Search Articles
WASHINGTON (CN) — House appropriators traded blows Wednesday over a recent push by some Republican legislators to impeach federal judges, while top judiciary officials implored them to increase funding for measures to protect jurists and courthouses from rising threats.
The pleas for additional security funds, issued at a sparsely attended hearing in the House Appropriations Committee, come as lawmakers are beginning to consider ways to slash government spending in full-year budget legislation for 2026.
The federal judiciary has long warned that current budget levels for its court security programs — set in a series of short-term stopgap spending bills that have kept funding flat for roughly two years — are insufficient to meet what they say is an increasingly dangerous environment for judges and courthouses. They’ve forecast that, without a cash injection from Congress, courts may be forced to further cut already outdated security measures such as screening checkpoints and monitoring systems.
And, speaking to appropriators Wednesday, judiciary officials pointed to a climate of mistrust in courts and judges that is contributing to these harms — including efforts by some lawmakers to impeach federal judges who have ruled against the Donald Trump administration.
“The independence of the judicial branch is jeopardized when judges are threatened with harm or impeachment on the basis of their rulings,” Judge Robert Conrad, director of the U.S. Courts Administrative Office, told members of the Appropriations Committee, adding that judges must be able to interpret the law “free from threats and intimidation.”
“This is essential, not just for the safety of judges and their families, but also to the pursuit of justice and equal rights for all,” Conrad said. “Threats of reprisals and retribution erode the rule of law.”
In recent months, some Republican members of Congress, Elon Musk and even Trump himself have called for certain federal district court judges to be impeached. Lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against a handful of jurists who have blocked the White House from following through on its expansive executive agenda.
Much like its authority over the president, Congress reserves the right to impeach federal judges who commit “high crimes and misdemeanors” as outlined in the Constitution. But many of the impeachment articles recently filed against jurists don’t point to specific wrongdoing, but rather accuse the judges of exhibiting political bias in their rulings.
House Republican leaders have largely been skeptical of judicial impeachments, with Speaker Mike Johnson saying as recently as last week that he believed Congress had to meet a high legal standard to remove federal judges.
The talk also earned a rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who in a rare statement in March said that impeaching judges was “not an appropriate response” to a ruling with which Congress disagrees.
But on Wednesday, some GOP lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee took issue with equating impeachments with other threats against the safety of judges and courthouses.
“I think it’s dangerous to combine those two in the same sentence,” Texas Representative Michael Cloud told Conrad. He appeared to argue that shielding federal judges from impeachment threats would be tantamount to protecting them from criticism.
“[T]hat would be like you telling me that I should not be worried about what the people who elected me will think,” Cloud said.
The Texas Republican pointed out that impeachment was a tool afforded to Congress by the Constitution and said it should be used to “deal with a legal system that’s gone wayward.”
Cloud also criticized Roberts’ perspective on the matter, saying he was “disappointed” with the chief justice for coming out against Trump’s impeachment calls “when there’s a lot of work to be done within the judiciary.”
The congressman’s comments earned a sharp retort from Maryland Representative Steny Hoyer, one of the few Democrats who attended Wednesday’s hearing.
“I’ve been here a long time, but in the history of our country, I do not think we’ve had a challenge to the courts’ authority as we’ve seen in this administration,” he said. “I think the assertion that somehow judges are accruing to themselves authority which they do not have is inaccurate.”
Hoyer argued that rulings from federal judges that limit Trump’s executive power are the “essence” of constitutional checks and balances, and that the courts were doing their job to interpret the correct balance of power under the law.
“I, for one, would hope that judges would continue to do that,” he said.
Maryland Representative Glenn Ivey levied a similar criticism at his Republican colleagues, slamming them for positioning judges as biased or as political agitators.
“I just don’t think that’s the kind of language that we should be projecting to the public, especially in these times,” Ivey said. “I think it’s important for us to not cross that line and say things we think — or should think — could generate some sort of a violent response.”
Conrad, for his part, said that Cloud’s point about combining impeachments with other threats to judges was “a fair one” but added that, from the federal judiciary’s standpoint, they represented “two harms.”
Meanwhile, the judiciary officials testifying Wednesday renewed their warnings about how court security programs could be affected if Congress does not allocate more money for them.
Judge Amy St. Eve, chair of the U.S. Judicial Conference’s budget committee, said budget freezes over the last two years have forced the judiciary to divert money from updating courthouse security equipment so they could pay court security officers and fund a vulnerability management program.
In its 2026 funding request, the judiciary has asked appropriators for roughly $900 million to bankroll its court security program — a significant increase from the $750 million or so it’s been allocated as part of a six-month budget patch approved earlier this year. Without that extra funding, St. Eve told lawmakers, security equipment at courthouses will become even more obsolete and risks will increase.
As Congress gets underway with budget negotiations, its Republican majority is looking at ways to drastically cut government spending. A budget blueprint passed earlier this year prescribes around $4 billion in cuts, but spending hawks in the House have said that those levels should be slashed by even more, by as much as $2 trillion.
Republicans have also taken aim directly at the judiciary’s funding in response to recent rulings against the Trump administration. House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan last month sent a letter to congressional appropriators urging them to include language in upcoming funding bills that would block funding for the issuing or enforcement of nationwide injunctions by federal judges.
Follow @BenjaminSWeissSubscribe to our free newsletters
Our weekly newsletter Closing Arguments offers the latest about ongoing trials, major litigation and rulings in courthouses around the U.S. and the world, while the monthly Under the Lights dishes the legal dirt from Hollywood, sports, Big Tech and the arts.