Press Releases

Washington, D.C. (March 18, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, issued the following statement after President Donald Trump lashed out at a federal judge on Truth Social and demanded judges be impeached—the latest escalation in Trump and Republicans’ crusade to undermine and erode the independent judiciary:

“Donald Trump is losing and losing badly every day in court. He is losing in front of Bush judges and Biden judges, Obama judges and Reagan judges. Trump is even losing in front of judges who he himself named to the bench in his first term.  

“Drowning in these humiliating legal defeats but refusing to accept that we are still a nation of laws and not Royal edicts, Trump is now lashing out at the judges who have been upholding the Constitution against his lawlessness. 

“Trump is actually calling for the judges opposing him to be impeached. 

“He is not calling for the impeachment of any judges who have ruled in his favor.  So his rule is clear: either rule in Trump’s favor or face impeachment. 

“We have impeached only 15 federal judges in the history of our country, always for professional misconduct like consistent intoxication on the bench, conspiracy to take bribes, income tax evasion and perjury. 

“We have never impeached a judge for the substance of his ruling in a case, much less for the substance of a correct ruling in a case. Erroneous decisions should be appealed and reversed.

“The judges Trump wants to impeach and try in the Senate are simply doing their jobs. As the Supreme Court has made clear for the past two centuries, ‘It is emphatically the province and duty of the judicial department to say what the law is.’

“Trump’s attack comes on the heels of a similar, shameless effort by House Republicans, who—not merely content to surrender their congressional authority to Donald Trump—are now actively working to dismantle the judicial branch of government which stands between Trump and Elon Musk, and their dream of unlimited tyrannical power over the people. My Republican colleagues have filed Articles of Impeachment against judges not for misconduct, not for corruption, but for the crime of upholding the rule of law against Trump’s plainly lawless acts.

“Amazingly, Trump believes that his election means that he can do whatever he wants even in violation of the Constitution. But no president—including all those who received much higher percentages of the popular vote than Trump did, like George Washington, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and Joe Biden—can violate the Constitution by pointing to their election results and claiming popular permission to do so.”