Eleanor Ross shouldn’t be a federal judge. She exhibited disturbingly poor judgment, lied about it, and blamed her law clerk when she got caught. That’s not someone who should make life-and-death decisions about litigants’ lives, livelihoods, and liberty. The challenge is how to remove her, since federal judges enjoy life tenure during “good behavior” and can only be removed by congressional impeachment, unless they’re pressured by colleagues to step down to avoid further discipline.
Everyone seems to be waiting for someone else to act. Unfortunately, spineless members of Congress immediately hunkered down in their partisan camps. House and Senate Judiciary Democrats refuse to hold judges accountable for anything. They wrongly lionize the judiciary and view judges as a bulwark against autocracy, because judges sometimes rule against Trump administration lawlessness. Leadership — at least those leaders who even knew who Ross is — said the discipline Ross received was sufficient.
On the other side of the aisle, two Georgia House Republicans, Clay Fuller and Andrew Clyde, filed articles of impeachment against Ross. Fuller’s rightly focused on egregious lack of candor, whereas Clyde’s focused on the salacious sexual misconduct. Unfortunately, both misstated the standard for impeachment: it’s not “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but “good behavior.” Ross is clearly no longer exhibiting good behavior. Neither litigants nor the public should have confidence in her ability to...
Foundational Context From 2016 to 2026, leaders from across the ideological spectrum in the United States and Latin America have doubled down on intentionally and consistently spreading false and ...