Problems with rulings? Ron DeSantis suggests eliminating Judges

TALLAHASSEE, FLA. 3/4/25-Gov. Ron DeSantis gives the State of the State address during the opening day of the 2025 Legislative Session, Tuesday at the Capitol in Tallahassee. COLIN HACKLEY PHOTO

Gov. Ron DeSantis has a solution for Judges that make rulings counter to the Donald Trump administration on immigration: Find another job.

DeSantis suggests that Judges like U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, who ruled that a recent deportation of alleged Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador was illegal even as the Trump administration said the flight was in the air already, can have their jurisdiction stripped from immigration cases.

“When Thomas Jefferson became President, they’d have problems with Judges. They just eliminated these judgeships that they had problems with,” DeSantis said during a discussion at New College.

“Other than the Supreme Court, none of the other courts even exist as a matter of constitutional right. That’s purely the discretion of Congress to create and then set the jurisdiction.”

These comments followed up on an X post the day before.

“Congress has the authority to strip jurisdiction of the federal courts to decide these cases in the first place. The sabotaging of President Trump’s agenda by ‘resistance’ judges was predictable — why no jurisdiction-stripping bills teed up at the onset of this Congress?” DeSantis wrote Wednesday.

DeSantis has suspended State Attorneys for failure to enforce state law as his administration interprets it, so his aggressive solution is in keeping with how DeSantis handles his current role.

Trump believes the Judge should be impeached.

Boasberg is a former Yale athlete like DeSantis, playing varsity basketball. A Skull and Bones member, he was appointed to judgeships by former President George W. Bush (who belonged to that elite secret society) and Barack Obama (who did not).

DeSantis has been critical of judicial rulings throughout Trump’s second term, and for much longer has complained that federal Judges lean too far left.

He said earlier this month that a 5-4 SCOTUS decision siding with a lower court Judge objecting to Trump’s desire to stop USAID foreign aid was a “missed … huge opportunity to put a stop to rogue district courts interfering with executive branch operations.”

During his remarks Thursday, DeSantis reprised familiar complaints about how the court isn’t far right enough for him.

“The three liberal Justices, they’re always going to be against no matter what. And then of the six others, you know, a lot of them aren’t reliable,” he said, citing Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito as exceptions.

DeSantis’ critiques have extended to all Trump appointees. The Governor went after Brett Kavanaugh, who, after his confirmation, opted to “go left,” and Neil Gorsuch, who DeSantis said was even worse.

He also included Amy Coney Barrett in the mix, telling Hugh Hewitt that while he respects “the three appointees he did … none of those three are at the same level” as Alito and Thomas.

DeSantis is also lukewarm on the Chief Justice, he said when running for President.

“If you replace a Clarence Thomas with somebody like a John Roberts or somebody like that, then you’re going to actually see the court move to the left, and you can’t do that,” DeSantis said.

As a presidential candidate, he said he expected the next President to be able to replace up to four Justices and create a path to a “7-2” conservative majority.