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As Donald Trump and Elon Musk widen their radical attacks on US judges who have stalled some of Trump’s executive orders and Musk’s slashing of federal agencies, they’re gaining backing from top House Republicans and other politicians, including some to whom the tech billionaire made big campaign donations.
House speaker Mike Johnson and judiciary panel chairman Jim Jordan have echoed some of Trump’s attacks on judges, and a judiciary subcommittee hearing on April 1 explored “judicial overreach” and ways to curb judges who have stymied some Trump orders or Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and its draconian cuts to the federal government.
Veteran Republican consultants say the hefty campaign-spending muscle of Musk, the world’s richest man, who spent about $300m helping Trump win last year, is likely to boost many Republican candidates in 2026 races, increasing pressures on members from Trump and Musk to accelerate efforts to rein in dissident judges.
“Republicans on Capitol Hill expect Musk to make a lot of donations to them in 2026,” said longtime Republican consultant Charlie Black. “But it’s likely that such donations will be coordinated with the president’s preferences.”
The verbal assaults on judges by Trump and his allies have been fueled by multiple rulings adverse to some Trump executive orders, including major court decisions in March that sought to halt deporting Venezuelan immigrants and blocking penalizing law firms that Trump deemed political enemies.
Washington DC judge James Boasberg incurred Trump’s wrath for trying to halt the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans to an El Salvador prison with a nationwide injunction challenging the tenuous legal basis for the administration action. Boasberg’s ruling spurred Trump to falsely label him a “radical left lunatic”, urge his impeachment, and then call for him to be disbarred.
Musk has repeatedly used X, the social media platform he owns and on which he has over 200 million followers, to urge impeaching judges whose rulings he doesn’t like. “The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” he said on 25 February.
Legal scholars say Trump and Musk’s radical threats of impeachment or disbarment for judicial rulings that stall or block administration moves undermine the rule of law.
“Trump and Musk are playing with fire,” said retired Massachusetts judge Nancy Gertner, who is now a lecturer at Harvard Law School. “They’re undermining bedrock constitutional principles.”
She added: “You can’t shut down a court just because you disagree. The judges have done nothing wrong or inconsistent with their oaths, and nothing outside their judicial roles.”
Trump’s call for impeaching Boasberg drew a sharp and broad rebuke from supreme court chief justice John Roberts, who last month said that “for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision”.
Further, contrary to Trump’s baseless charges against Boasberg, the judge’s rulings have hardly been one-sided. One example: Boasberg sided with Trump in 2017 to stop the IRS from sharing his tax returns which a long-shot lawsuit sought.
Besides Boasberg, three other Washington DC judges last month ruled against Trump executive orders targeting law firms he viewed as political foes for retribution, which the judges argued were on dangerous or dubious legal ground.
Among other things, the Trump orders seek to take away security clearances for some of the law firms and sharply curtail their government business.
To ratchet up pressures on judges, after judge Beryl Howell issued a decision in March to temporarily block Trump from penalizing the law firm Perkins Coie, the justice department, in a rare move, tried to have Howell removed from the case, alleging she was biased.
In a blistering response, Howell wrote: “This strategy is designed to impugn the integrity of the federal judicial system and blame any loss on the decision-maker rather than fallacies in the substantive legal arguments presented.”
Two other DC judges in March backed law firms Jenner & Block and WilmerHale, which sued the administration on first amendment grounds to block executive orders aimed at hurting the firms financially for their separate ties to key lawyers who led a special counsel inquiry into how Russia worked to help elect Trump in 2016.
Judge John Bates, an appointee of former president George W Bush who issued a restraining order blocking Trump’s sanctions against Jenner & Block, called Trump’s punitive move “disturbing” and “troubling”, noting the order targets the firm’s and its lawyers’ rights under the first amendment, and due process.
Legal scholars and former judges are raising alarms about the rising dangers to the rule of law and the physical safety of judges sparked by the attacks from Trump and his congressional allies.
“While the threats to impeach federal judges based on their decisions are largely performative, they are also designed to foment disrespect for the judiciary and the rule of law,” said former federal judge John Jones, who is now the president of Dickinson College.
“In addition, many of the calls for impeachment are accompanied by the unconscionable disclosure of personal information about individual judges that jeopardize the personal safety of those judges and their family members.”
Other legal experts worry that Trump’s judicial attacks, which some congressional allies are parroting even though the odds of impeaching judges are long, could spark violence.
“The real risk comes not from Congress, but the fringe elements in Trump’s camp, who might be stirred up to threaten or actually inflict harm on the targeted judges,” said former federal prosecutor and Columbia Law School professor Daniel Richman.
“Judges are rightly worried about their safety, and the measures in place to protect them may prove inadequate if the dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric from the Trump camp continues.”
Despite such fears, many of Trump’s hardcore loyalists in Congress are jumping on board to further fuel Trump’s attacks on judges, while benefiting from Musk’s campaign largesse.
At least seven Republican members, including Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Brandon Gill of Texas, who echoed Trump’s call for impeaching Judge Boasberg, or advocated other “action” against judges who ruled against Trump orders, received checks from Musk for $6,600, the maximum he could donate.
Although Republican leaders have suggested that impeachment of judges won’t happen because they don’t have the votes, their public efforts to bolster Trump’s war on judicial independence has been accelerating, with allies exploring other avenues to curb judges.
Speaker Johnson turned up the heat on judges on 25 March when he vowed that “desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act”. One option eyed by Trump’s Republican allies came up at a judiciary subcommittee hearing last week that focused on banning nationwide injunctions by judges. A House bill to ban such injunctions is expected to pass in coming weeks.
Meanwhile, Senator Charles Grassley, who leads his chamber’s judiciary committee and has received a donation from Musk, held a hearing that also explored bans on nationwide injunctions by judges; Grassley in March introduced a bill that would end the “practice of universal injunctions”, but Senate passage is deemed a long shot.
Some former Republican congressmen are highly critical of Trump’s congressional allies for amplifying his attacks on judges, and predict that the House GOP will try to “monetize” Trump’s fury at a growing number of judges.
“The investigation into judges by Chairman Jordan, and calls by Gill and Ogles for the impeachment of judges who have ruled against Trump, are more examples of blind loyalty to Trump by a bunch of sycophants,” said former Michigan member Dave Trott.
“It would not be such a big deal except for the fact that their conduct is helping create a crisis involving the constitution they swore to uphold.”
Trott added: “And just in case these sycophants suddenly decide to stand up to Trump, Elon is using his billions to help Republicans get re-elected. This will ensure the GOP stays in line. The concentration of great wealth and power is a problem that will have serious consequences for our country.”
Other ex-Republican members voice similar concerns.
“I think this is a talking point and a fundraising tool,’ said Charlie Dent of Pennsylvania, adding that members will attack judges for “impeding Trump’s agenda, and they’ll try to monetize it for campaign purposes”.
Some former prosecutors say the judicial attacks by Trump and his GOP allies jibe with Trump’s broader blitz to expand his powers
“Trump has, believe it or not, a strategic plan to disable all opposition,” said former prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig.
Part of that plan “involves eliminating internal oversight, like inspectors general, and cowing external opposition, by threatening law firms. The final piece is to eliminate the last independent check on his authority – judges. To do this he is falsely accusing them of bias and enlisting his sycophantic supporters, like Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan, in the effort.”
