As Trump and his allies push to impeach judges, Speaker Mike Johnson eyes an escape hatch
Johnson has backed a bill to bar district judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, an alternative to House Republicans' taking politically perilous impeachment votes.
WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., faces mounting pressure from President Donald Trump and some of his allies in Congress to impeach judges who are blocking his agenda.
But legislation introduced by Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., could provide Johnson with an off-ramp, allowing his members to voice their support for Trump on the issue while avoiding politically perilous impeachment votes that are all but doomed to fail.
Issa's bill, the "No Rogue Rulings Act," would seek to bar district court judges from issuing nationwide injunctions, the sort of rulings that have hampered Trump from fully enacting his plans on issues from deportation to federal agency cuts two months into the new administration. Johnson, a former constitutional attorney, threw his support behind the bill over the weekend.
“We have a major malfunction in our federal judiciary, and practically every week another judge casts aside the tradition of restraint from the bench and opts to be the Trump resistance in robes,” Issa, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, told NBC News on Monday.
“Our bill is the constitutional solution to a national problem, and that’s why it’s on a glide path to the House floor and to the Senate next,” he added.
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