citizenship for people born in the U.S., paused his freeze on trillions of dollars worth of financial assistance, and barred Musk’s cost-cutting effort from accessing sensitive Treasury Department systems.
A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency from taking any more steps to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, saying their efforts to close the foreign aid agency likely violated the U.S. Constitution.
The White House official acknowledged the unlikely odds against getting any judge impeached.
To remove a judge from office, the House of Representatives must pass articles of impeachment by a simple majority vote and then the Senate must vote by at least a two-thirds majority to convict the judge. Republicans control both chambers of Congress but do not have a two-thirds majority in the Senate.
Even so, some Republican leaders did not rule out congressional action.
A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson said he “looks forward to working with the Judiciary Committee as they review all available options under the Constitution to address this urgent matter.”
Russell Dye, spokesperson for House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, said: “All options are on the table.”
(Reporting by Steve Holland and Nandita Bose; additional reporting by Luc Cohen and David Morgan; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)
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