Notes From Underground (#2)
RI's Own Judge McConnell & the Trump-Musk-Vance Attack on the Judiciary
In normal times, a federal judge can only be impeached if they face accusations of “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
4 days ago, Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia (R) announced he was drafting articles of impeachment against Rhode Island’s own U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr,. If this were, say, 10 or 20 years ago, you may have reasonably assumed that the Representative offered credible evidence that Judge McConnell committed treason, bribery, and/or other high crimes and misdemeanors.
After all, “[o]nly 15 federal judges have ever been impeached in the Senate,” and of those only 8 have ever been convicted (emphasis mine). In fact, the last time the Senate has convicted any judge was 15 years ago. What could Judge McConnell have done to have a close ally of the current president declare him worthy of impeachment?
He must have done something really wrong, don’t you think?
Again, that logic would hold if we were living in the America of 10 or 20 years ago. Well dear reader, that logic does not hold any longer. Why? For one simple reason: we are living in Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and J.D. Vance’s version of America.
Let me explain. In late January, Judge McConnell became the second judge to block the Trump Administration’s federal aid funding freeze. For those who may not remember, the freeze took place when Trump “ordered a [temporary] freeze on domestic and foreign federal aid” without any congressional approval or oversight whatsoever.
In the White House’s telling, this was all done to stop any government funding from going to causes at odds with the Trump agenda. In reality, it was a clear power grab by the Executive Branch. Yet why should you care? Well, because if Trump can get away with little-by-little power grabs like these, then the same guy making hundreds of millions of dollars off industries he’s supposed to regulate could eventually get complete control over the government’s purse strings.
Doesn’t exactly sound like a good deal for the American people, does it? That is the danger when one man and all his rich friends have all the power. It is also why we ended up fighting a war against monarchy and aristocracy almost 250 years ago.
In Judge McConnell’s words, “[f]ederal law specifies how the Executive should act if it believes appropriations are inconsistent with the President’s priorites—it must ask Congress, not act unilaterally [i.e., on its own].”
Of course, another important consideration also led McConnell to block the freeze. Namely, the enforcement of the Trump Executive Order and the government memo based off of it caused chaos across all levels of government.
The sweeping freeze affected Medicaid payments. It delayed funding for domestic violence assistance. Community health centers. Home heating assistance. Rental assistance. Disaster relief. Firefighting funding. Suicide hotlines. Veteran care, daycare, free school lunches, Food Stamps, and WIC, among others.
All programs for everyday people. The poor, the desperate, the vulnerable, and the people living paycheck-to-paycheck. If there were no people like Judge McConnell to get in the way of funding freezes like these, then many of these same everyday people would still be suffering the effects of these terrible delays. Because what else could force Trump, Musk, and Vance to face the consequences of what they do? Certainly not their own consciences.
For any skeptical Trump supporters out there, it should tell you something that the Trump Administration lawyers never defended themselves on whether or not the order was constitutional. Instead, they simply claimed that the Administration withdrew the memo that directed the funding freeze. In short, they argued that the states’ claims against them were essentially no longer relevant. Because there was no memo to challenge anymore, right?
Wrong. Unfortunately for those lawyers, Donald Trump’s own Press Secretary cut through their legal mumbo jumbo better than I ever could. In her words, the withdrawing of the memo “is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo…The President’s EO’s on federal funding remain in full force and effect, and will be rigorously” put into action (emphasis not mine).
In other words, the memo was gone, but the policy behind the memo was still in place. All this is why Judge McConnell made the decision that he did. Which brings us to earlier this February, when the states presented evidence to the court that the Trump Administration “in some cases have continued to improperly freeze federal funds and refused to resume disbursement of appropriated federal funds.”
Of course, the Trump Administration lawyers naturally responded that they were “just trying to root out fraud.” Except, as Judge McConnell found, “the freezes in effect now were a result of the broad…order, not a specific finding of possible fraud” (emphasis mine). Hence, Judge McConnell—for good reason—became the first judge ever to accuse the Trump Administration of violating a court order.
Despite that, Rep. Clyde has drafted up articles suggesting that this judge is worthy of impeachment. Rep. Clyde, by the way, is the same man who compared the January 6 insurrection to “a normal tourist visit” just a few months after it happened. This is also the same man who supports a president who pardoned January 6 “rioters” accused of seditious conspiracy. Like Stewart Rhodes of the Oath Keepers (a far-right militia founded in 2009) and Enrique Tarrio of the Proud Boys (“stand back and stand by!”).
Again, in normal times, a federal judge can only be impeached if they face accusations of “treason, bribery, and other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Yet Elon Musk is calling for “an immediate wave of judicial impeachments” to target people like Judge McConnell (emphasis mine).
I wonder why. Though perhaps you already know.