MLB Commissioner considers reinstating Pete Rose for Hall of Fame consideration

Commissioner Rob Manfred is considering a petition filed on Jan. 8 by Pete Rose's family to have Major League Baseball's all-time hit leader posthumously removed from baseball's ineligible list, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation told ESPN on Saturday.

Jeffrey Lenkov, a Los Angeles lawyer who represented Rose prior to his death at age 83 in late September, said he filed the reinstatement petition after he and Fawn Rose, the oldest daughter of Pete Rose, met with Manfred and MLB spokesman Pat Courtney in the commissioner's office on Dec. 17.

"The commissioner was respectful, gracious, and actively participated in productive discussions regarding removing Rose from the ineligible list," Lenkov said of the one-hour meeting in the commissioner's office. Lenkov said he is seeking Rose's removal from MLB's banned list for betting on baseball "so that we could seek induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, which had long been his desire and is now being sought posthumously by his family."

MLB sources acknowledged the commissioner met with Fawn Rose and Lenkov and that Manfred is now reviewing the petition to reinstate Rose. In December 2015, Manfred rejected Rose's reinstatement petition after meeting with Pete Rose. Manfred and Courtney declined to comment on Saturday.

Lenkov's comments came a day after President Donald Trump said he would pardon Rose and criticized MLB for barring Rose from the Baseball Hall of Fame. Rose was banned from baseball for life by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti in 1989.

"Over the next few weeks I will be signing a complete pardon of Pete Rose, who shouldn't have been gambling on baseball, but only bet on his team winning," Trump posted on social media. "He never betted against himself, or the other team. He had the most hits, by far, in baseball history, and won more games than anyone in history." Although Trump did not say what the pardon would cover, Rose served five months in prison after pleading guilty to tax evasion charges in 1990.

Lenkov said he had "not actively sought" the White House's assistance in his efforts to seek reinstatement for Rose, which he said began years ago.

"When he gets passionate about an issue, POTUS stands behind it," Lenkov said of Trump. "He was passionate about Pete. Pete would have appreciated the president's commitment to him."

Lenkov declined to release the petition that he sent to Manfred. But the petition describes "what Rose would have said honestly and candidly to commissioner Manfred, if he had been able to attend that meeting," Lenkov said.

"It is now time to turn the page on Pete Rose's legacy in baseball and for the Hall of Fame to honor him. Whether you are a fan or not of Pete Rose, we are at our best a nation of second chances, a nation of giving people second opportunities. We don't write off people."

Rose, who spent most of his 24-year career with the Cincinnati Reds, won the World Series three times and remains Major League Baseball's career leader in hits, games played, at-bats, singles and outs. Rose often said no player had won more major league baseball games than him.

In a statement on Saturday to ESPN, John Dowd, who investigated Rose for gambling on baseball for MLB in 1989 and served as Trump's lawyer seven years ago, noted that MLB is "not in the pardon business nor does it control admission to the HOF."

In 2020, ESPN reported that for all practical purposes, commissioner Manfred viewed baseball's banned list as punishing players during their lifetime but ending upon their death. A senior MLB source told ESPN then that after a banned player dies, MLB informally sees that the banning ends. When Manfred denied Rose's petition for reinstatement, he said, "Under the Major League Constitution, my only concern has to be the protection of the integrity of play on the field through appropriate enforcement of the Major League Rules. It is not a part of my authority or responsibility here to make any determination concerning Mr. Rose's eligibility as a candidate for election to the Baseball Hall of Fame."

In 1991, the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, passed a rule declaring that any player ruled ineligible by Major League Baseball could not appear on a Hall of Fame ballot. This became known as the "Pete Rose rule," because it closely followed the indefinite banning of Rose.

Rose has never appeared on a Hall of Fame ballot. As Lenkov seeks a precedent-setting ruling by Manfred on Rose's removal from the ineligible list, he said he hopes he can use it to persuade the Baseball Hall of Fame to allow baseball writers to vote for Rose's induction.

In the past, Hall of Fame representatives have said that after a player dies and he is still on the banned list he still won't be eligible for consideration for the Hall of Fame.

Rose had numerous opportunities to win reinstatement during his lifetime.

In the early 2000s, then-commissioner Bud Selig offered Rose a chance for reinstatement but insisted on conditions, including that Rose would have to admit he gambled on baseball, make no casino appearances and stop gambling. But Rose declined.

In 2004, Rose admitted in a book that he gambled as a manager of the Reds, but he insisted he only bet on his team to win. Years later, ESPN reported that Rose also placed bets as a player, but Rose wouldn't admit it.

Lenkov said he is hopeful Manfred will reinstate Rose and that the Hall of Fame will allow Rose to be considered.

"Legally, the lifetime ban is over. His lifetime is over," said Lenkov, who also was executive producer of the recent Pete Rose documentary on HBO. "The Hall of Fame has a rule that if you are on the ineligible list, you can't be considered. If he is taken off that list, there's still no guarantee he gets in. It's a unique situation because he's never been on a Hall of Fame ballot.

"But if he gets in, it'll be a wonderful thing. Imagine the outpouring of emotion to go to the Hall of Fame when he's formally inducted. And why not? As a lawyer and as an American, I believe in second chances. Pete Rose has had as long a prison sentence as any person could have ever imagined. Now is the time for Rose to get his second chance."

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/44071919/sources-manfred-mulling-family-request-remove-rose-ineligible-list

Haitian man charged in NC triple murder flew into US under Biden migrant flights program: ICE

A Haitian migrant charged with triple murder in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who allegedly killed several members of his family last week, had come to the U.S. as part of former President Biden’s controversial migrant flights program, according to authorities.

The Fayetteville Police Department said that 26-year-old Mackendy Darbouze has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing 77-year-old Beatrice Desir, as well as a 13-year-old and a 4-year-old.

Police responded to a home at about 9 a.m. on Feb. 21 after receiving a report that a stabbing had occurred in a home.

When officers arrived, they discovered three individuals suffering from stab wounds inside. Two of the victims were juveniles, and the third victim was an elderly woman, later identified as Desir.

A local ABC station in Raleigh reported that authorities said Darbouze greeted police at the door with blood on his hands, face and pants.

At the time of the stabbing, authorities added, there were three other children inside the home.

Authorities also said that surveillance footage allegedly shows Darbouze walking around with a knife, and during a preliminary investigation, investigators located a knife with blood on it in his room.

Darbouze was arrested at the scene and is currently being held at the Cumberland County Detention Center without bond.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News that Darbouze had flown into the U.S. in July 2024 as part of Biden’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) migrant flights mass parole program.

Darbouze also does not speak English, ICE said, and their personnel interviewed him in Creole.

ICE has lodged a detainer on Darbouze.

The controversial CHNV program, which was implemented under the Biden administration in 2022, initially allowed for asylum seekers in Venezuela to be paroled into the United States for up to two years if they had a person in the country who agreed to financially support them. Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua were added to the list of countries the program supported in 2023, with the program allowing for 30,000 people per month from the four countries to enter the United States.

While the Biden administration touted the program's success for reducing the numbers of individuals attempting to illegally cross the U.S. southern border by land, it did not slow the number of total migrants entering the country, with CHNV program beneficiaries instead being mandated to travel by air to a U.S. airport before being paroled into the country.

The program drew even more scrutiny after Jose Ibarra, a Venezuelan national paroled into the U.S. under CHNV in 2022, attacked and ultimately killed University of Georgia Student Laken Riley.

While President Donald Trump shut down the program by executive order on his first day in office, Luttrell pointed out that more than 50,000 people had been paroled into the U.S. at airport ports of entry nationwide.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/haitian-man-charged-nc-triple-murder-flew-us-biden-migrant-flights-program-ice

>>22685016

New details of deadly triple stabbing revealed in court

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im62W8Tk2-Y

Elon Musk announces birth of ‘14th’ child: a son named Seldon Lycurgus

Elon Musk’s ever-growing brood of children has expanded once again after he confirmed the arrival of a new son named Seldon Lycurgus.

The baby is believed to be his 14th child and the fourth he has had with Shivon Zilis, a Canadian executive at Neuralink, his neurotechnology firm.

The billionaire, now working with Donald Trump as the head of the department of government efficiency or Doge, has forged a reputation for giving his children highly unusual names, including Exa Dark Sideræl, Strider, Azure and X Æ A-12, known as X for short.

Ms Zilis announced the birth on X, the social media platform owned by Mr Musk, and also disclosed the name of their third child, which had been unknown until now.

“Discussed with Elon and, in light of beautiful Arcadia’s birthday, we felt it was better to also just share directly about our wonderful and incredible son Seldon Lycurgus,” 38-year-old Ms Zilis wrote.

“Built like a juggernaut, with a solid heart of gold. Love him so much,” she wrote. Mr Musk responded with a heart emoji.

The founder of SpaceX and Tesla believes that humanity is at risk from declining birth rates and has signalled his intention to have a large number of children.

“Bravo to big families,” the 53-year-old billionaire said three years ago. He has described falling birth rates as “the biggest danger civilisation faces by far.”

His offspring have been born to at least three different women: Ms Zilis; the Canadian electropop musician Grimes, whose real name is Claire Boucher; his ex-wife, author Justine Wilson; and, allegedly, with a glamorous young Maga influencer called Ashley St Clair, 26.

Ms St Clair says there is no doubt about the paternity of the baby. In her lawsuit, she insisted that she “did not have sexual intercourse with any other male during the time the child was conceived.”

As part of her evidence, she included text messages allegedly sent to her by Mr Musk. In one exchange, he allegedly wrote: “I look forward to seeing you and him this weekend.”

On X, she wrote: “Five months ago, I welcomed a new baby into the world. Elon Musk is the father.”

Mr Musk has yet to respond publicly to her claim.

At the time that she met Mr Musk, she was working for the conservative satirical website The Babylon Bee, a Christian, Right-wing version of The Onion.

A regular guest on conservative news outlets, she has warned about declining birth rates in developed countries, a concern shared by many Republicans.

Mr Musk has six children with his first wife, followed by three with Grimes and now four with Ms Zilis.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/elon-musk-announces-birth-14th-143030149.html

A privately built spacecraft is about to attempt a moon landing

The robotic lander, dubbed Blue Ghost, aims to touch down on the lunar surface early Sunday. It’s a feat that only one other private company has ever accomplished.

A privately built spacecraft is hours from attempting to land on the moon, a feat that only one other company has accomplished in spaceflight history.

The robotic lander, dubbed Blue Ghost, has been in orbit around the moon for roughly two weeks, preparing for its daring descent. Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace developed the spacecraft, which aims to touch down on the lunar surface early Sunday at around 3:34 a.m. ET.

If all goes according to plan, Blue Ghost will become the second privately built vehicle to land on the moon successfully. In February 2024, another Texas-based company, Intuitive Machines, made history when its Odysseus lander pulled off a nail-biting touchdown near the moon’s south pole.

Firefly Aerospace’s upcoming landing attempt is the first in a flurry of robotic missions to the moon in 2025. Earlier this week, Intuitive Machines launched its second lander into space, with a targeted moon landing on or around March 6. And a lander and tiny rover developed by Japanese company ispace launched to the moon on the same rocket as Blue Ghost, but are taking a longer, less energy-intensive path and are expected to arrive in late May or early June.

Blue Ghost aims to touch down in a 350-mile-wide basin on the near side of the moon (the side that always faces Earth). The region is thought to be the site of an ancient asteroid impact, according to NASA.

Earlier this week, the lander beamed back footage of the pockmarked, crater-laden far side of the moon as it orbited roughly 62 miles above the surface.

Blue Ghost is expected to begin its hourlong descent to the moon a little after 2 a.m. ET on Sunday. NASA will broadcast a livestream beginning at 2:20 a.m. ET on NASA TV.

The spacecraft is carrying 10 NASA science instruments, including one that will probe the interior of the moon to depths of up to 700 miles. Cameras will snap X-ray images looking back at Earth, studying how space weather interacts with Earth’s magnetic field, while a separate camera will take detailed photos of the lander as it descends to the lunar surface in order to aid future missions to the moon.

Instruments aboard the lander will also analyze samples of lunar soil, study how much lunar dust sticks to different materials, and use lasers to measure the precise distance between Earth and the moon.

Blue Ghost is expected to spend about two weeks gathering data on the lunar surface.

The mission is part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative, which was set up as a public-private partnership between the agency and more than a dozen U.S. companies to deliver NASA science experiments, technology and other cargo to the moon. It's a component of NASA’s Artemis program, which aims to eventually return humans to the moon.

The agency awarded Firefly Aerospace around $101.5 million to carry out the Blue Ghost mission.

NASA has said the science experiments and technology demonstrations on these missions will help scientists better understand the moon’s south polar region, where future crewed missions are expected to land.

https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/moon-landing-blue-ghost-private-spacecraft-nasa-rcna193468

Pete Hegseth orders 3,000 troops and 20 ton armored Stryker combat vehicles to beef up southern border

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered an additional 2,500 to 3,000 active-duty troops to the southern U.S. border, including soldiers from a motorized brigade equipped with 20-ton armored Stryker combat vehicles, defense officials familiar with the effort said.

The defense secretary approved the orders Friday, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal Defense Department planning. The soldiers are primarily from the 4th Infantry Division’s 2nd Stryker Brigade at Fort Carson, Colorado, and will be joined by soldiers specializing in engineering, intelligence and public affairs, the officials said.

The Pentagon announced the deployment, first reported by The Washington Post, in a statement Saturday afternoon. Hegseth has ordered the deployment of a Stryker brigade combat team and a helicopter unit to “reinforce and expand current border security operations to seal the border and protect the territorial integrity of the United States,” the statement said.

The troops will arrive in coming weeks, underscoring the Defense Department’s “unwavering dedication to working alongside the Department of Homeland Security to secure our southern border and maintain the sovereignty, territory integrity, and security of the United States under President Trump’s leadership,” the statement added.

The statement did not disclose a number of troops to be deployed.

The mission had been in planning since January and comes despite a sharp drop in border crossings since the Trump administration took office. Hegseth said during a trip to the border in February that all options are on the table to support President Donald Trump’s efforts to stop illegal migration, and that the administration wants “100 percent operational control” of the border.

The orders are part of a broader, politically fraught military mission that the Trump administration initiated to to stop undocumented migrants and drug smugglers from crossing into the United States. Several thousand U.S. troops are already involved, primarily assisting U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in the detection and apprehension of migrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Stryker vehicles — a lightly armored attack vehicle carrying up to 11 soldiers and typically equipped with a machine gun or grenade launcher — have been used in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. More recently, the Biden administration provided some Stryker vehicles to Ukrainian forces, who used them during a cross-border incursion into the Kursk region of Russia. It was not clear Saturday if vehicles will be mounted with weapons during the deployment.

The Strykers likely will be transported to the border by rail and truck, after earlier discussions included the possibility of a road march from Fort Carson, one of the officials said. Army officials see it as useful for the soldiers to continue training with the vehicles while deployed to the border. The vehicles will be sent to Arizona, and also could appear in other states, the official said.

It was not immediately clear where in Arizona they will appear, or if they will rely on existing military bases for support. Among those near the border are Marine Corps Air Station Yuma, Davis Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, and Fort Huachuca, an Army installation.

Trump has long shown an interest in deploying U.S. troops domestically for demonstrations of force, whether to deter migration or to crack down on civil protests. During his first administration, as many as 8,000 troops were deployed to the border at a time, but their mission was largely limited to stringing miles of razor wire and providing other logistical support to CBP.

Border crossings soared early in the Biden administration, as the Democratic president rolled back restrictions adopted during Trump’s first term. Those numbers plummeted last year after U.S. and Mexican authorities introduced new efforts to stem the flow of migrants looking to enter the United States.

https://archive.is/tc6Vz#selection-629.0-851.123

Bird strike causes engine fire for FedEx plane, emergency landing at Newark airport

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1895880555297960237

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1895880555297960237

Voters back Trump approach to ending Ukraine war

Michael Brendan Dougherty

@michaelbd

Anyone positing that Trump is playing to a tiny bubble of MAGA on X on the Ukraine issue isn't keeping up.

https://x.com/michaelbd/status/1895537890811429182

Dapper Detective

@Dapper_Det

🚨JUST IN: Three ILLEGAL ALIENS from Columbia ARRESTED for BURGLARIES of homes on Long Island NY—robbing Americans of jewelry, gold and over $250,000 in cash.

Local police defunded made this huge bust.

https://x.com/Dapper_Det/status/1895675774772064485

U.S. Department of Education Launches “End DEI” Portal

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Education launched EndDEI.Ed.Gov, a public portal for parents, students, teachers, and the broader community to submit reports of discrimination based on race or sex in publicly-funded K-12 schools.

The secure portal allows parents to provide an email address, the name of the student’s school or school district, and details of the concerning practices. The Department of Education will use submissions as a guide to identify potential areas for investigation.

“For years, parents have been begging schools to focus on teaching their kids practical skills like reading, writing, and math, instead of pushing critical theory, rogue sex education and divisive ideologies—but their concerns have been brushed off, mocked, or shut down entirely,” said Tiffany Justice, Co-Founder of Moms for Liberty. “Parents, now is the time that you share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools. This webpage demonstrates that President Trump’s Department of Education is putting power back in the hands of parents.”

https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-launches-end-dei-portal

Powers of Trump and Congress Collide in Government Shutdown Fight

WASHINGTON—President Trump has spent his first weeks back in office undoing much of the handiwork of Congress—freezing spending that lawmakers authorized, idling agencies that were already funded and bypassing laws regarding immigration and independent agencies.

A budget fight now brewing in Congress is becoming the first test of whether lawmakers will try to claw back any of their powers—or whether they accede to a new power alignment in Washington that centralizes far more authority in the White House.

Opinion is hardening among Democrats that Congress must pass measures to compel Trump to spend money on federal programs as designated by lawmakers—to put guardrails on his unilateral efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy and reclaim, as they say, their constitutional power of the purse.

Some are insisting that these requirements be written into must-pass legislation needed to fund the government after March 14, raising the prospect that Democrats—if they stick to their demands—could withhold the votes that Republican leaders have typically needed in recent years to pass such spending bills. That would set the government on course for its first shutdown since 2019.

“We should absolutely insist on safeguards to assure that funds are spent when they are appropriated” as a condition of passing a spending bill, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.). Sen. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said he couldn’t vote for even a short-term bill to fund the government “in the absence of guarantees” that the president will honor Congress’s funding priorities.

Republicans say there is no way they can agree.

“We’re not going to shackle the president of the United States—can’t do it,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R., Okla.). “We’re not going to do that to a Republican president and we never tried to do it to a Democratic president.”

The spending fight is one aspect of a broader discussion about whether Congress has ceded too much power to the president, either by passing laws that expand his authority or empowering him through their own inaction.

The Constitution assigns to Congress the power to levy tariffs, and some lawmakers within both parties say they have gone too far in delegating that authority to the president. Separately, a handful of lawmakers within each party want to scale back laws that give the president enhanced powers during emergencies, which Trump has cited in some of his actions regarding energy production, tariffs and immigration.

Other separation-of-powers battles could be on the horizon, including one over the authority of federal courts as they consider the legality of Trump’s executive actions.

Dan Bongino, Trump’s choice to be deputy director of the FBI, has said the president “should ignore” a court decision with which he disagrees, and Vice President JD Vance wrote recently that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

In a Senate confirmation hearing this week, a nominee for a senior Justice Department job suggested there were circumstances in which a president didn’t have to follow federal court orders.

“There is no hard-and-fast rule about whether, in every instance, a public official is bound by a court decision,” said Aaron Reitz, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Policy, which advises the attorney general on policy and helps select federal judicial nominees. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) expanded on Reitz’s comment, by suggesting that some court decisions, such as a 1944 Supreme Court ruling allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, merited opposition.

But Reitz’s comments drew a rebuke from Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who said: “Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court—ever.” Blumenthal, in an interview, said the comments reinforced the challenge lawmakers face in ensuring that Trump adheres to the spending priorities they lay out in appropriations.

“Eventually, a court could tell them that you have to obey the law,” he said. “If they’re now saying, ‘Well, we’ll disobey the court,’ essentially they’re saying that we’re embracing a lawless and autocratic tyranny.”

The White House has previously said that all of Trump’s actions have been “fully legal and compliant with federal law.”

To many Democrats, the spending issue is existential: Trump and his designated cost-cutter, Elon Musk, have moved to fire thousands of government workers and claimed authority to cut spending on a range of federal functions, rather than wait for Congress to pass budgets and appropriations. Trump and his budget chief believe the president already has considerable discretion to not spend appropriated funds, and that a 1974 law prohibiting the practice is unconstitutional.

If the president can override any deal struck between the two parties in Congress, Democrats say, then the president has essentially usurped the most essential power that the Constitution gives lawmakers—the power over appropriations. They say there is no point in striking agreements that will be ignored.

“I cannot imagine how we begin to have faith in any kind of deal we make with the Republicans when they so quickly acquiesce all congressional authority and power to Elon Musk,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D., Texas). “How can we vote for a government funding bill when we can’t be assured that what we will be voting on will actually be implemented?”

The issue has emerged as a roadblock among congressional leaders negotiating a spending deal. On Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, indicated that she was looking for a way to satisfy Democratic concerns that the Trump administration had yanked away powers of Congress but that she didn’t want to trigger a shutdown.

In the House, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is sparring on the issue with Cole, her GOP counterpart. “The money needs to go to where it’s intended,” she said. “Getting the assurances with regard to that is important.”

Late Thursday, Trump endorsed a continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year, which Murray and DeLauro said amounted to walking away from bipartisan talks.

Cole said that if Democrats withhold votes for a spending deal, they would be blamed for a shutdown. “They have to vote for a final deal if it’s going to happen,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) hasn’t aired any concerns about Musk usurping congressional authorities. Instead he praised Musk’s work, saying Congress has been blocked in its own efforts to find waste and abuse. Musk is “doing the job that Congress has been unable to do for decades because the bureaucrats were hiding the data,” he said on Fox News. “He’s cracked the code.” Johnson has also said he wants to codify the executive actions into law.

In a separate separation-of-powers issue, some lawmakers believe they have ceded too much authority to the president over the years to levy tariffs, a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), asked about Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs, said there was political will to place restrictions on presidential trade powers when Grassley was Finance Committee chairman from 2019 to 2021. But Congress missed the opportunity.

“Otherwise, this would have been circumvented,” Grassley said. “To what extent I don’t know, but at least some restrictions put on” the president’s trade authority.

Congress should take action to claw back tariff powers, said Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont.

“The delegation of authority had as a presumption that it would be used with restraint, and for legitimate national security reasons—not as a negotiating tool or political tool where there is no national security threat,” Welch said.

https://archive.is/9aEyb#selection-6253.0-6273.233

Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats

Democrats say the calls to remove judges who block Trump administration initiatives amount to intimidation. Some senior Republicans were also skeptical of the effort.

Congressional Republicans, egged on by Elon Musk and other top allies of President Trump, are escalating calls to remove federal judges who stand in the way of administration efforts to overhaul the government.

The outcry is threatening yet another assault on the constitutional guardrails that constrain the executive branch.

Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. The mounting calls for removing federal judges, who already face increasing security threats, have so far not gained much traction with congressional leaders. Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction.

But even the suggestion represents another extraordinary attempt by Republicans to breach the foundational separation of powers barrier as Trump allies seek to exert iron-fisted control over the full apparatus of government. And Democrats charge that it is designed to intimidate federal judges from issuing rulings that may go against Mr. Trump’s wishes.

“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr. Musk wrote this week on X, his social media platform, in one of multiple posts demanding that uncooperative federal judges be ousted from their lifetime seats on the bench.

“We must impeach to save democracy,” Mr. Musk said in another entry on X after a series of rulings slowed the Trump administration’s moves to halt congressionally approved spending and conduct mass firings of federal workers. He pointed to a purge of judges by the right-wing government in El Salvador as part of the successful effort to assert control over the government there.

The push comes as arch-conservative House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges whom they portrayed as impediments to Mr. Trump, accusing them of acting corruptly in thwarting the administration.

“If these partisan judges want to be politicians, they should resign and run for office,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, in filing articles of impeachment against Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judge, who was placed on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had temporarily barred those working for Mr. Musk’s government review team from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records.

Impeachments of federal judges, which historically result strictly from serious criminal behavior rather than the content of rulings, are extremely unusual. They also consume copious amounts of time: Lawmakers must conduct a House investigation and a Senate trial, as they do in the case of presidential impeachments.

Those seeking to remove federal judges must meet a high threshold of securing 67 votes in the Senate. Just eight federal judges have been impeached, convicted and removed in the history of the country, most for egregious criminal and personal behavior. Others have been investigated and acquitted or resigned before they could be removed.

Given the slim chance of successful impeachments for rulings rather than criminal misconduct, Democrats say the impeachment drumbeat is an obvious effort to cow judges and discourage them from making what Mr. Trump would consider adverse rulings. They say it follows a longstanding pattern of Mr. Trump and his allies attacking judges when the courts don’t go their way.

“It’s clear they’re trying to create an environment of intimidation to the judiciary to try to make certain that they don’t rule against President Trump and his policies,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

“It is all about raw politics,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a senior member of the panel. “It may seem absurd and hypothetical to us here, but to judges, it is extremely threatening. It is plainly a device to bully and intimidate judges to think twice about issuing orders.”

Political pressure on federal judges has reached a level that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted it in his year-end report issued in January. He scolded those who would try to browbeat the judiciary, saying that “attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.”

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The American College of Trial Lawyers has pushed back on the impeachment calls by Mr. Musk and others, saying in a statement that “threats of impeachment for such judicial acts have no constitutional grounding and are patently inconsistent with the rule of law upon which our nation was founded.”

Criticism of the judges has spread beyond Mr. Musk and hardright elements of the House and has been picked up by Senate Republicans and other officials. Mr. Trump, who has a long record of excoriating judges, warned last month that his administration would have to “look at” judges as they stepped in to block the Musk effort. Vice President JD Vance has also sharply questioned the reach of judicial authority.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in a social media post that “corrupt judges should be impeached and removed” after earlier suggesting that rulings against the administration smacked of a ‘judicial coup.”

In an interview, Mr. Lee, a constitutional law expert with extensive legal experience, said it would be up to the House to determine if federal judges who blocked Trump administration proposals should be turned out.

“The question of whether anybody has committed an impeachable offense here first and foremost is a decision for the House,” Mr. Lee said. “We can’t do anything unless or until the House acts.” He noted that the Constitution provides that judges have lifetime tenure during “good behavior.”

“It is not good behavior if you are corrupt, either legally or criminally corrupt, or if you abuse your power,” he said.

Other senior Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voiced caution on lowering the bar for impeaching federal judges in a fit of pique over decisions against the Trump White House.

“The Rolling Stones said it best: You can’t always get what you want,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has led the panel. “I’m not a big fan of impeaching somebody because you don’t like their decision. They have to actually do something unethical.”

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a veteran of the Judiciary Committee, called impeachment “an extraordinary remedy for unique cases.”

“Impeachment is a very serious matter and certainly should be handled on a case-by-case basis in a rational, calm way,” he said. “The best recourse for somebody who is unhappy with what a judge decides is to appeal what that judge decides.”

With rulings much of the time going against the Trump administration in its aggressive campaign to reshape the government and with Mr. Musk and others trying to rally opinion against judges handing down the decisions, it is unlikely that calls for impeachment will die down.

But given the lack of leadership support so far and the scant chance the Senate could muster the votes to oust a judge, lawmakers say the fight to watch is how the administration responds to court directives it doesn’t like.

“Ultimately, this is going to be resolved in the courts,” Mr. Durbin said. “The question is whether Trump feels he has to follow court orders.”

https://archive.is/JSiVf#selection-853.0-1069.143

Powers of Trump and Congress Collide in Government Shutdown Fight

WASHINGTON—President Trump has spent his first weeks back in office undoing much of the handiwork of Congress—freezing spending that lawmakers authorized, idling agencies that were already funded and bypassing laws regarding immigration and independent agencies.

A budget fight now brewing in Congress is becoming the first test of whether lawmakers will try to claw back any of their powers—or whether they accede to a new power alignment in Washington that centralizes far more authority in the White House.

Opinion is hardening among Democrats that Congress must pass measures to compel Trump to spend money on federal programs as designated by lawmakers—to put guardrails on his unilateral efforts to reshape the federal bureaucracy and reclaim, as they say, their constitutional power of the purse.

Some are insisting that these requirements be written into must-pass legislation needed to fund the government after March 14, raising the prospect that Democrats—if they stick to their demands—could withhold the votes that Republican leaders have typically needed in recent years to pass such spending bills. That would set the government on course for its first shutdown since 2019.

“We should absolutely insist on safeguards to assure that funds are spent when they are appropriated” as a condition of passing a spending bill, said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.). Sen. Edward Markey (D., Mass.) said he couldn’t vote for even a short-term bill to fund the government “in the absence of guarantees” that the president will honor Congress’s funding priorities.

Republicans say there is no way they can agree.

“We’re not going to shackle the president of the United States—can’t do it,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R., Okla.). “We’re not going to do that to a Republican president and we never tried to do it to a Democratic president.”

The spending fight is one aspect of a broader discussion about whether Congress has ceded too much power to the president, either by passing laws that expand his authority or empowering him through their own inaction.

The Constitution assigns to Congress the power to levy tariffs, and some lawmakers within both parties say they have gone too far in delegating that authority to the president. Separately, a handful of lawmakers within each party want to scale back laws that give the president enhanced powers during emergencies, which Trump has cited in some of his actions regarding energy production, tariffs and immigration.

Other separation-of-powers battles could be on the horizon, including one over the authority of federal courts as they consider the legality of Trump’s executive actions.

Dan Bongino, Trump’s choice to be deputy director of the FBI, has said the president “should ignore” a court decision with which he disagrees, and Vice President JD Vance wrote recently that “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

In a Senate confirmation hearing this week, a nominee for a senior Justice Department job suggested there were circumstances in which a president didn’t have to follow federal court orders.

“There is no hard-and-fast rule about whether, in every instance, a public official is bound by a court decision,” said Aaron Reitz, Trump’s nominee to head the Office of Legal Policy, which advises the attorney general on policy and helps select federal judicial nominees. Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) expanded on Reitz’s comment, by suggesting that some court decisions, such as a 1944 Supreme Court ruling allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, merited opposition.

But Reitz’s comments drew a rebuke from Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who said: “Don’t ever, ever take the position that you’re not going to follow the order of a federal court—ever.” Blumenthal, in an interview, said the comments reinforced the challenge lawmakers face in ensuring that Trump adheres to the spending priorities they lay out in appropriations.

“Eventually, a court could tell them that you have to obey the law,” he said. “If they’re now saying, ‘Well, we’ll disobey the court,’ essentially they’re saying that we’re embracing a lawless and autocratic tyranny.”

The White House has previously said that all of Trump’s actions have been “fully legal and compliant with federal law.”

To many Democrats, the spending issue is existential: Trump and his designated cost-cutter, Elon Musk, have moved to fire thousands of government workers and claimed authority to cut spending on a range of federal functions, rather than wait for Congress to pass budgets and appropriations. Trump and his budget chief believe the president already has considerable discretion to not spend appropriated funds, and that a 1974 law prohibiting the practice is unconstitutional.

If the president can override any deal struck between the two parties in Congress, Democrats say, then the president has essentially usurped the most essential power that the Constitution gives lawmakers—the power over appropriations. They say there is no point in striking agreements that will be ignored.

“I cannot imagine how we begin to have faith in any kind of deal we make with the Republicans when they so quickly acquiesce all congressional authority and power to Elon Musk,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D., Texas). “How can we vote for a government funding bill when we can’t be assured that what we will be voting on will actually be implemented?”

The issue has emerged as a roadblock among congressional leaders negotiating a spending deal. On Thursday, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, indicated that she was looking for a way to satisfy Democratic concerns that the Trump administration had yanked away powers of Congress but that she didn’t want to trigger a shutdown.

In the House, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, is sparring on the issue with Cole, her GOP counterpart. “The money needs to go to where it’s intended,” she said. “Getting the assurances with regard to that is important.”

Late Thursday, Trump endorsed a continuing resolution to fund the government through the end of the year, which Murray and DeLauro said amounted to walking away from bipartisan talks.

Cole said that if Democrats withhold votes for a spending deal, they would be blamed for a shutdown. “They have to vote for a final deal if it’s going to happen,” he said.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) hasn’t aired any concerns about Musk usurping congressional authorities. Instead he praised Musk’s work, saying Congress has been blocked in its own efforts to find waste and abuse. Musk is “doing the job that Congress has been unable to do for decades because the bureaucrats were hiding the data,” he said on Fox News. “He’s cracked the code.” Johnson has also said he wants to codify the executive actions into law.

In a separate separation-of-powers issue, some lawmakers believe they have ceded too much authority to the president over the years to levy tariffs, a power that the Constitution assigns to Congress.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), asked about Trump’s aggressive use of tariffs, said there was political will to place restrictions on presidential trade powers when Grassley was Finance Committee chairman from 2019 to 2021. But Congress missed the opportunity.

“Otherwise, this would have been circumvented,” Grassley said. “To what extent I don’t know, but at least some restrictions put on” the president’s trade authority.

Congress should take action to claw back tariff powers, said Democratic Sen. Peter Welch of Vermont.

“The delegation of authority had as a presumption that it would be used with restraint, and for legitimate national security reasons—not as a negotiating tool or political tool where there is no national security threat,” Welch said.

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Musk and Republican Lawmakers Pressure Judges with Impeachment Threats

Democrats say the calls to remove judges who block Trump administration initiatives amount to intimidation. Some senior Republicans were also skeptical of the effort.

Congressional Republicans, egged on by Elon Musk and other top allies of President Trump, are escalating calls to remove federal judges who stand in the way of administration efforts to overhaul the government.

The outcry is threatening yet another assault on the constitutional guardrails that constrain the executive branch.

Judicial impeachments are rare and notoriously time-consuming. The mounting calls for removing federal judges, who already face increasing security threats, have so far not gained much traction with congressional leaders. Any such move would be all but certain to fail in the Senate, where a two-thirds majority would be needed for a conviction.

But even the suggestion represents another extraordinary attempt by Republicans to breach the foundational separation of powers barrier as Trump allies seek to exert iron-fisted control over the full apparatus of government. And Democrats charge that it is designed to intimidate federal judges from issuing rulings that may go against Mr. Trump’s wishes.

“The only way to restore rule of the people in America is to impeach judges,” Mr. Musk wrote this week on X, his social media platform, in one of multiple posts demanding that uncooperative federal judges be ousted from their lifetime seats on the bench.

“We must impeach to save democracy,” Mr. Musk said in another entry on X after a series of rulings slowed the Trump administration’s moves to halt congressionally approved spending and conduct mass firings of federal workers. He pointed to a purge of judges by the right-wing government in El Salvador as part of the successful effort to assert control over the government there.

The push comes as arch-conservative House Republicans have filed articles of impeachment against federal judges whom they portrayed as impediments to Mr. Trump, accusing them of acting corruptly in thwarting the administration.

“If these partisan judges want to be politicians, they should resign and run for office,” said Representative Eli Crane, Republican of Arizona, in filing articles of impeachment against Judge Paul A. Engelmayer of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. The judge, who was placed on the bench by President Barack Obama in 2011, had temporarily barred those working for Mr. Musk’s government review team from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records.

Impeachments of federal judges, which historically result strictly from serious criminal behavior rather than the content of rulings, are extremely unusual. They also consume copious amounts of time: Lawmakers must conduct a House investigation and a Senate trial, as they do in the case of presidential impeachments.

Those seeking to remove federal judges must meet a high threshold of securing 67 votes in the Senate. Just eight federal judges have been impeached, convicted and removed in the history of the country, most for egregious criminal and personal behavior. Others have been investigated and acquitted or resigned before they could be removed.

Given the slim chance of successful impeachments for rulings rather than criminal misconduct, Democrats say the impeachment drumbeat is an obvious effort to cow judges and discourage them from making what Mr. Trump would consider adverse rulings. They say it follows a longstanding pattern of Mr. Trump and his allies attacking judges when the courts don’t go their way.

“It’s clear they’re trying to create an environment of intimidation to the judiciary to try to make certain that they don’t rule against President Trump and his policies,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

“It is all about raw politics,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut and a senior member of the panel. “It may seem absurd and hypothetical to us here, but to judges, it is extremely threatening. It is plainly a device to bully and intimidate judges to think twice about issuing orders.”

Political pressure on federal judges has reached a level that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted it in his year-end report issued in January. He scolded those who would try to browbeat the judiciary, saying that “attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed.”

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The American College of Trial Lawyers has pushed back on the impeachment calls by Mr. Musk and others, saying in a statement that “threats of impeachment for such judicial acts have no constitutional grounding and are patently inconsistent with the rule of law upon which our nation was founded.”

Criticism of the judges has spread beyond Mr. Musk and hardright elements of the House and has been picked up by Senate Republicans and other officials. Mr. Trump, who has a long record of excoriating judges, warned last month that his administration would have to “look at” judges as they stepped in to block the Musk effort. Vice President JD Vance has also sharply questioned the reach of judicial authority.

Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican who sits on the Judiciary Committee, said in a social media post that “corrupt judges should be impeached and removed” after earlier suggesting that rulings against the administration smacked of a ‘judicial coup.”

In an interview, Mr. Lee, a constitutional law expert with extensive legal experience, said it would be up to the House to determine if federal judges who blocked Trump administration proposals should be turned out.

“The question of whether anybody has committed an impeachable offense here first and foremost is a decision for the House,” Mr. Lee said. “We can’t do anything unless or until the House acts.” He noted that the Constitution provides that judges have lifetime tenure during “good behavior.”

“It is not good behavior if you are corrupt, either legally or criminally corrupt, or if you abuse your power,” he said.

Other senior Republicans on the Judiciary Committee voiced caution on lowering the bar for impeaching federal judges in a fit of pique over decisions against the Trump White House.

“The Rolling Stones said it best: You can’t always get what you want,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has led the panel. “I’m not a big fan of impeaching somebody because you don’t like their decision. They have to actually do something unethical.”

Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas and a veteran of the Judiciary Committee, called impeachment “an extraordinary remedy for unique cases.”

“Impeachment is a very serious matter and certainly should be handled on a case-by-case basis in a rational, calm way,” he said. “The best recourse for somebody who is unhappy with what a judge decides is to appeal what that judge decides.”

With rulings much of the time going against the Trump administration in its aggressive campaign to reshape the government and with Mr. Musk and others trying to rally opinion against judges handing down the decisions, it is unlikely that calls for impeachment will die down.

But given the lack of leadership support so far and the scant chance the Senate could muster the votes to oust a judge, lawmakers say the fight to watch is how the administration responds to court directives it doesn’t like.

“Ultimately, this is going to be resolved in the courts,” Mr. Durbin said. “The question is whether Trump feels he has to follow court orders.”

https://archive.is/JSiVf#selection-853.0-1069.143