The G.O.P. Impeachment Head Fake

James Boasberg
President Trump did personally call for James Boasberg’s impeachment, a major escalation of the tensions between the executive and the judiciary. Photo: Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg/Getty Images
Leigh Ann Caldwell
March 19, 2025

Capitol Hill, still wrestling with Donald Trump’s efforts to usurp congressional authority, now faces a more complex, and more dangerous, test: how to deal with the president openly defying a court. Yes, there are disagreements over whether Trump triggered an honest-to-god constitutional crisis this weekend by ignoring the chief judge of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia James Boasberg’s order to halt the deportation of hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador, or if he’s merely flirting with one. Regardless, the episode represents Trump’s most potent attack yet on the separation of powers. In conversations with lawmakers this week, members of both parties have told me the president and the judiciary are on a collision course.