Elon Musk has taken to attributing any decision that goes against the wishes of the Trump administration to being part of a “judicial coup,” and he’s already putting money behind Congressional candidates who also find the concept of checks and balances to be distasteful. According to the New York Times, Musk has already made the maximum individual donation to seven Republican Congressional candidates who have shown a willingness to support impeaching or punishing judges.
Per the Times, the candidates who have found a $6,600 check made out to them from the bank account of Elon Musk include: Representatives Eli Crane of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Andy Ogles of Tennessee, Andrew Clyde of Georgia, Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin and Brandon Gill of Texas. He also gave to Senator Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa.
Grassley and Boebert are probably the most familiar characters on the list, but Brandon Gill is a name to watch here. He’s just 31 years old and serving his first term in Congress, and he’s made it clear he’s going to try to make a name for himself while he’s there. Also his father-in-law is Dinesh D’Souza, so he’s got grifting in his family. Gill filed Articles of Impeachment this week against James Boasberg, the federal judge who blocked the Trump administration’s attempts to deport immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
Gill isn’t the only one to get the Musk Bump for their willingness to attempt to upend the judiciary for issuing rulings they don’t like. Arizona’s Eli Crane and Wisconsin’s Van Orden led a call to impeach District Judge Paul Engelmayer of the Southern District of New York (which is notably not in Arizona nor Wisconsin) for his decision to pump the brakes on some of the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency.
Ogles, meanwhile, has not only filed Articles of Impeachment against a judge (his target: District Judge John Bates, who ruled the Trump administration would have to restore deleted webpages related to LGBTQ health issues) but has also decided to lead his own end-run around the law. He also proposed an amendment to the constitution that would allow Donald Trump to run for a third term.
Musk’s donations, which are pretty small in the scheme of things, serve as a signal for what his likely causes will be in the coming election cycles. Musk is actively gutting the bureaucracy that he claims is somehow getting in the way of democracy, but he can’t single-handedly gut the judiciary to get rid of the umpires who keep calling strikes when he wants them to call balls. Instead, he’ll need to stack the deck in Congress to pull that off.
Funnily enough, Musk doesn’t even seem to know what his goal is: he posted “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people,” But it is the House that impeaches. The Senate convicts and that requires a two-thirds majority, which means it would take 67 senators. But let’s be fair, civics isn’t really Musk’s interest here. Getting his way is.
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