Progressive Democrat Lisa McCormick today condemned House Speaker Mike Johnson and congressional Republicans for their brazen attacks on the federal judiciary, calling their threats to defund courts, impeach judges, and dismantle judicial districts a “cowardly assault on the Constitution.”
“Mike Johnson is a very desperate man leading a very corrupt party,” said McCormick. “Instead of holding Donald Trump accountable for his relentless criminality, Republicans are threatening the one branch of government that is actually doing its job by restraining a lawless president.”
McCormick’s fiery statement comes after Johnson declared, “desperate times call for desperate measures,” while openly musing about using Congress’s power to slash court funding and eliminate judicial districts in retaliation for rulings against Trump’s executive abuses.
“The problem is not that judges are restraining Trump—the problem is that Trump keeps breaking the law,” McCormick said. “Sixty-seven percent of injunctions against a president in the last century have been against Donald Trump. Maybe Johnson should calculate the percentage of presidents who were indicted four times, impeached twice, and convicted by a jury before whining about ‘judicial overreach.’”
She noted that Trump could halt the injunctions by simply not violating the Constitution—but instead, his Republican enablers are trying to bully the judiciary into submission.
“This is not patriotism—it’s plutocracy,” McCormick said. “Elon Musk is bankrolling impeachment efforts against judges, Trump calls them ‘lunatics,’ and now Johnson is waving the funding axe like a mob boss threatening a witness. These people don’t believe in democracy—they believe in dictatorship.”
McCormick slammed the GOP’s hypocrisy, pointing out that Congress has the power of the purse—yet Republicans are letting Trump and Musk loot federal agencies instead of defending them.
“Agencies created by law must not be eradicated by one man abusing the presidency,” she said. “Funds authorized by Congress may not be pocketed by any president. Instead of cheering for Trump’s crimes, Republicans should be defending the institutions they swore to uphold.”
She warned that the GOP’s escalating war on the courts is unfounded because judges are not overstepping, while no modern president has so flagrantly defied legal and constitutional limits.
“What’s truly unprecedented is Trump’s lawlessness, his violations of the Constitution, and the spinelessness of Republicans who pretend he’s not entirely wrong,” McCormick said. “If Johnson really believes in ‘desperate measures,’ he should try enforcing the law instead of dismantling the courts that dare to uphold it.”
McCormick called on Americans to reject the GOP’s authoritarian power grab, declaring: “We didn’t vote for the destruction of the federal government. We voted for justice—and if Republicans won’t deliver it, the judiciary will.”