
California judge who blocked Trump National Guard order hit with impeachment resolution
Rep. Randy Fine, R-La., is filing a resolution to remove U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer from the bench on Friday.
He told Fox News Digital that he felt the judge's decision was "political."
"The goal is to get judges to do their jobs. If we're not going to try to hold accountable the ones that aren't, then they have no incentive to stop," Fine said.
It comes as Republicans continue to push back on Democratic officials trying to block Trump's crackdown on illegal immigration throughout the country.
The days-long riots in Los Angeles were spurred by ICE raids in Hispanic and Latino neighborhoods, leading to activists clashing with law enforcement and burning cars as a sign of resistance.
Trump, accusing California's progressive officials of not doing enough to stop the situation, bypassed Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom to order the National Guard into Los Angeles to restore order.
Critics of the move said it needlessly escalated an already tense situation, and accused Trump and his allies of exaggerating the violence.
Breyer issued a temporary order blocking Trump's deployment of federal troops earlier this month, however, in response to a lawsuit brought by California.
"At this early stage of the proceedings, the Court must determine whether the President followed the congressionally mandated procedure for his actions. He did not," the court opinion said.
"His actions were illegal—both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. He must therefore return control of the California National Guard to the Governor of the State of California forthwith."
Breyer's ruling was quashed last week when a three-judge panel on the San Francisco-based 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it was within Trump's authority to federalize the California National Guard.
Breyer is just the latest judge to be brought under House GOP scrutiny after several Trump executive actions got held up in court.
Trump allies have called for the impeachment of multiple judges, though House GOP leadership has made clear there's little appetite to follow through on such moves – particularly when removal by the Senate is unlikely.
Fine acknowledged the long odds but insisted the resolution was a potent messaging tool.
"I think it's worth doing. I don't know that we can pass it, I don't know that the Senate would remove him from office, but I think failing to avail ourselves of the remedies that the framers intended was a mistake," Fine said.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


The Verge
31 minutes ago
- The Verge
Something everyone can hate.
Posted Jul 4, 2025 at 8:20 AM UTC Something everyone can hate. Elon Musk's embrace of acronyms like MAGA and DOGE has alienated the left, while his commitment to clean energy and EVs continues to enrage the entrenched oil and gas interests of the Trumpian right. Is anyone left to appreciate Tesla's massive new off-grid Supercharger?
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US Supreme Court to weigh transgender athlete bans
The US Supreme Court agreed on Thursday to wade into the hot-button issue of transgender athletes in girls and women's sports. The court said it would hear cases next term challenging state laws in Idaho and West Virginia banning transgender athletes from female competition. More than two dozen US states have passed laws in recent years barring athletes who were assigned male at birth from taking part in girls or women's sports. The conservative-dominated Supreme Court's decision to hear the cases comes two weeks after it upheld a Tennessee law banning gender-affirming medical treatment for transgender minors. The Supreme Court also recently backed a move by President Donald Trump, who campaigned on the issue of transgender athletes, to have transgender troops dismissed from the military. Trump issued an executive order in February aimed at banning transgender athletes from girls and women's sports. "From now on women's sports will be only for women," Trump said. "With this executive order the war on women's sports is over." The executive order allows federal agencies to deny funding to schools that allow transgender athletes to compete on girls or women's teams. In a high-profile case, the University of Pennsylvania agreed this week to ban transgender athletes from its women's sports teams, settling a federal civil rights complaint stemming from the furor around swimmer Lia Thomas. The Department of Education said that UPenn had entered into a resolution agreement vowing to comply with Title IX, the federal law which prohibits sex-based discrimination in any educational program. It follows an investigation by the department's Office for Civil Rights which found the university had violated Title IX by allowing transgender swimmer Thomas to compete in women's competitions. Thomas became a lightning rod around the debate over transgender athletes in women's sport after competing in female collegiate competitions in 2022. She had earlier swum on UPenn's men's team while undergoing hormone replacement therapy. Critics and some fellow swimmers said she should not have been allowed to compete against women due to an unfair physiological advantage. - 'Discriminatory laws' - The Idaho case accepted by the Supreme Court stems from the Republican-led state's 2020 "Fairness in Women's Sports Act." It was challenged by a transgender athlete at an Idaho university and lower courts ruled that it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution. West Virginia's 2021 ban on transgender athletes was challenged by a middle school student who was not allowed to compete for the girls' track team. An appeals court ruled that the ban was a violation of Title IX. "We believe the lower courts were right to block these discriminatory laws, and we will continue to defend the freedom of all kids to play," Joshua Block, a senior counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. "Like any other educational program, school athletic programs should be accessible for everyone regardless of their sex or transgender status," Block said. The Supreme Court will hear the cases during the term beginning in October and issue a ruling next year. cl/bgs
Yahoo
32 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Freed from US jail, Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil seizes his new public platform
By Jonathan Allen NEW YORK (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump's fight with elite American universities was only a few days old when federal immigration agents arrested the Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil at his Columbia University apartment building in New York in March. Over the more than three months he was held at a jail for immigrants in rural Louisiana, the Trump administration escalated its battle. It arrested other foreign pro-Palestinian students and revoked billions of dollars in research grants to Columbia, Harvard and other private schools whose campuses were roiled by the pro-Palestinian student protest movement, in which Khalil was a prominent figure. "I absolutely don't regret standing up against a genocide," Khalil, 30, said in an interview at his Manhattan apartment, less than two weeks after U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz ordered him released on bail while he challenges the effort to revoke his U.S. lawful permanent residency green card and deport him. "I don't regret standing up for what's right, which is opposing war, which is calling for the end of violence." He believes the government is trying to silence him, but has instead given him a bigger platform. Returning to New York after his release, Khalil was welcomed at the airport by U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a political foe of Trump; supporters waved Palestinian flags as he reunited with his wife and infant son, whose birth he missed in jail. Two days later, he was the star of a rally on the steps of a cathedral near Columbia's Manhattan campus, castigating the university's leaders. Last week, he appeared before cheering crowds alongside Zohran Mamdani, the pro-Palestinian state lawmaker who won June's Democratic primary ahead of New York City's 2025 mayoral election. "I did not choose to be in this position: ICE did," Khalil said, referring to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who arrested him. "And this of course had a great impact on my life. I'm still, honestly, trying to contemplate my new reality." He missed his May graduation ceremony and emerged from jail unemployed. An international charity withdrew its offer of a job as a policy adviser, he said. The government could win its appeal and jail him again, so Khalil said his priority is spending as much time as possible with his son and wife, a dentist. Khalil was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria; his wife, Dr. Noor Abdalla, is a U.S. citizen and he became a U.S. lawful permanent resident last year. Moving to New York in 2022 as a graduate student, he became one of the main student negotiators between Columbia's administration and the protesters, who set up tent encampments on a campus lawn as they demanded that Columbia end investments of its $14 billion endowment in weapons makers and other companies supporting Israel's military. Khalil is not charged with any crime, but the U.S. government has invoked an obscure immigration statute to argue that Khalil and several other international pro-Palestinian students must be deported because their "otherwise lawful" speech could harm U.S. foreign policy interests. The federal judge overseeing the case has ruled that the Trump administration's main rationale for deporting Khalil is likely an unconstitutional violation of free-speech rights. The government is appealing. "This is not about 'free speech,'" Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, wrote in response to queries, "this is about individuals who don't have a right to be in the United States siding with Hamas terrorists and organizing group protests that made college campuses unsafe and harassed Jewish students." URGES UNIVERSITIES TO HEED THEIR STUDENTS Khalil, in the interview, condemned antisemitism and called Jewish students an "integral part" of the protest movement. He said the government was using antisemitism as a pretext to reshape American higher education, which Trump, a Republican, has said is captured by anti-American, Marxist and "radical left" ideologies. The Trump administration has told Columbia and other universities that federal grant money, mostly for biomedical research, will not be restored unless the government has greater oversight of who they admit and hire and what they teach, calling for greater "intellectual diversity." Unlike Harvard, Columbia has not challenged the legality of the government's sudden grant revocations, and agreed to at least some of the Trump administration's demands to tighten rules around protests as a precondition of negotiations over resuming funding. Khalil called Columbia's response heartbreaking. "Columbia basically gave the institution to the Trump administration, let the administration intervene in every single detail on how higher education institutions should be run," he said. Columbia's administration has said preserving the university's academic autonomy is a "red line" as negotiations continue. Virginia Lam Abrams, a Columbia spokesperson, said university leaders "strongly dispute" Khalil's characterization. "Columbia University recognizes the right for students, including Mr. Khalil, to speak out on issues that they deeply believe in," she said in a statement. "But it is also critical for the University to uphold its rules and policies to ensure that every member of our community can participate in a campus community free from discrimination and harassment.' Khalil urged Columbia and other universities targeted by Trump to heed their students. "The students presented a clear plan on how this campus can follow human rights, can follow international law, can be inclusive to all students, where everyone feels equal regardless of where they stand on issues," he said. "They prefer to capitulate to political pressure rather than listening to the students."