Republican Moves to Impeach Judge Who Ruled Against Trump Order

A Republican member of Congress announced he’d introduced an article of impeachment against a Washington federal judge who ruled against the Trump administration in a public health case, the latest effort to remove judges hearing challenges to the president’s actions.

In a resolution posted on X on Monday, Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) claimed Senior Judge John Bates of the US District Court for the District of Columbia engaged in misconduct and promoted a “grave moral evil” by ordering health agencies to restore certain webpages with health information and datasets.

The webpages were taken down under Donald Trump’s executive order to remove any agency statements that “promote or otherwise inculcate gender ideology.”

Ogles said in the impeachment resolution that Bates “failed to consider” that these webpages contained information about gender-affirming care, and “at no time in the history of the American judicial system, until very recently, would judges have considered the purposeful damage to the bodies of healthy young men and women to be a compelling or even legitimate health concern.”

Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, has spent more than two decades on the court and previously served as director of the federal court system’s administrative office.

A spokesperson for the D.C. federal court declined to comment.

Ogles’ impeachment article would represent at least the third filed this month by Republicans against federal judges hearing challenges to Trump’s orders.

Last week, two other Republican lawmakers introduced impeachment articles against Judge Paul Engelmayer of the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, after the Obama-appointed judge blocked Elon Musk’s government efficiency unit from accessing Treasury Department information.

Musk and other conservative figures have verbally attacked federal judges online. Musk posted on his social media platform that “it’s time” to start impeaching judges. “Time to impeach judges who violate the law,” Musk wrote on Ogles’ post announcing his impeachment effort.

Impeaching an official requires the support of the majority of the House. The matter would then be sent to the Senate for a trial, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict.

Impeachments of federal judges are rare. The last time a judge was impeached was in 2010, when a Louisiana federal judge was impeached by the House, convicted by the Senate, and removed from office for taking bribes.