America's Talking - Chief Justice Criticizes Trump’s Call to Impeach Judges

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

(The Center Square) – U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts criticized President Donald Trump's move to impeach judges who have ruled against the president's policies, saying that the court system should be left to resolve legal disputes. "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said Tuesday in a statement. "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose." The Chief Justice's rare public comments came after Trump demanded the impeachment of a federal judge overseeing a legal challenge to the removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members using the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th century statute.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_26572a26-042d-11f0-8b61-03f8126e1de8.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. The Trump administration's effort to deport thousands of violent foreign nationals in the U.S. illegally hit some legal snags in the past week when a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ruled that the deportation of Venezuelan prison gang members be temporarily halted. Three planes carrying more than 200 violent illegal aliens had already entered international waters on their way to El Salvador, and the Trump administration did not order them to return

the U.S. Later, Trump said the judge who ordered the deportations be halted should be impeached, which led to a rebuke from U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts. Joining me to discuss this today is Casey Harper, Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief for the Center Square. Casey, voters elected Trump in part on his promises to secure the border and remove violent criminal aliens. But now, Democrat appointed judges are working against him. Tell us more. Yeah, this is a fascinating story. I mean, there's a whole constitutional question, a legal question, who has the authority to do what? Did Trump violate a court order? Is this judge acting outside of his constitutional authority? But before we dive into all that, I think if you have to have a constitutional crisis, this is the

best possible thing to have a crisis over for the Trump administration. This is not Trump trying to dismantle the Department of Education or even USAID or any of these other things that are more controversial. He's deporting violent gang members that are in the country illegally. And so I think just put in a political angle, this is where you want to have this fight if you're on the Trump team. He's, you know, found these gang members who in the U.S., they're known for being violent, very organized criminal operation, and he's getting him out of the U.S. And so this kind of just interesting that this is the hill that the judges are trying to die on. We're seeing this. and this pattern play out, though, with the judges across all kinds of different issues.

Pretty much everything Trump has done, the executive order has been challenged by lawsuits, and then brought into court. And Trump is generally losing these battles right now, actually. So that's why what John Roberts said is so interesting because all these things are probably going to go to the Supreme Court. I mean, these are such unique cases, whether it's, you know, USAID, just meant, like defunding USAID or it is deporting these. judges or it is banning transgender people from the military. That's also being challenged in court.

These are all probably going to make their way up to the Supreme Court. So getting a little unusual window into what John Roberts thinks is very helpful. It's very informative because ultimately he's going to be possibly the deciding vote on a lot of these big cases. Trump's borders are Tom Holman had a roundtable meeting with Florida governor Ron DeSantis yesterday. And he just pretty much say that these these these Democrats. appointed judges aren't going to stop us from making this country safe again. I mean, this sounds like there could be a big battle coming up between the Trump administration and in the judicial system in this country. Doesn't the Supreme Court really need to get involved sooner rather than later?

Probably, yeah. I mean, this is unusual in modern history, but in American history, it's not at all unusual. I mean, there's a whole constitutional history here over exactly how much power the courts have. Basically, the Supreme Court ruled in the early 1800s in Marbury v. Madison that it has the authority for judicial review. And it has the authority to basically say that what Congress did or what the president did was unconstitutional. And that power is not in the Constitution. I think it's important for people understand. That is not explicitly written in the Constitution. The Supreme Court granted itself that power in Marbury v. Madison and set that precedent. Now, since then, we've generally obeyed that precedent. And it would be, it would be, it would

be probably one of the biggest changes in American history if we undid that precedent, to be clear. But that is a power that the Supreme Court granted itself. Now, what's interesting here when it is there's a difference between the Supreme Court saying you can't do something versus you have to do something. And that's where I think we're getting into really dicey waters here, where the court may be overstepping its authority, whether it's this, you know, district court judges or eventually the Supreme Court. So if Congress passes a law, the Supreme Court can say that law is not constitutional. But they're not supposed to rewrite the law. Or, you know, if the president deports someone, the judge, you know, in this case, in this El Salvador case said, you know, what you did was unconstitutional. But then

this judge went further and said that flight needs to turn around and come home. Now, does the judge, the judge has the authority to rule that something's not constitutional, but does he have the authority to tell the president of the United States to do something proactively, like turn a plane around that's already in the air and possibly international waters? That's where I think the lines reading blurred. And the Supreme Court, I think actually the courts in recent years have sort of overstep their authority. For instance, you know, John Roberts, who were talking about, he sort of rewrote Obamacare. When Obamacare got to the Supreme Court, you know, everyone was waiting on pins and needles to see if it was going to be ruled constitutional or not. And the big thing in

question was whether you can charge people a fine for not buying health insurance. And all of Obamacare really needed that to work. And then they basically, John Robert, and a few others, reinterpreted the law in a way that was favorable enough to keep it. And they sort of redefined what the law meant so that it could stay. And I think that's a great example. I think you actually saw the same thing with gay marriage. They just felt, if you read that case, you know, they felt that they had a moral obligation to allow gay marriage. And they didn't really point to the laws or illegal arguments. They just pointed to moral arguments. And so you've seen in recent years, the Supreme Court's gotten more and more bold in not just saying,

this is constitutional or this is not constitutional, but in saying here's what needs to happen in America. And I think they've sort of become a new legislative branch because Congress has become so dysfunctional and so divided, they can't get anything done. And then you've got the will of the people. Of course, the border and the border crisis under President Joe Biden, former President Biden, escalated more than 14 million illegal border crossers in just the four years of the Biden was in office. Trump ran on this. This was a major campaign promise for Joe Biden, or excuse me, for Donald Trump.

And the voters, the majority of voters elected him to Donald Trump won all seven states. Shouldn't the voters have a say in this? Final word. Yeah, I mean, it's no question. If you went and just asked a thousand Americans, do you think that violent criminal gang members who are in the U.S. illegally should be returned to their country of origin. The vast majority are going to say yes. And so this is, like I said, politically it's the best place for Trump to die on this hill.

There's so many other things that Trump is doing via executive order that are much more controversial. But those are not where it's all heading. But I don't know. It's really all going to end up in the Supreme Court and whether to what degree Trump decides to comply with these rulings. If the Supreme Court really has no power to enforce it, So we may have a constitutional crisis on our hands, but I don't want to be hyperbolic, but it does seem like it could be trending that way. Thank you for joining us today, Casey. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.