Originally published at: House Dems Tear Into Johnson’s ‘Outrageous’ Suggestion That Congress Could ‘Eliminate’ Some Fed Courts
House Democrats who spoke to TPM on Tuesday were stunned and floored by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) raising the possibility of Congress eliminating some federal courts, as part of he and House Republicans’ ongoing interest in punishing judges who dare to rule against the Trump administration. “That is outrageous,” House Judiciary Committee Ranking Member…
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"…will follow along like lemons.” Come on folks. It’s “lemmings.” Copy editing, please!
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1 / Every day and in every way Johnson proves himself an Oath Breaker to the Constitution.
2 / He sold his soul to the Devil in the form of Trump and Xtian Nationalism.
3 / If you want to sleep at night, you have to forget that he is second-in-line to the Presidency if Trump and Vance die of a bird flu outbreak or the brain worm that destroyed RFK Jr’s heroin-saturated gray matter.
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Hey, when life hands you lemmings, you make lemmingaide… 
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What we are hearing is the Trump “dangle” style being expanded into the routine dialogue of the GOP right wing legislators: make an outrageous claim for authority, something that is a ridiculous claim for expanding their power, then assess the reactions that come in. Once the claim is on the record, it can be propagandized over time until it is normalized and treated as legitimate dialog. At some point, the claim becomes the basis of a formal proposal.
That’s one of the reason the GOP owns Fox.
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Hawley’s and Jordan’s suggestions are no less outrageous then Johnson’s
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Not even Nixon dared to eliminate courts
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I wish the Democrats would use more resonate words! (I know, look who’s talking). But Authoritarian is a good word, but DICTATORSHIP is what it is.
When the only crime is disagreeing with that traitor, we’re way beyond reasonableness.
The politicians don’t have to lead necessarily, but they have got to participate fer chrissakes.
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That was one of the functions of my grad students.
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I saw that, and my initial reaction was, “LEMMINGS!”
Then I thought about it a bit, and I realized that judged on any reasonable standard of behavior, the Republicant Party are best described as lemons.
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I have to say that while Johnson would do awful things with Congress’s power to regulate the courts, it’s about time somebody noticed that Congress can regulate the courts. Johnson would definitely do this for bad ends. No doubt. But lots of folks on the left spent all of 2020 urging Joe Biden to understand that court reform was a must do agenda item if he wanted his agenda to succeed. Maybe even discussing reform would have dissuaded SCOTUS and the rogue 5th Circuit’s “pipeline of bs” that we witnessed from 2021-2024. Instead Biden appointed a commission who wrote a report that he promptly ignored. John “Taney” Roberts read that weakness loud and clear.
It’s probably not great that a single judge can issue nationwide permanent injunctions rather than enjoining for the litigants. It’s probably not great that you can forum-shop your case into Amarillo, TX where Matthew Kacsmaryk just happens to be the only judge (see “pipeline of bs”). It’s definitely not great that there are a set of plaintiffs who believe they can predict the outcome of any case they bring that makes it to SCOTUS, so they invent cases to make new law.
Reform is necessary to make the courts function the way we think they do when we watch West Wing. I don’t think it’s helpful for Dems to use rhetoric that forecloses that in the future.
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What wexare dealing with here is institutional madness. One party trying to eliminate the justice system and the other party in a panic.
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And judges under threat that if they anger Caesar, Caesar might simply demolish their court!
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Mike Johnson, Lickspittle Extraordinaire!
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I get it. The legislature will mess with the courts because the courts are placing some control (not near enough) over the executive. Congress is ignoring its Constitutional role in governing so the Judiciary needs to join in the ignoring, or is that ignorance.
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Trump and the GOP do not need a judicial system.
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Okay, we’ve got two political parties. And one is now practically walking around with signs that say “END DEMOCRACY NOW!” …
So … have we reached a Constitutional crisis yet? … Oh, heck no. … according to way too many people.
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Elections for a new batch of Congress critters is about 18 months away. MAGA Mike figures that if you smash and break the present system before the one year mark occurs “The People” will get use to the new regime. I don’t think so.
Call me an optimist but if Johnson and his tuchus lechers allow the convicted felon and Ketamine Kid to continue with their rampage the GOP will suffer the biggest electoral disaster since the Hoover Administration in 1930.
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“We do have the authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts and all these other things,” Johnson told reporters during a press conference. “But desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”
Uh-oh. Talk about judge shopping. Looks like we may be kissing the liberal districts goodbye. That sounds liek it may be Mikey’s assignment.
Just send all cases immediately to Matthew Kasmaryk and Aileen Cannon, I guess.
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Thank you a zillion times for this, I have been trying to get people to say “dictator” and “dictatorship” for months.
We have to get a lot more direct with our words.
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