As Courts Push Back on Trump, GOP Questions Their Authority

After Elon Musk called for judges who have ruled against the Trump administration to be impeached, others on the right were echoing that general idea. Below is a sampling of the conservative figures currently questioning the court's authority and the very legitimacy of judiciary oversight, which the AP calls "a fundamental pillar of American democracy, which is based on the separation of powers."

• Vice President JD Vance: "If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges aren't allowed to control the executive's legitimate power," he wrote on X.
• Pushback to Vance: Responses were pouring in, the Daily Beast reports, including many that suggested Vance read the country's founding documents: "Our constitution created three co-equal branches of government to provide checks and balances on each other ('separation of powers')," wrote New York Rep. Daniel Goldman. "The judiciary makes sure that the executive follows the law. If you do, then you won't have problems."

• Stephen Miller: The deputy White House chief of staff called a judge's ruling blocking Musk's DOGE from accessing the Treasury's payment system "an assault on the very idea of democracy itself." He went on to decry government workers as "rogue bureaucrats who are elected by no one, who answer to no one, who have lifetime tenure jobs," calling them an "unelected shadow force that is running our government and running our country."
• Trump himself: The president said he was "disappointed" with the ruling regarding the Treasury payment system, adding, "No judge should frankly be allowed to make that kind of a decision."

(More President Trump stories.)