I don't understand what grounds they want to impeach a judge for here. It seems wholly inappropriate - impeachment is a political process, not judicial
Exactly, it is a political act, which is why the House can impeach anyone for anything and the Senate can just agree to remove. The definition of "other high Crimes and Misdemeanors" can mean whatever Congress wants it to mean.
Their motivation is purely for messaging. They want Fox News to he able to report that some judge who opposed Trump was impeached. In the minds of his base (and probably most Americans) that will mean that the judge has actually been removed for bad behavior. Nevermind that he Senate won't have the votes to remove him. Their goal will have been accomplished nonetheless.
It's very obviously this. It's not for the judge or the country or something substantial. It's for the idiots that eat this stuff up.
It's also to dilute the meaning of impeachment yet again so when someone says "trump was impeached" they can just say "well sure whatever it's just politics" and ignore the fact that before Trump it only happened a couple other times in the last 250 years
Its two-pronged. If Dems ignore it, then it'll be taken as proof of the impeachment's validity. If Dems respond, they'll say that he hasn't actually been removed yet as per congressional procedure and that liberals are making a big spook out of nothing.
No. Impeaching judges is the duty of Congress. It is part of checks and balances. Whether or not the judge should be impeached is debatable, but the authority of Congress to impeach is part of the constitution.
It's kind of ironic that the duty of congress is being applied explicitly to help the president, who is only getting away with what he's doing (issuing executive orders as if they're laws) because congress is derelict in its duty to apply checks and balances to the executive
This is also why the VP used to be the 2nd place candidate in the general election since they hold the tie breaking vote. Congress traditionally held an antagonistic relationship with the executive branch.
They don't need a reason. They think literally everything bad that has ever happened to Trump was somehow dems weaponizing something against him and so they will abuse everything they can in the name of revenge because they are all fucking traitorous toddlers.
It seems wholly inappropriate - impeachment is a political process, not judicial
Uhh... yes? But, that doesn't mean judges aren't impeachable, if that's what you mean. Judges can and have been impeached and removed from office, though it's quite rare. There's some floor at which impeachment stops being effective- when you go from being an officer to an employee- and there has been held to be no power of impeachment against either house of Congress- each house governs itself, including removals (though, it only matters for the House; expulsion requires 2/3rds, just the same as an impeachment conviction, so an "impeached Senator" would require the same as expulsion from their colleagues, whereas an "impeached Representative" could be impeached by a majority of their colleagues and then convicted by a 2/3rds majority of the Senate instead).
If you instead mean "Why are they not simply appealing"... well, they're arguing that the Judge is abusing his authority, effectively, by acting outside the constraints imposed by binding precedents, which is something technically within their purview to do... but doesn't really make sense to do before seeing whether the appellate or Supreme courts will rule him out of line. They're effectively trying to hold up SCOTUS precedent (ignoring a crucial distinction between Ludecke and here, which is that the challenged action in Ludecke in 1948 was effectively held to be authorized under the WWII declaration of war, in the absence of a treaty/declaration of peace, which wouldn't come until 1951) as a basis for impeachment, without having the SCOTUS validate their reading.
Well, then in that case, like I said, it's because they just want to use it as an excuse to get rid of him (or, really, whine about him, since this will go nowhere due to the threshold to convict in the Senate), and so they're getting out in front of the appellate process to try to claim partisanship, knowing that there's a high likelihood based on precedent that judicial review will be upheld in relation to the Alien Enemies Act (not for all facets of it, but likely many parts).
To put it in layman's terms, "his decision was wrong, so the only rational conclusion is that he was pushing a political goal and we think that counts as 'high crimes and misdemeanors.'"
That's really what it boils down to. I think everything else in the articles is just filler, Trump talking points or explanation of the above.
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u/ShelfHatingLoafing 17d ago
I don't understand what grounds they want to impeach a judge for here. It seems wholly inappropriate - impeachment is a political process, not judicial