Congressional Republicans, egged on by Elon Musk and other top allies of President Trump, are escalating calls to remove federal judges who stand in the way of administration efforts to overhaul the government.
The outcry is threatening yet another assault on the constitutional guardrails that constrain the executive branch.
Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. The mounting calls for removing federal judges, who already face increasing security threats, have so far not gained much traction with congressional leaders. Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction.
But even the suggestion represents another extraordinary attempt by Republicans to breach the foundational separation of powers barrier as Trump allies seek to exert iron-fisted control over the full apparatus of government. And Democrats charge that it is designed to intimidate federal judges from issuing rulings that may go against Mr. Trump’s wishes.
“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr. Musk wrote this week on X, his social media platform, in one of multiple posts demanding that uncooperative federal judges be ousted from their lifetime seats on the bench.
“We must impeach to save democracy,” Mr. Musk said in another entry on X after a series of rulings slowed the Trump administration’s moves to halt congressionally approved spending cuts and conduct mass firings of executive branch workers. He pointed to a purge of judges by the right-wing government in El Salvador as part of the successful effort to assert control over the government there.
The push comes as arch-conservative House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges whom they portrayed as impediments to Mr. Trump, accusing them of acting corruptly in thwarting the administration.
“If these partisan judges want to be politicians, they should resign and run for office,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, in filing articles of impeachment against Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judge, who was placed on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had temporarily barred those working for Mr. Musk’s government review team from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records.
Impeachments of federal judges, which historically result strictly from serious criminal behavior rather than the content of rulings, are extremely unusual. They also consume copious amounts of time: Lawmakers must conduct a House investigation and a Senate trial, as they do in the case of presidential impeachments.
Those seeking to remove federal judges must meet a high threshold of securing 67 votes in the Senate. Just eight federal judges have been impeached, convicted and removed in the history of the country, most for egregious criminal and personal behavior. Others have been investigated and acquitted or resigned before they could be removed.
Given the slim chance of successful impeachments for rulings rather than criminal misconduct, Democrats say the impeachment drumbeat is an obvious effort to cow judges and discourage them from making what Mr. Trump would consider adverse rulings. They say it follows a longstanding pattern of Mr. Trump and his allies attacking judges when the courts don’t go their way.
“It’s clear they’re trying to create an environment of intimidation to the judiciary to try to make certain that they don’t rule against President Trump and his policies,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.
“It is all about raw politics,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a senior member of the panel. “It may seem absurd and hypothetical to us here, but to judges, it is extremely threatening. It is plainly a device to bully and intimidate judges to think twice about issuing orders.”
Political pressure on federal judges has reached a level that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted it in his year-end report issued in January. He scolded those who would try to browbeat the judiciary, saying that “attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.”
The American College of Trial Lawyers has pushed back on the impeachment calls by Mr. Musk and others, saying in a statement that “threats of impeachment for such judicial acts have no constitutional grounding and are patently inconsistent with the rule of law upon which our nation was founded.”
Criticism of the judges has spread beyond Mr. Musk and hardright elements of the House and has been picked up by Senate Republicans and other officials. Mr. Trump, who has a long record of excoriating judges, warned last month that his administration would have to “look at” judges as they stepped in to block the Musk effort. Vice President JD Vance has also sharply questioned the reach of judicial authority.
Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in a social media post that “corrupt judges should be impeached and removed” after earlier suggesting that rulings against the administration smacked of a ‘judicial coup.”
In an interview, Mr. Lee, a constitutional law expert with extensive legal experience, said it would be up to the House to determine if federal judges who blocked Trump administration proposals should be turned out.
“The question of whether anybody has committed an impeachable offense here first and foremost is a decision for the House,” Mr. Lee said. “We can’t do anything unless or until the House acts.” He noted that the Constitution provides that judges have lifetime tenure during “good behavior.”
“It is not good behavior if you are corrupt, either legally or criminally corrupt, or if you abuse your power,” he said.
Other senior Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voiced caution on lowering the bar for impeaching federal judges in a fit of pique over decisions against the Trump White House.
“The Rolling Stones said it best: You can’t always get what you want,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has led the panel. “I’m not a big fan of impeaching somebody because you don’t like their decision. They have to actually do something unethical.”
Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a veteran of the Judiciary Committee, called impeachment “an extraordinary remedy for unique cases.”
“Impeachment is a very serious matter and certainly should be handled on a case-by-case basis in a rational, calm way,” he said. “The best recourse for somebody who is unhappy with what a judge decides is to appeal what that judge decides.”
With rulings much of the time going against the Trump administration in its aggressive campaign to reshape the government and with Mr. Musk and others trying to rally opinion against judges handing down the decisions, it is unlikely that calls for impeachment will die down.
But given the lack of leadership support so far and the scant chance the Senate could muster the votes to oust a judge, lawmakers say the fight to watch is how the administration responds to court directives it doesn’t like.
“Ultimately, this is going to be resolved in the courts,” Mr. Durbin said. “The question is whether Trump feels he has to follow court orders.”
