Press Releases

Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this hearing. 

One of the things that I have found to be delightful in being an attorney and in transitioning from the rules of evidence and civil procedure or criminal procedure into the legislative branch and hearings was those rules that we abide by as lawyers don’t apply. And so, you can expect relevancy and those kinds of issues to perhaps pop up, but as I say, they are not mandatory.

This hearing is another step in a decades-long scheme to capture our referees of justice – to make certain our third branch is so deeply loyal to one man that our system of justice cannot possibly work without him.

Our colleagues want us to believe that their sole focus is to strengthen our federal judiciary. But we know the truth. 

The truth is, when they had the chance last year, they put politics first. The JUDGES Act of 2024 was a fair bill. It was premised on a good faith, bipartisan agreement that the first set of judges in the bill would go to the next unknown president. The bill removed all politics from the process, because we understood that politics is the reason we have gone so long without more federal judges. 

I put forward a bill to establish 203 judgeships in accordance with prior request from the judicial branch. For some reason, the judicial conference has altered those numbers of late, and been a little more conservative about what they’re asking for in terms of numbers of judges, but it’s clear when you look across the country that the 203 number would do the judicial branch much more justice than 50 to 60 district court judgeships.

I look forward to one day right-sizing our judiciary, which has been neglected for so long by the legislative branch. It’s been since 1990 since we’ve done appreciable numbers of authorizations for new judgeships and so for 30+ years, we’ve been needing more judges.

And I stand ready to do that at the proper time, but this bill and the way that it has come forward is nothing but politics. This bill last session removed politics from the process, as I said, by ensuring that when it passed, we would not have known who the next president was. But, when it became somewhat iffy and things looked that they would go the other way, then my colleagues on the other side of the aisle decided to hold up on this bill until after the elections and then once the election was held, result known, then they decided to press forward with this legislation, injecting politics into the process.

Judgeships were not important to Republicans then. But they are very important to them today. 

Their guy is now in the White House! Proving once again that what I said last Congress is true: Republicans only want to add new judgeships when they can rig the game in their favor. 

This blatant attempt to stack the deck shouldn’t surprise us. What we are witnessing today is the culmination of a plot that began 50 years ago. In the early seventies, soon-to-be Justice Powell wrote, “the judiciary may be the most important instrument for social, economic and political change” to reassert corporate power over the needs of the individual.

And so began a decades-long crusade to concentrate power in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many. This created the foundation for the meticulously constructed plan we are watching play out in real time by the Trump-Musk administration. Donald Trump is laying waste to our democratic system. 

In just 36 short days, the Trump-Musk administration has sought to unilaterally reinterpret the Constitution, bequeathing new powers to itself out of thin air, all while publicly undermining the judicial branch’s previously unquestioned constitutional power to “say what the law is.” 

To me, none of these developments come as a shock. When you put a president above the law, like the immunity decision effectively did last year, he will behave like it doesn’t apply to him.

But all is not lost. Despite what many MAGA Republicans think, just because Trump says it is true, does not make it so. 

Our framers intentionally constructed the United States government with three separate and distinct branches of government to check and balance one another. That way, power would never be concentrated in any one branch. Practically, this meant Americans would be protected from the autocratic whims of one petty man and his billionaire co-president – no matter how many years after the Constitution became the law of the land.

So, while we watch the Trump-Musk duo cosplay as king, we Americans know something they don’t. Time has caught up with Lewis Powell’s scheme. The clock has run out on the far right’s attempt to overturn our democracy.  

But our 250-year experiment in self-governance will succeed only if Americans continue to believe that judicial independence means that judges are not subject to pressure and influence. 

Americans must believe that justice cannot be bought by billionaires with gifts of lavish vacations and motorhomes. Americans must believe judges are free to make impartial decisions based solely on law and fact, free from fear of retribution.

Our independent judiciary is the backbone of our democracy. And I, for one, will not just stand here and let the Trump-Musk administration try to dismantle it one branch of government at a time. 

So, if my colleagues across the aisle came here today in good faith, I say welcome. Let’s work together to find a compromise to help strengthen our third branch of government. Let’s have a good faith discussion about the need for more judges, starting with the next unknown president. 

I yield back.