By South China Morning Post | Created at 2025-03-19 20:31:41 | Updated at 2025-03-20 15:11:30
18 hours ago
The White House on Wednesday accused judges of “usurping” executive power after a series of rulings against Donald Trump’s administration, including one that blocked the deportation of Venezuelan migrants and drew the president’s ire.
Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt alleged there had been a “concerted effort by the far left” to pick judges who were “clearly acting as partisan activists” to deal with cases involving the Republican’s administration.
“Not only are they usurping the will of the president and the chief executive of our country, but they are undermining the will of the American public,” Leavitt said at a daily briefing.
Leavitt in particular lashed out at District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the suspension over the weekend of the deportation flights, carried out under an obscure wartime law.
Trump’s administration said it invoked the more than 200-year-old legislation to deport Venezuelan gang members as part of its mass deportation programme of undocumented migrants.
“It’s very, very clear that this is an activist judge who is trying to usurp the president’s authority,” Leavitt said, branding the judge also as a “Democrat activist.”
Trump personally called for the judge’s impeachment on Tuesday, saying Boasberg was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama”.
