Publisher’s Perspective

By Tim Douglass, Publisher

News reports last week stated that President Donald Trump’s attacks on the nation’s federal judges was met with outrage — and ridicule — by Democrats and others in the nation’s capital.

As reported, Trump, along with the MAGA world, have not been happy with the growing number of judicial reversals of the efforts of his administration and Oligarch Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Those include a San Francisco judge’s ruling that the administration must rehire thousands of federal employees and a Maryland judge’s order to restore email and computer access to all employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development, most of whom have been placed on administrative leave.

But the judicial ruling that really got under Trump’s skin was made by Washington, D.C., federal Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the administration to turn around planes carrying alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador and return them to the United States.

The administration, which cited authority under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, did not comply with that order, prompting concerns about a constitutional showdown. In addition, Trump and his allies demanded that Congress impeach Judge Boasberg.

That elicited a well-timed rebuke from U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a prepared statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

But Trump continued to call for the impeachment of Boasberg and what he called other “crooked” judges. Not because of any improper or illegal conduct, but because he didn’t like a ruling going against his authority as President.  It’s about making noise as he continues to erode the county’s democracy and install a new autocracy with unbridled power instead of checks and balances by Congress and the Judicial branch.   

Then Musk just echoed the executive power grab and was upbraided for posting on X, the social media platform he owns, that Boasberg’s ruling was “a judicial coup.”

“We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” Musk said in his post.

His comment about “restoring the rule of the people” is laughable.  It has nothing to do with the people.  It has everything to do with more power to the executive  branch of our government.  Also, he doesn’t even know how our government functions.  Fact-checking commenters quickly ridiculed Musk because the U.S. Senate does not impeach; that’s up to the U.S. House of Representatives, which votes to send articles of impeachment to the Senate, which considers the evidence, hears witnesses and votes to acquit or convict the impeached official. And it takes two-thirds of the Senate, or 67 votes, not 60, to vote to convict.  (He should know, Trump was impeached twice by the U.S. House.)

Musk’s ignorance, however, matters little since he’s not interested in democracy anyway.  He’s just interested in power and using it to add to his billions.