Billionaire Elon Musk in recent weeks has raged in a blizzard of social media posts at federal judges who have ruled against his efforts to disembowel the government and executive orders issued by President Donald Trump.
“This evil judge must be fired!” he said last month on his social media platform while sharing a photograph of a judge. “The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” he said in another post last week.
Trump allies in Congress have followed his lead. Some have called for “corrupt” judges to be removed, while others issued resolutions to impeach at least three federal judges for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors” in impeding Trump: New York District Court Judge Paul Engelmayer and D.C. District Court Judges Amir Ali and John Bates.
The resolutions, made against judges appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, are almost certainly dead on arrival, as the judicial impeachment process is deliberately rigorous. The House can impeach federal judges with a simple majority vote, but judges can only be removed after a trial and a vote to convict by a two-thirds majority (67 votes) in the Senate.
While impeachments are unlikely, the calls and resolutions are clearly meant to intimidate judges who have ruled against recent Trump policies or judges who may hear future challenges against the administration, Paul Grimm, the director of the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School and a retired U.S. district judge, told Democracy Docket.
“It is improper to try to bring undue influence against a judicial officer in the performance of their duties, plain and simple,” Grimm said.
Since the country’s founding, 15 federal judges have been impeached, and only eight have been convicted and removed. Notably, none of them were based on a disagreement with how a judge ruled.
Arguing that unfavorable rulings constitute high crimes and misdemeanors lowers the standard “down to the point where anybody who disagrees with something that a presidential administration did is somehow subject to impeachment,” Grimm said.
In general, Trump allies in the House made broad claims of the judges being biased and abusing their power. However, in at least one case, they appealed only to the will of the people.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.) claimed in his resolution against Engelmayer that the judge committed high crimes and misdemeanors for making a procedural ruling against Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which demonstrated “clear bias and prejudice against the President and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.” (Trump received 77 million votes in the 2024 presidential election.)
Musk and the GOP’s intimidation tactics come as judges and lawyers are increasingly facing physical threats. The head of the U.S. Marshals Service Ron Davis said last year threats targeting federal judges have more than doubled over the last three years. In 2024, the service investigated 822 threats and potential threats against people it protects, including judges, prosecutors and court officials.
In recent years, state and federal judges and their family members have been injured and murdered in politically motivated attacks. Even Supreme Court justices haven’t been immune from threats.
The increased political pressure on the judiciary has been accompanied by Trump officials, including the vice president and Trump Department of Justice nominees, openly suggesting that some court orders can be ignored.
In response, law societies and bar societies have warned that the outcries for removal and the resolutions are part of a concerted assault on judicial independence. “These are clearly efforts to intimidate judges and our courts,” the American Bar Association warned in a March 3 statement.
“These actions highlight escalating governmental efforts to interfere with fair and impartial courts, the right to counsel and due process, and the freedoms of speech and association in our country,” the ABA continued.
Notably, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts warned against political pressure on federal justices in his year end report last year. “Public officials certainly have a right to criticize the work of the judiciary, but they should be mindful that intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others,” he wrote.
Ominously, all of this — the intimidation campaign and flirting with ignoring courts — is occurring while the public’s trust in the judiciary is at a record-low.
“For the rule of law to exist, the public must have trust in the judicial system,” Grimm said. “The rule of law doesn’t exist if the public is not willing to acknowledge and be bound by the rulings of courts, even if they disagree with them.”
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