Trump allies say they will pass bill to prevent judges from 'coup d′état'
Published in News & Features
WASHIINGTON — Republican allies of President Donald Trump said during a stormy House hearing Tuesday that they expect to pass legislation this week limiting the authority of federal judges to prevent the courts from staging a “judicial coup d′état.”
Leading Trump defenders clashed with Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats during the hearing over GOP efforts to prevent federal judges — including those in Maryland — from issuing the sort of nationwide injunctions that have blocked Trump’s orders on deportation and other issues.
In Baltimore, U.S. District Judge Adam Abelson ordered a second nationwide pause in February on Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship for anyone born in the U.S. to someone in the country illegally. Abelson ruled in the case that Trump’s orders were too vague and contradicted free speech.
“Another judge for impeachment consideration?” Arizona Republican Rep. Eli Crane posted on X after Abelson’s decision.
Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan predicted during the more than three-hour hearing that the House would pass a measure Wednesday by California Republican Rep. Darrell Issa blocking judges from issuing injunctions affecting people and policies beyond the immediate parties in the case.
“We’re going to pass Chairman Issa’s bill, which says that some district judge’s injunction doesn’t apply nationwide,” said Jordan, an Ohio Republican. “The left always says, ‘Trust the bureaucrat, trust the judge.’ Who gets to make the call? Is it the guy whose name is on the ballot, or is it some bureaucrat?”
But Raskin, a former constitutional law professor from Montgomery County and the committee’s top-ranking Democrat, said federal judges are “showing America why we have an independent judiciary.”
“I call on my colleagues right now to call off the campaign to impeach federal judges for doing their jobs,” Raskin said. He urged them “to denounce all violent threats, doxing, online vilification and threats against our judges. This is the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives, and we should act like it.”
During the hearing, Raskin mentioned the case of a Marylander, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, with protected legal status, whom the Trump administration acknowledged it mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Raskin said Abrego Garcia, who lived in Beltsville, was “shackled and put on that airplane and shipped off to the torturers of El Salvador.” The reason the United States has due process, Raskin said, “is because we can’t try these cases in the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives.”
The Maryland-based federal court has been a popular venue for challenges to Trump orders. Judges have approved a request for a preliminary injunction preventing immigration authorities from conducting raids in certain houses of worship and blocked an order that sought to end government support for programs promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
“This is clearly a judicial coup d’etat,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, testified at the hearing.
“You now have potentially 677 potential alternative presidents, none of whom won an election. Unelected lower court judges have been steadily grabbing power for years,” he said.
But Kate Shaw of the University of Pennsylvania’s Carey Law School, testified that the judges were within their proper authority.
“The premise of this hearing — that courts have overreached or transcended the limits of their authority, and that this overreach calls for response — is badly mistaken,” Shaw said. “Many of the challenged actions have been taken without regard for, and often with outright contempt for, both statutes and the Constitution.”
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