Press Releases

Our Republican colleagues called this hearing today for one reason: because this President continues to lose, over and over again, in court as people and groups from across the political spectrum challenge the barrage of unconstitutional and illegal executive actions taken by this White House in just the first few weeks of this term. 

Because it doesn’t matter if judges were appointed by Bush, Biden, Obama, Regan, or by Trump himself. When Trump attempts illegal and unconstitutional actions, United States judges–guided by the letter of the law–rule against him.  

It’s a confirmation of the total subservience of today’s Republican Party to this President that their response to multiple judicial rulings of executive overreach is a hearing entitled “Judicial Overreach and Constitutional Limits on Federal Courts.” 

We really should be holding a hearing on “Presidential Power Grabs by the Trump Administration and Constitutional Limits on Executive Power.”

This is Civics 101. 

The Constitution provides in Article I that Congress writes the laws, in Article II that the president administers the laws, and Article III that the courts interpret the laws 

Our Republican colleagues are concerned about the unprecedented number of successful lawsuits challenging this president’s executive orders. But it’s not the actions of the courts in interpreting our Constitution and laws that are unprecedented. It’s the scope and breadth of this president’s executive orders that are unprecedented.  

It’s this president’s attempt to go it alone, to usurp the power of Congress and “We the People,” to rewrite the laws of this country and the Constitution, and to reserve unto himself, rather than the Judiciary, the right to interpret the laws and our Constitution. 

The sheer volume of unconstitutional and illegal actions taken by this president in just the first few weeks of his term leads some to wonder if the President fundamentally misunderstands the nature and terms of his Article II Powers. 

Specifically, when Article II Section 3 says that the president shall take care to faithfully execute the laws passed by Congress, does this president think that the word  “execute” actually means to kill laws rather than to carry them out?

Unfortunately, the underlying rationale for much of this action is a radical theory set forth in Project 2025 and elsewhere. 

It’s one that would vest federal power in a unitary executive, sidelining two of the three co-equal branches of our government, Congress and the Judiciary. 

We’re here because Republicans who control the House and Senate have thus far chosen to abandon their constitutional duty to constrain an out-of-control executive branch. 

If they don’t see anything wrong with that, their constituents do. 

And more of our colleagues would know that if they actually showed up at town halls in their districts. 

Our constitution is built upon the rule of law—that that one is above the law. And our legal system is built on the idea of judicial independence. 

In the past two months, we’ve seen our judicial system working as the founders intended it. 

And as the Supreme Court ruled in Madison v. Marbury over 200 years ago, it’s the job of our Judiciary to declare laws and executive actions unconstitutional if they’re in conflict with the Constitution.  

The federal judges who’ve ruled against President Trump’s unlawful power grab are simply interpreting the Constitution and the laws passed by Congress to protect the rights of the American people. 

To suggest otherwise is to substitute a theory of executive primacy that is completely at odds with our Constitutional separation of powers. 

Mr. Chairman, I wish we could dismiss today’s hearing as political theater. But the stakes are just too high for the American people, as their rights hang in the balance. 

President Trump and his allies are systematically and intentionally pushing the boundaries of presidential power.

While this administration has begun by attacking people it vilifies, including immigrants, students, or working people, no one should kill kid themselves. It’s clear the rights of every American are at stake. 

When the White House and some of our colleagues claim the right to deny due process to immigrants who they claim have broken a law, that’s a sham, because if you don’t support the rights of immigrants to due process, then you don’t support anyone’s right to due process, because without due process, the government can do whatever it wants to anyone, including citizens, and they aren’t able to defend themselves. What’s to what’s to stop ICE from saying that Mr. Roy or Mr. Jordan is a member of a violent gang and shipping them out of the country?

Attacks on our courts, whether in the form of executive orders, punishing law firms and lawyers that dare to stand up for the rule of law, or hearings like this attempting to constrain the courts, or Tweets urging impeachment or violence against judges are part of a broader attack on the rule of law. Our Republican colleagues have shown that they’re not concerned about civil rights and the rule of law. Their sole concern appears to be whether or not a federal judge has ruled against this administration.

They’ve gone so far as to call for impeaching judges because of their rulings, cutting off funding for the court system, and eliminating courts altogether. 

The fact is, if Trump wants to end his legal woes, he can simply follow the Constitution and the law. Because, if a President is intentionally issuing illegal executive orders, the courts are duty-bound to block them.

But, rather than accepting that reality, our Republican colleagues would rather hand Trump the keys to unchecked authoritarian power.

Let’s be real here: Americans elect a President every four years, not a king.   Even if President Trump won the landslide electoral victory he claims to—which he didn’t—it would be beside the point.  

An electoral victory does not justify running roughshod over the courts and the Constitution, which every president is sworn to uphold presidential power is not absolute. When President Trump empowers Elon Musk to ignore laws Congress passed or slash funding Congress appropriated, he is undermining the power of the American people who voted us into office.

If President Trump’s agenda is as popular as he claims, he can work with his allies in Congress to convince the American people to support it. 

But he has no right to simply do whatever he wants just because House and Senate Republicans don’t have the backbone to stop him.

Democrats and Independents are standing up against President Trump’s blatant power grabs, because if he can deny the rights of some people, there’s nothing stopping him from denying the rights of all people all across America. And that should concern everyone in this room and everyone in this country. 

I yield back.