Republicans in Congress are discussing how to reign in Federal Judges.

 

File photo of Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson. ABC News/Reuters. 

Republicans in Congress are discussing how to reign in Federal Judges after several have filed injunctions against the Trump administration. ABC News. The Republicans will hold hearings about Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee that ended Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport illegal immigrants, many of whom were gang members from Venezuela. Republicans have accused Boasberg of naked bias and may call him as a witness. In addition to the hearings, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said they will have a vote for a bill called the No Rogue Rulings Act, which would prevent district judges from launching sweeping injunctions outside of their districts. Impeachment of judges may happen as well, but that would face a difficult battle in both the House and the Senate, with conviction and removal extremely unlikely given that 14 Democrats in the Senate would have to agree to convict. 

My Comment:

Looks like there is at least an effort to reign in these federal judges. Whether those efforts lead to much of anything remains to be seen, but it is about time something is being done. These rulings have been almost universally against the president and have targeted things, like foreign policy, that the courts have absolutely not jurisdiction on.

Of the three solutions proposed, the most useless is hearings. Though there is some appeal in watching these judges squirm on the stand, it won't actually do anything. Maybe if you use motivated reasoning you could say they have a chilling effect on these judges, but that seems very unlikely. 

Indeed, I don't think there is much more useless than a congressional hearing. Very little ever comes from these hearings and it's mostly just an excuse to see both parties talk. And keep in mind, the Democrats will be at these hearings as well, so it's not like they will have a chance to actually grill these judges. 

The 2nd solution seems like it would actually do something. Passing legislation against nationwide injunctions seems like some that can easily pass both the House and the Senate and once it did it would greatly hamper the Democrats effort at lawfare. Instead of one judge they would need one from each district, so 12 in total, to rule against the Trump administration for a national ban. That's not impossible but it would both be difficult and expensive. 

This is the solution I think that the Republicans should focus on. There is a possibility that it could backfire and the Democrats could use it to their advantage in the next administration (if the party survives that long), but the risk are worth it. The real problem is that they don't have the 60 votes they need to bust the filibuster against it in the Senate. It's possible they could use reconciliation to lower the threshold to 51 votes, but it would be extremely difficult to make the act related to the budget. 

But the bill has a better chance of actually working than the third solution, impeachment. The House probably has the votes to impeach these judges but the trial happens in the Senate. Though the benefits of impeachment hearings is similar to regular hearings, we can't even pretend that we are going to get enough Democrats on board with removing these judges to pass the 67 vote threshold to impeach them. 

Given that it won't accomplish much and could even backfire, I am not sure that impeachment should even be tried. I have always said that the impeachment attempts against Bill Clinton and Donald Trump helped their popularity and made the parties that called for them look vindictive at best. I do think that these judges deserve to be impeached, it's obvious lawfare and has very little to do with the actual law. But unless we somehow get past the 67 vote conviction threshold, I don't see what the point is.