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‘Grave Moral Evil’: Republicans Are Moving to Impeach Judges Over Anti-DOGE Rulings
Far-right House Republicans are pushing to impeach federal judges, alleging “high crimes and misdemeanors” in response to rulings that opposed actions by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). One congressman denounced a judge as a “predator” and a “radical anti-LGBTQ activist,” while another argued that blocking DOGE reflected bias against Trump voters. A third asserted that Congress has the “authority to impeach judges to defend the will of the people.”
Courthouse News reporter Benjamin S. Weiss notes that three federal judges have been targeted for impeachment by multiple members of Congress.
Senior U.S. District Judge John Bates
On Monday, U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) made unsubstantiated accusations against Senior Judge John Bates, a Bush appointee serving on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Bates was also appointed by Chief Justice John Roberts to serve on the FISA Court and to serve as the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts.
READ MORE: ‘Axis of Evil’: U.S. Slammed for Voting with Russia, North Korea Against Ukraine at UN
“I just formally introduced articles of impeachment against RADICAL LGBTQ ACTIVIST U.S. District Judge John Bates. His attempt to block President Trump’s order to remove webpages containing resources for ‘gender-affirming care’ from government sites is appalling,” Congressman Ogles declared.
“At no point in American history has the judiciary considered the surgical or chemical castration of healthy children to be a compelling or even legitimate health concern and it shouldn’t start now,” he alleged, wrongly framing the judge’s actions. “We must protect our children from predators like Judge Bates.”
According to an extensive report in The Washington Post, however, Judge Bates had “ordered the nation’s premier health agencies to restore online access to several websites that monitor HIV, health risks for youths and assisted reproductive technologies, which were abruptly taken offline to ensure they complied with President Donald Trump’s recent executive order on gender.”
Judge Bates wrote in his opinion: “By removing long relied upon medical resources without explanation, it is likely that … each agency failed to ‘examine the relevant data and articulate a satisfactory explanation for its action.’”
The Post adds that Bates found “that the health agencies probably violated federal law in taking down the scientific data. He ordered the agencies to restore access to the websites.”
In a video posted to social media (below), however, Rep. Ogles insisted the webpages Bates ordered restored were about “transgender surgeries.” In a press release attacking Judge Bates, Ogles went even further in wrongly characterizing the judge’s actions.
“The continued socialization of this grave moral evil necessitates immediate Congressional action against those promoting it. America’s founders gave Congress the authority to impeach judges to defend the will of the people,” Congressman Ogles falsely claimed. The founders did not give Congress authority to impeach judges to defend the will of the people. “My articles will do just that. It is unacceptable for rogue judges to implicate taxpayers in woke LGBTQ propaganda and the irreversible destruction of children’s bodies.”
U.S. District Chief Judge John “Jack” McConnell Jr.
U.S. Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) has “threatened to file articles of impeachment” against U.S. District Chief Judge John “Jack” McConnell Jr. who, Fox News reports, “filed a motion ordering the Trump administration to comply with a previous restraining order. The order temporarily blocked the administration’s efforts to pause federal grants and loans.”
READ MORE: Trump Mass Firings May Be ‘Contrary’ to Law, Watchdog Rules
According to Fox News, “McConnell has since come under fire from Trump supporters and conservatives who have accused him of being a liberal activist after a 2021 video of him saying courts must ‘stand and enforce the rule of law, that is, against arbitrary and capricious actions by what could be a tyrant or could be whatnot’ resurfaced online.”
WPRI reports that Musk wrote on X: “Impeach this activist posing as a judge! Such a person does great discredit to the American justice system,” and later, “Impeach this pseudo-jurist!!”
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer
Last week, U.S. Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-WI) filed articles of impeachment alleging U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer “engaged in judicial misconduct when he halted President Donald J. Trump’s Executive order establishing and implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency on purely political grounds, demonstrating clear bias and prejudice against the President and the 74,000,000 Americans who voted for him.”
Congressman Van Orden also charged the judge with “improper handling” of that case.
Reporting on the articles of impeachment, Bloomberg Law noted that U.S. Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ) is also filing to impeach Judge Engelmayer.
In a press release, Congressman Crane says Judge Engelmayer “responded to an overtly political emergency request by 19 Democratic attorneys general aiming to prevent Trump administration officials from accessing a payment system within the Treasury Department.”
Bloomberg reported that the “acts against Engelmayer come after Musk called for judicial impeachments, in response to judges issuing court orders that blocked many Trump administration actions.”
During Musk’s Oval Office press conference, President Trump, Axios reported, had said, “Maybe we have to look at the judges because I think that’s a very serious violation.”
But it was Vice President JD Vance who perhaps made the most waves when he wrongly claimed that federal judges “aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”
Watch Congressman Ogles’ video below or at this link.
Judge Bates joins the ranks of hundreds of partisan activists disobeying their oaths to score political points.
Thanks to patriots like @RepEliCrane and @Rep_Clyde, rogue judges like Bates will be held accountable. pic.twitter.com/zTBMmpCo8R
— Rep. Andy Ogles (@RepOgles) February 24, 2025
READ MORE: ‘Here’s a Civics Lesson for You’: Stephen Miller Schooled by Democratic Congresswoman
Image of Rep. Ogles via Wikimedia/public domain
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Maine Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Graham Platner is under fire after releasing a video declaring that new allegations against him are false, yet he is “taking time to reflect” on a path forward.
Politico on Monday afternoon reported that a woman who dated Platner, Jenny Racicot, “says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.”
“Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner,” Politico reported, “for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.”
In a video posted to social media eleven minutes after the Politico story dropped, Platner says, “I wanted to directly address the troubling, serious, and false allegations against me. Any accusation of nonconsensual behavior is categorically false.”
He said he and his supporters “were united in a love of Maine, a belief that our politics must change, in a focus on defeating Susan Collins.”
“So, regardless of the inaccuracy of the reporting, but mindful the political reality will inflict, we are taking the time to reflect on the best path forward for the state that I love, the people that I love, the movement I belong to, and the goal of defeating Susan Collins.”
“Those were the goals when we launched this campaign. And they remain my goals today.”
“Throughout it all, you never turned your back on me. And I will not turn my back on you now. Every one of you deserves to see that vision come to fruition and see Susan Collins defeated. And we will use every tool at our disposal to do so.”
The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a political commentator who served as the communications director for the Jeb Bush 2016 presidential campaign, blasted Platner.
“I’m sorry but ‘we are taking time to reflect on the best path forward’ is not an option on the table,” Miller wrote. “Either it’s false and you campaign with vigor or it’s true and you get out / apologize to everyone you let down.”
Journalist Ryan Grim, commenting on Platner’s video, noted that Platner “strongly suggests he is considering dropping out. Already Troy Jackson and Chellie Pingree, both gubernatorial candidates, are being kicked around in Maine circles as potential replacements.”
Several others, including Puck News’ Peter Hamby, predicted Platner will be dropping out.
Platner had postponed several campaign events before the Politico story was published.
— Graham Platner for Senate (@grahamformaine) July 6, 2026
President Donald Trump is facing backlash after posting a video of children — including showing their unblurred faces — graduating from kindergarten, with some of the girls purportedly wearing hijabs.
“President Trump posted a captionless video of graduating kindergarteners on Truth Social on Monday, goading his supporters into verbally attacking little children simply for being Muslim,” The New Republic reported. “The clip is from Gateway STEM Academy, a majority-Black K-8 public charter school in St. Paul, Minnesota. It shows about 21 children in caps and gowns on stage singing a song together. Most of the girls are wearing hijabs.”
The original post of the video which Trump reposted reads: “Public school in St. Paul, Minnesota. Every girl is in a hijab … in kindergarten.”
Trump did not add any comments. TNR called the post “Islamophobic, weird, and creepy,” while noting that the comments section of Trump’s post was filled with calls “by racist, xenophobic MAGA supporters” to “deport the children and ban hijabs.”
TNR also noted that it “should come as no surprise that Trump isn’t above attacking children who just learned how to read, but this post is still particularly discomforting—and will certainly contribute to the already potent level of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. and in Minnesota.”
Critics blasted Trump.
“There is something deeply unsettling about the president of the United States—the most powerful person in the world—going after kindergarten schoolchildren in Minnesota because they wore hijabs, as Trump has done this morning on his website,” The Bulwark’s Sam Stein wrote.
One social media commentator wrote, “Trump posted an unblurred video of more than a dozen Muslim kindergartners to Truth Social, exposing the children’s faces while targeting them for their religion.”
Another added, “Trump is a bigot. The president took to Truth Social to attack kindergarteners in hijabs. These are little kids. The president isn’t just a bigot, he’s also a coward.”
The original video was posted to the X social media platform in June.
U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) at the time commented, “If you are in a public school in America, you should be speaking english.”
Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump’s apparent efforts to delay releasing the $5.8 million civil judgment to E. Jean Carroll are being met with a warning by the journalist’s legal team, who suggest there could be a legal maneuver for Trump to employ to forgo paying the judgment in either of the two cases he lost.
According to The Guardian, on July 4, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan ordered Trump to release the $5.8 million judgment, which is in escrow, to Carroll by this coming Tuesday — or explain why he would not do so.
Carroll’s attorneys think Trump may be trying to buy time to mount another legal strategy, telling the judge that Trump’s request for an extension “appears to be little more than yet another play for time.”
“The case is separate from Trump’s appeal of a Manhattan civil jury’s 2024 award of $83.3m to Carroll for defamation,” The Guardian explains. “But her lawyers have suggested a legal scenario in which the president might seek to conjoin the cases and further delay payment of both.”
Carroll’s attorney Roberta Kaplan (no relation to the judge) wrote, “We can only assume that defendant is seeking … to buy time so he can try to concoct some new basis to put off paying plaintiff presumably in connection with his forthcoming petition and motion for a rehearing.”
Trump’s former attorney, Justin Smith, in one of his final acts, wrote to the Supreme Court suggesting that his client would be appealing the $83.3 million civil judgment.
Smith argued that the Supreme Court “may wish to consider the petitions together,” given they involve the same parties.
The larger judgment case involves possible questions of presidential immunity, and that has Carroll’s attorneys concerned.
“A conjoined case, Carroll’s lawyers fear, could result in both judgments being wiped out,” The Guardian reports.
The president has also made clear he is no fan of Judge Kaplan, after the jurist made several rulings that “angered” Trump.
“What else can you expect from a Trump Hating, Clinton appointed judge, who went out of his way to make sure that the result was as negative as it could possible be,” Trump wrote on Truth Social in 2023, “speaking to, and in control of, a jury from an anti-Trump area which is probably the worst place in the US for me to get a fair ‘trial’.”
Image via Reuters
Platner Scorched Over ‘Taking Time’ Video After New Accusation
Trump Sparks Fury Online After Posting Unblurred Video of Muslim Kindergartners in Hijabs
One Legal Maneuver Threatens to Undo Everything E. Jean Carroll Won
Inside the Group Helping MAGA Voters Walk Away — And What Finally Pushed Them
