C.J. Roberts Immediately Smacks Down Trump’s All-Cap Judicial Impeachment Cry

** This column required an almost immediate update to include Chief Justice Robert’s nearly unprecedented immediate response to a Trump tweet earlier today:

President Donald Trump is once again acting as his own worst enemy. Without a doubt, the world could so easily be his oyster – president during a time of Republican control of Congress and with a Supreme Court that is more than amenable to conservative causes.

Yet time after time he manages to bring things to the point where there is an almost inevitable pushback from otherwise sympathetic entities. Of late we see the Trump administration pushing the limits of even immigration powers by invoking a 1789 statute (That would be the first year of the Constitutional Republic), one that has only been used in a time of war, in the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members.

The order was so out of the ordinary and so sweeping that a highly experienced DC District Court judge had serious questions and ordered the whole process stopped – only to find the matter complete with the plane in the air and refusing to turn around. Now Trump is demanding that Chief Judge James Boarsberg be impeached after a contentious hearing yesterday in which the judge demanded answers – with Trump’s call coming in an all-caps tweet sure to get the attention of the Supreme Court.

Few things bother the judiciary – and especially the SCOTUS, more than constantly referencing the president who appointed a judge, but ignoring court orders would be one that is even more threatening. In this matter, the Trump administration has brought both concerns into play, along with the presidential call to impeach Boarsberg. Today, Trump lashed out in a manner that will reverberate in the high court across from Congress:

This Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, was not elected President – He didn’t WIN the popular VOTE (by a lot!), he didn’t WIN ALL SEVEN SWING STATES, he didn’t WIN 2,750 to 525 Counties, HE DIDN’T WIN ANYTHING!

This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!

WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!

Well. As I have written many times, to the extent that he feels picked on, Trump need only revisit Pres’s. Biden and Obama’s administrations to see that federal district court judges will halt the entire executive branch under certain circumstances without regard to massive popular vote victories (Both Obama and Biden enjoyed electoral and popular vote victories similar or greater than Trump’s).

None of this is unusual, and – to the extent it matters, even if the judge slows the Trump administration down in this proceeding, and even if the court tosses out the use of the Alien Enemies Act altogether, the administration can still likely deport legitimate Venezuelan gang members – or at least imprison them. Unlike Obama and Biden administration programs for DACA and higher-ed loans, the Trump administration will almost surely get what it wants. But Trump’s call to impeach the judge, along with concerns that the order was ignored, nearly compel the SCOTUS to step in.

Instead of having the Supreme Court look favorably on extreme – but well-planned, immigration policy within the context of traditional enforcement, Trump is forcing the SCOTUS to examine the matter in light of whether they consider their orders as sacrosanct. It is not like they have an alternative.

The SCUTUS is not going to rule that a district court can be ignored but they must be followed. Unless they back up judicial orders at all levels they’re left to having to come up with a reason to show up the next morning. This is all simplified but the point remains.