By TOM HALS Reuters
Share this story

Elon Musk and other allies of Donald Trump lashed out at federal judges on Tuesday who have blocked the president’s biggest initiatives, including ending birthright citizenship, in some cases challenging the independence of the judiciary.

Musk took to his X social media platform to attack the judge who ordered U.S. health agencies on Tuesday to temporarily restore websites they took offline in response to an executive order by Trump. The order remains in place while the parties prepare legal briefs for a longer injunction.

ADVERTISING

“We should at least ATTEMPT to fire this junky jurist. The notion of having a judge job for life, no matter how bad the judgments, is ridiculous!” Musk posted to his 217 million X followers. He also posted messages claiming the country was being destroyed a “judicial coup.”

Trump on Tuesday blamed “highly political judges” for slowing his agenda, but later in the day he and Musk met with reporters in the Oval Office and the president said he would abide by court rulings and appeal those that go against him and against Musk’s drive against wasteful spending.

“We want to weed out the corruption. And it seems hard to believe that a judge could say, we don’t want you to do that,” said Trump. “So maybe we have to look at the judges.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration would continue to fight for his voters.

“These unlawful injunctions are a continuation of the weaponization of justice against President Trump,” she said, after an appeals court ruled on Tuesday against the administration’s bid to freeze federal spending.

There is little modern precedent for an administration to ignore court orders and doing so would bring the country close to a constitutional crisis.

Some members of Trump’s Republican Party in Congress, whose appropriations and laws the president was alleged to be violating, defended the courts.

Josh Hawley, a senator from Missouri, said the administration should abide by court rulings, according to ABC News. Hawley is a former attorney general for Missouri and he and his wife were both U.S. Supreme Court clerks.