Top White House aide Stephen Miller alleged that judges are attempting to “steal” Donald Trump’s second term from him.
“Unelected rogue judges are trying to steal years of time from a 4 year term,” Trump’s deputy chief of staff wrote in an X post late on Tuesday. “It’s the most egregious theft one can imagine: robbing the vote and voice of the American People. Any ‘conservative’ legal commentator who fails to condemn this lunacy has lost all credibility forever.”
DOGE head Elon Musk, who has for weeks been urging the impeachment of the judges who rule against Trump, responded with a bullseye emoji.
Over the past week, Miller has been one of the loudest voices opposing judge James Boasberg’s order blocking Trump’s attempt to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang using a 200-year-old wartime law.
Trump on Tuesday declared Boasberg a “radical left lunatic” and urged his impeachment—along with other judges who have pushed back on his administration’s boundary-testing actions. It was an escalation that Trump had previously not taken, despite often criticizing the judges who rule against him.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” he wrote in the post on Truth Social.
Just a few hours later, the president was rebuked by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Roberts.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in a rare public statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Roberts’ reprimand seemed to do nothing to cool the flames of Miller’s rage.
In another late night tweet, Miller said that it was “indefensible judicial tyranny” that judges had ruled against Trump. He was responding to a post sharing an Harvard Law Review analysis showing that 67 percent of all injunctions against a president in the 21st century came against Trump during his first term.
“There are nearly 700 unelected district court judges,” Miller wrote in another post. “If the most extremist of these judges on any given day decides he is in charge of the executive branch then Article II, democracy and government itself cannot function.”
In yet another post, he said that judges who ruled against the president were like “Marxist university professors” with the ability to “to unilaterally veto, edit or override the exercise of presidential authority.”
The rage-posting tear continued on Wednesday with perhaps Miller’s most definitive statement so far.
“Each day the nation arises to see what the craziest unelected local federal judge has decided the policies of the government of the United States shall be,” Miller wrote. “It is madness. It is lunacy. It is pure lawlessness. It is the gravest assault on democracy. It must and will end.”
Miller’s complaints aside, the judicial branch’s authority to interpret the law is designed as a check on the power of the executive branch. The White House can choose to appeal the court’s decision.
In the early days of his second term, Trump has frequently tested the limits of the president’s power. In a day-one executive order, Trump tried to end birthright citizenship, which is enshrined in the Constitution. He was blocked by no fewer than four federal judges.
His attempts to dismantle federal agencies that are established by law has also resulted in a slew of court battles. On Tuesday, a judge ruled that the Musk-led shutdown of the U.S. Agency for International Development likely violated the Constitution.
Last week, a judge ordered Trump’s administration to hire back tens of thousands of fired probationary government workers.
