The more Elon Musk and the DOGE operation rack up legal defeats, the more enraged he appears on his social media platform. As Jay Willis summarized at Balls and Strikes, the Republican megadonor has been “posting incessantly, calling for the impeachment of ‘fake,’ ‘corrupt,’ ‘activist’ judges for ‘violating the will of the people.’ His timeline … is littered with conspiratorial screeds about the dastardly ulterior motives that these judges must have had for preventing an unelected billionaire from assuming the power of the legislative and executive branches all for himself.”
I obviously can’t read Musk’s mind, but his online tirades suggest that he expected federal judges to go along with his agenda — at least in part because Donald Trump won the election. “What is the point of having democratic elections if unelected activist ‘judges’ can override the clear will of the people?” Musk recently wrote. “Well, that’s no democracy at all!”
He’s similarly warned against the “tyranny of the judiciary,” adding that impeaching judges who reject the actions of his quasi-governmental “department” is necessary “to save democracy.”
Given Musk’s powerful position in the White House, the rhetoric is unsettling, as is his apparent confusion about how the government and constitutional law work. Making matters far worse, however, are the congressional Republicans who are echoing his sentiments.
Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, for example, published a message to social media this week that read, “Corrupt judges should be impeached. And removed.” It came on the heels of a similar message Lee published earlier this month that read, “This has the feel of a coup — not a military coup, but a judicial one.”
If the Trump administration’s highly controversial moves are struggling to withstand judicial scrutiny, the argument goes, then there must obviously be a problem with judicial scrutiny.
Joyce Vance, a former U.S. attorney and an MSNBC legal analyst, responded to the senator’s comments in a thoughtful essay:
Utah Senator Mike Lee knows better than this, which means that it’s about politics and not about the law. Specifically, it’s about letting politics trump the rule of law, the principle that there are laws that everyone, including the government, must follow. … Calling for judges to be impeached just because you don’t like their decisions is nothing short of anti-constitutional.
There was a time when rhetoric like this from Lee would put his position on the Senate Judiciary Committee in jeopardy. Alas, that day has long since passed. Complicating matters, the problem is not limited to the Senate. In the House, headed into this week, a handful of Republican members introduced three separate impeachment resolutions targeting sitting federal judges. That total is now up to four — and counting. Musk will likely be pleased, but no one else should be.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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