The House Judiciary Committee will take early steps to investigate federal judges who have blocked President Donald Trump‘s executive agenda as the president and hard-line House Republicans push for impeachment.
After weeks of House GOP lawmakers and Trump blasting federal judges for blocking executive actions such as illegal immigrant deportations, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) heeded the president’s calls and filed articles of impeachment against James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
A handful of other judges face impeachment attempts from House Republicans after ruling against Trump this year, including Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York and Judges Amir Ali and John Bates out of Washington, D.C.
House Republicans could take initial steps on investigating judges as soon as next week when they return to Washington, though an exact time frame has not been established.
“Everything is on the table,” Russell Dye, spokesman for Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), said in a statement to the Washington Examiner when asked if the congressman was open to bringing up the articles of impeachment in the committee.
If Republicans don’t overwhelmingly agree that a federal judge should be tried for high crimes and misdemeanors in Congress, the House Judiciary Committee has other options such as holding hearings on the topic of judicial overreach.
Jordan signaled such non-impeachment hearings are on the horizon.
“We’re going to hold hearings on this entire issue,” Jordan said on CNN on Wednesday. “The 15 injunctions that have been done in an eight-week time frame, Judge Boasberg’s decision. We plan on holding hearings — hearing from experts, talking about this whole kind of body of law, this whole situation.”
The historically rare judicial impeachment process reserved for gross misconduct faces long odds in the GOP-controlled House and Senate.
In a typical impeachment, the articles would run through the House Judiciary Committee and members would need to vote them out of committee before sending them to the floor for a full chamber vote.
Then comes a trial in the Senate, in which an impeachment conviction and removal requires a two-thirds majority or 67 senators. Republicans now hold 53 seats in the Senate.
Only 15 federal judges have been impeached, with even fewer removed from the bench, according to the Federal Judicial Center. Reasons for impeachment largely centered on judges being intoxicated or mentally unfit to serve on the bench. A few were impeached by the House for abuse of power, but most were acquitted by the Senate or resigned before they could be removed.
But impeachment can be a powerful messaging tool, even if it is not successful. Democrats frequently refer to Trump as a “twice-impeached” president for actions he took during his first term, but he was acquitted by the Senate both times.
House Republicans impeached former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in February 2024 just a month before Trump accepted the GOP presidential nomination. The articles against Mayorkas were effectively dismissed in the Senate before a trial, but the process fed into the GOP’s campaign against illegal immigration and the influx of fentanyl through the southern border.
Boasberg’s ruling paused the Trump administration’s deportation flights approved under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, causing harsh rebuke from GOP lawmakers and Trump allies who called his decision “politically motivated” and “radical.” Trump himself has lashed out at Boasberg and other judges, reminding them that he won the election in November.
Several Republican members of the Judiciary Committee seem eager to get the ball rolling on the articles of impeachment, noting that it will be imperative to do so the right way.
“All tools must be on the table to stop the radicalized judiciary,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) told the Washington Examiner. “Whatever we do must be crafted properly. We should have hearings, but we should move quickly, with regard to funding, jurisdiction, impeachment … all the options. It’s time to show the judiciary what Article One means.”
Rep. Mark Harris (R-NC) said it’s up to Congress to act.
“It’s clear many of these activist judges are acting outside of their authority or with blatant political motivations — our founders warned us about such behavior,” Harris said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. “The legislative branch should use every tool at our disposal to rein in these rogue judges and secure the separation of powers as the Framers intended.”
When reached for comment, Rep. Darrell Issa’s (R-CA) office pointed the Washington Examiner to a bill already passed out of the Judiciary Committee that would “take care of all the rogue judges at once.”
“My bill – The No Rogue Rulings Act of 2025 – won’t only deal with excesses like Judge Boasberg’s outrageous demands on the president and the Trump Administration,” Issa said in a statement on Wednesday. “It is the comprehensive solution we need to ensure that this problem does not occur anywhere in our federal judiciary and resets the proper and appropriate balance in our courts.”
It’s not uncommon for the judicial branch to stop a president’s executive agenda, as has been a tradition in the balance of powers set out in the Constitution. Former President Barack Obama’s 2015 immigration plan to expand his Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program was blocked in court. President Joe Biden also faced repeated courtroom setbacks, with his eviction moratorium, federal mask mandate, and student loan plans overturned by federal judges.
In a rare public statement, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts said the impeachment of federal judges is “not an appropriate response” to disagreement with their rulings.
House and Senate Republicans are not fully on board with wading into Trump’s war with judges blocking his decisions. Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Politico that impeaching judges is “idiotic,” while Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said, “You don’t impeach judges who make decisions you disagree with.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) told the Washington Examiner that he thinks it’s “bad precedence” to impeach based on “not liking a judge’s ruling.”
“We have a two-century tradition of respecting the rulings or appealing them. Separation of powers, and the checks and balances in the Constitution are important to protect,” Bacon, one of three Republicans representing a district Trump lost in 2024, said.
If articles of impeachment manage to pass out of the Judiciary Committee, Republicans’ razor-thin majority could put the GOP leadership at a crossroads. Do they risk taking the time to bring a measure to the floor for messaging purposes or wait until higher courts rule on any blocks to the Trump administration agenda?
Currently, due to vacancies and recent deaths, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) holds a two-seat majority with all members present and voting. In April, the winners of Florida’s special elections will fill the seats left vacant by now-national security adviser Mike Waltz and former Rep. Matt Gaetz.
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Eyes would be on vulnerable Republicans like Bacon, as well as Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), the other two GOP lawmakers representing a Kamala Harris-won district, to see how they’d choose to vote on the impeachment articles on the House floor.
Even if the articles did move over to the Senate, it is unlikely 14 Democrats would join all Republicans to convict the federal judges.
