Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia).
President Donald Trump criticized U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg and other judges he labeled as “radical left” for hindering his ability to fulfill his presidential duties, suggesting they are causing harm to the public through their oversight of cases and lawsuits against his administration.
Trump expressed his dismay about the current state of the Court System on his social media platform, Truth Social. Specifically, he singled out Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, for his involvement in a deportation case involving the enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798. The case revolves around the president’s efforts to deport targeted Venezuelans due to various reasons.
Boasberg, who got his start as a jurist under George W. Bush and was later promoted by Obama, issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on March 15 blocking the Trump administration from carrying out AEA removals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld Boasberg’s ruling last week and rejected a Justice Department bid for an emergency stay of the TRO.
“I was elected for many reasons, but a principal one was LAW AND ORDER, a big part of which is QUICKLY removing a vast Criminal Network of individuals, who came into our Country through the Crooked Joe Biden Open Borders Policy!” Trump said Sunday in reference to the Venezuelans being deported.
“These are dangerous and violent people, who kill, maim and, in many other ways, harm the people of our Country,” the president claimed. “The Voters want them OUT, and said so in Record Numbers. “If it was up to District Judge Boasberg and other Radical Left Judges, nobody would be removed, the President wouldn’t be allowed to do his job, and people’s lives would be devastated all throughout our Country. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”
In addition to the deportations case, Boasberg has also been randomly assigned to oversee a lawsuit aimed at the Trump administration over its ongoing Signal group chat scandal. The judge has been the target of Trumpworld ire over his court rulings and concomitant dressings-down of government lawyers.
“The President has a constitutional duty to ignore any clearly unlawful court order that imminently endangers American lives, like Judge Boasberg’s orders,” wrote Mike Davis, former chief counsel for nominations on the Senate Judiciary Committee, in a Truth Social post on March 24. “Judge Boasberg is refusing to back down. So the House must move forward with impeachment proceedings for his lawless and dangerous sabotage of the President’s core Article II powers.”
Trump, himself, has suggested that Boasberg should be be impeached — blasting him as a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” — in previous social media posts. In response, Chief Justice John G. Roberts issued a rare public statement earlier this month rebuking Trump and others publicly calling for judges to be impeached over disagreements with their rulings.
The ranking justice on the U.S. Supreme Court said, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Similar to a presidential impeachment, a judge’s impeachment requires a majority vote in the House, but conviction and removal require a two-thirds majority vote in the Senate. Only 15 federal judges have been impeached and only eight have been subsequently convicted and removed.
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