Mike Johnson Has Terrifying Threat for Courts That Rule Against Trump

House Speaker Mike Johnson threatened Tuesday to outright eliminate district courts where judges rule against Donald Trump.

During a press conference, Johnson discussed how Congress was “working through” a “natural tension” between the branches of government, as courts across the nation have issued injunctions blocking a series of the Trump administration’s questionable actions.

Most recently, Trump and several members of his administration have attacked U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who on Monday refused to lift his injunction blocking the administration’s expedited deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

Johnson issued a sinister warning that courts that stood against the president could see themselves wiped off the map. 

“We do have authority over the federal courts, as you know. We can, we can eliminate an entire district court. We have power of funding over the courts, and all these other things,” Johnson said. “But, um, desperate times call for desperate measures, and Congress is going to act.”

Johnson later clarified that he was making a point about the “broad authority” of Congress over the “creation, maintenance and the governance” of the courts. Congress eliminated two federal courts as recently as 1982, erecting two others. 

Johnson’s threat is both extreme and unlikely. Passing legislation defunding the courts now would require amazing cooperation among the Republicans’ narrow majority in the House—as well as total unanimity among Senate Republicans, who would need to convince seven Democrats to join them.  

Johnson also said that the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee was looking at alternative legislative moves, including his “favorite,” a bill from Representative Darrell Issa to “limit the scope of federal injunctions.” 

The bill would restrict the ability of federal judges to “abuse the system,” as Johnson put it, by preventing them from imposing nationwide injunctions—though that’s not quite abusing the system so much as using checks and balances the way they were designed. 

Earlier this month, an amendment was added to the bill that would allow broad orders brought by multiple states to stand in some instances, if they were heard and approved by a three-judge district court panel.

The Trump administration is claiming that it’s made billions off its visa “gold card” program—even though the pay-to-play immigration alternative doesn’t exist yet.

Despite centering his campaign and presidency around deporting immigrants—documented or not—and limiting admission into the country, last month, Donald Trump pitched giving rich foreigners a new pathway to citizenship. The initiative, which the president has suggested calling the “Trump card,” would replace the EB-5 visa program.

Speaking with the All In podcast last week, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick claimed that the administration had made $5 billion by selling the EB-5 visa replacement for $5 million a pop.

“Yesterday I sold a thousand,” Lutnick said, saying that the program would launch in a couple of weeks and that Elon Musk was currently working on software to handle applications for the pricy legal papers.

Lutnick explained that American billionaire hedge fund manager John Paulson was the brains behind the visa replacement, sharing the details of the “gold card” with Trump over the phone. Since the card does not actually exist yet, Lutnick’s claim (if true) means that people are willing to pay Trump $5 million a pop for little more than a promise.

But Lutnick’s blank explanation for the gold card came with a casual, dual warning for green card recipients.

“If you have a green card, which used to be a green card now a go-card, you’re a permanent resident of America. You can be a citizen, but you don’t have to be, and none of them are going to choose to be,” Lutnick said, completely fabricating the last point.

“They have the right to be an American, as long as they’re good people, and they’re vetted,” he said. “We can always take it away if they’re evil or mean or bad or something.”

Some green card holders, including Columbia graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, have already been forcibly detained and had their green cards canceled by the Department of Homeland Security after they dared to protest the actions of the U.S. government. Others, like 21-year-old Yunseo Chung, are still evading ICE’s deportation efforts despite being legal permanent residents.

“The idea is, if I was not American, and I lived in any other country, I would buy six—one for me, one for my wife, one for my four kids—because God forbid something happens, I want to be able to go to America and I want to have the right to go to the airport to go to America,” Lutnick said of the gold card, plainly restricting the terms that used to be available to all refugees seeking shelter in the U.S. to just the ultrawealthy denizens of the world. “I don’t want to hear that I can’t come here when there’s a horrible war, a horrible whatever.”

Critics of Trump’s “gold card” program have claimed that the new visa is yet another sign that Trump is willing to sell American democracy to the “highest bidder” and would allow America’s longtime adversaries—including Russian oligarchs—to effectively buy their way into the country.

The Trump administration plans to freeze millions of dollars in grants to family planning organizations in order to investigate whether the money went to diversity initiatives.

The Wall Street Journal reports that $120 million in funds set to go to organizations like Planned Parenthood this year is on hold, citing unnamed sources. Pregnancy testing, providing contraception, treating sexually transmitted infections, and infertility evaluation and counseling are among the services threatened by the freeze.

The Department of Health and Human Services is reviewing recipients of the grants to comply with President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting the funding of anything related to diversity, equity, and inclusion, a spokesperson for the agency said. The funds are distributed under HHS’s Title X program, and $120 million amounts to about half of the funds available to the program for this year.

Under the program, about four million people receive free or reduced services at a network of about 4,000 clinics. Planned Parenthood clinics in about a dozen states would have received $20 million under the program. HHS could fully rescind those grants or redistribute them.

“The Trump-Vance-Musk administration wants to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers by any means necessary, and they’ll end people’s access to birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing and treatment, and more to do it,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, told the Journal.

Conservatives have long fought to defund Planned Parenthood due to its abortion advocacy, despite no federal funds being used for the health procedure given that federal law already prohibits taxpayer funds from going to abortions. Vice President JD Vance said during the 2024 presidential campaign that Trump would halt funding for the organization if elected, and it looks like this is an early attempt to begin that process.

The Trump administration’s deny, deny, deny tactic to brush off its Signal chat scandal about airstriking another country is starting to make its own officials look wildly uninformed.

Members of Trump’s Cabinet accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, to a Signal chat regarding sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month.

And during a prescheduled Senate hearing Tuesday to discuss national security threats, National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard’s repeated efforts to shirk the classified label only made the intelligence leader appear increasingly uninformed or blind to the core principles of her job.

Senator Angus King torched Gabbard for conducting such sensitive business on an unofficial channel via a private company, strongly disagreeing with the national intelligence leader’s definition of classified information.

“Secretary Hegseth put into this group text a detailed operation plan, including targets, the weapons we were going to be using, attack sequences, and timing, and yet you’ve testified that nothing in that chain was classified. Wouldn’t that be classified?” asked King, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. “What if that had been made public that morning, before the attack took place?”

But Gabbard opted to dodge the question.

“Senator, I can attest to the fact there were no classified or intelligence equities that were included in that chat at any time,” Gabbard said.

“So the attack sequencing, and timing, and weapons, and targets, you don’t consider should have been classified?” King pressed.

“I defer to the secretary of defense and the National Security Council,” Gabbard answered.

“Well, you’re the head of the intelligence community,” King scoffed. “You’re supposed to know about classifications.”

King then argued that if the information is not classified, the entire text thread should be released to the American public so that they could draw their own conclusions about the Trump administration’s behavior.

In another heated exchange with Senator Mark Kelly, Gabbard refused to say that details regarding a potential strike on another country would constitute classified information. Instead, CIA Director John Ratcliffe threw Gabbard under the bus, capitulating that a “pre-decisional strike deliberation” should be conducted through “classified channels.”

Continuing to deny that the chat ever took place—or that a journalist that Trump officials have derided as “deceitful and highly discredited” was accidentally sent sensitive details—won’t do the administration any good. A spokesperson for the National Security Council, Brian Hughes, already confirmed to Goldberg that the chat was real.

The monumental slipup was a horrific omen for U.S. national security, whose weakest link is apparently a crew of Cabinet members who can’t accomplish the basic due diligence of double-checking who they’re adding to a group chat hosted by a private company.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe flailed Tuesday when asked one simple question about the Trump administration’s major national security scandal.

During a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, Ratcliffe and other intelligence officials faced tough questions about a Signal chat Cabinet members used to discuss sensitive details of a plan to bomb Houthis in Yemen earlier this month—which accidentally included The Atlantic’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg.

Unlike the more reticent Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Ratcliffe dove straight off a sinking ship and readily admitted to participating in the group chat. He insisted that the CIA was permitted to use Signal.

But Ratcliffe crumbled when asked a straightforward question by Senator Jon Ossoff.

“Director Ratcliffe, this was a huge mistake, correct?” the Georgia Democrat asked.

There was a silence before Ratcliffe responded, shaking his head. “No,” he said.

There was another long silence in the chamber as Ratcliffe’s answer started to sink in. It seemed Ratcliffe wanted so badly not to be in trouble that, somehow, including a journalist in sensitive discussions of strike plans wasn’t even a mistake? At once, Ossoff continued, and Ratcliffe attempted to make sense of his unbelievably poor response.

“A national political rep—no, no you hold on,” Ossoff said, over Ratcliffe’s pleas of, “Hold on, let me answer!”

“No, no Director Ratcliffe, I asked a simple yes or no question, and now you hold on,” Ossoff said. “A national political reporter was made privy to sensitive information about imminent military operations against a foreign terrorist organization, and that wasn’t a huge mistake? That wasn’t a huge mistake?”

As Ossoff spoke, Ratcliffe continued to limply defend himself. “You can characterize it how you want,” Ratcliffe said of the “inadvertent mistake of adding a reporter.”

“I think that they characterized it as a mistake,” Ratcliffe finally said, defeated.

“This is an embarrassment. This is utterly unprofessional. There’s been no apology. There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error. And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain, and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content,” Ossoff said.

During Thursday’s hearing, Gabbard insisted that there had been no classified information sent in the group chat, though Goldberg reported that there had been information that, if “read by an adversary of the United States, could conceivably have been used to harm American military and intelligence personnel, particularly in the broader Middle East, Central Command’s area of responsibility.”