{"id":7865,"date":"2025-04-01T18:54:13","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/issa-cold-on-impeaching-judges\/"},"modified":"2025-04-01T18:54:13","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T18:54:13","slug":"issa-cold-on-impeaching-judges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/issa-cold-on-impeaching-judges\/","title":{"rendered":"Issa cold on impeaching judges"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A key Republican threw cold water Tuesday on calls by GOP colleagues to impeach federal judges, suggesting the proposals were politically symbolic but were unlikely to pass.<\/p>\n

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said some House Republicans may be introducing impeachment bills \u201cbecause they were popular and felt strongly within their district, whether or not they were moving anywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n

Issa, the chair of a House Judiciary subcommittee on the courts, asked former Speaker Newt Gingrich if he agreed with that assessment. Gingrich, who was testifying as a former Congressional leader, concurred that impeachment proposals have little chance of passing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re political symbols, not legislative symbols,\u201d Gingrich responded, grinning.<\/p>\n

The exchange came during a hearing Tuesday, chaired by Issa, on what Republicans claim has been \u201cjudicial overreach\u201d during the early weeks of the Trump administration. Despite calls by President Donald Trump<\/a>, Elon Musk and a small band of allies in Congress \u2014 frustrated by dozens of court orders that have declared key Trump policies illegal or unconstitutional \u2014 there\u2019s been little momentum among House GOP leaders, who have privately insisted such efforts are going nowhere in the closely divided Capitol.<\/p>\n

Issa instead sought to rally support for his own legislation that would limit the ability of judges to impose nationwide blocks on presidential policies they deem improper. He emphasized that, despite Democrats\u2019 remarks, impeachment was not the focus of the hearing.<\/p>\n

Without the votes in the House<\/a> for impeachment, GOP leadership has been looking for an outlet<\/a> for the fervor within the party\u2019s conservative flank to target specific judges who have drawn Trump\u2019s fury. Issa argued during the hearing that district court judges have far exceeded their constitutional powers, calling their rulings \u201cthe new resistance to the Trump administration.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTime and time again, rogue judges have asserted as though they were five of the nine members of the Supreme Court,\u201d Issa said. \u201cThe reality is, every judge is considering himself not to be an associate justice, not to even be the chief justice, but, in fact, to be a combination of the Justice and the President of the United States. This demands that we take a, make a change and make it quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Democrats, however, argued that the courts were functioning as a legitimate and necessary check on a president who has pushed the boundaries of the law and Constitution in unprecedented ways. It\u2019s no accident, they argued, that Trump has faced more judicial resistance than his predecessors, who tailored policies to survive court scrutiny.<\/p>\n

They repeatedly asked Republicans to speak to the calls from the right flank of the party for impeachments, as GOP lawmakers in the hearing shied away from the topic. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Republicans\u2019 calls for impeachment have devolved into threats against and intimidation of federal officials.<\/p>\n

\u201cI call on my colleagues right now to call off the campaign to impeach federal judges for doing their jobs,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

There was some skepticism from at least one House Republican to GOP efforts to limit the power of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) noted that Republicans cheered nationwide injunctions during the Biden administration, when judges blocked several of his most sweeping policy efforts.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a double-edged sword. He did unlawful and unconstitutional things during covid that were stopped with nationwide injunctions,\u201d Massie said. \u201cI\u2019m torn on this.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A key Republican threw cold water Tuesday on calls by GOP colleagues to impeach federal judges, suggesting the proposals were politically symbolic but were unlikely to pass. Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) said some House Republicans may be introducing impeachment bills \u201cbecause they were popular and felt strongly within their district, whether or not they were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7865\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}