Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Wednesday that Democrats should keep their impeachment options open when they take control of Congress, accusing the Supreme Court of shielding President Donald Trump from accountability.
She brought up the justices when CNN’s Manu Raju asked whether Democrats would try to impeach Trump.
The New York Democrat said the court had “legalized a lot of his criminality” and referred to impeachment as she discussed the court.
She gave no names of justices she would seek to impeach and announced no plan to bring articles against them.
In her answer, she also said impeachment in the Republican majority at the time had been “pointing at the Supreme Court” without specifying which action she meant.
AOC just admitted the Democrats' entire agenda for their new majority: endless LAWFARE.
She says there are so many targets, “it’s hard to figure out the order of operations!”
They campaigned on affordability, but all they care about is attacking Trump’s allies.
Voters will… pic.twitter.com/JmM5HOHaHk— Ryan Fournier (@RyanAFournier) November 11, 2026
Ocasio-Cortez gave no timetable for any impeachment effort. She closed by saying that “all options are on the table” for Democrats.
The interview came a week after Democrats won control of the House and Senate in the midterm elections.
Raju also asked whether the incoming Congress would impeach Pete Hegseth after Republicans turned back an effort introduced by Kentucky Republican Rep. Thomas Massie.
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Ocasio-Cortez declined to put Hegseth first in line for impeachment. She predicted multiple investigations and said she expected subpoenas.
The congresswoman accused members of the administration of criminal conduct and said it was difficult to say whom Democrats should scrutinize first.
She said lawmakers would “have to follow wherever the evidence takes us” before deciding how to proceed.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, linked the case for impeaching Hegseth to affordability, corruption and constitutional rights in a separate exchange with Raju.
She accused him of taking the country into “an unconstitutional war” as defense secretary.
House Minority Leader-elect Jim Jordan predicted that Democrats would try to impeach Trump a third time and would use committees across the House to investigate Cabinet officials and people outside government.
The Ohio Republican pointed to the Hegseth effort as an example of what he expected to see in the next Congress.
Jordan also accused Democrats of sending hundreds of letters to people inside and outside government.
He cited a Justice Department letter that, in his account, warned that inquiries must have a legislative purpose and cannot be used for political harassment.
The Republican leader argued that Democrats had yet to identify such a purpose. He pledged that Republicans would challenge the inquiries in committee.
In laying out how Republicans would respond, the Ohio congressman said he expected the disputes to play out in every committee rather than in a single impeachment inquiry.
On Thursday, Jordan repeated his impeachment prediction in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity. He argued that the investigations would extend beyond the administration.
He named Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as people Democrats could target if they thought either would become the Republican presidential nominee in 2028.
Jordan portrayed the anticipated inquiries as attempts to go after political opponents.
The Ohio congressman said Republicans would keep their members present for key votes during the lame-duck session while they still held the majority.
He cited the 11 Democrats who were absent for the Hegseth vote and credited Republican attendance with defeating the effort.
He said the party wanted to advance legislation before the change in control.
He also pledged to challenge investigations he described as lawfare and said Republicans would focus on American families.
In separate remarks Thursday, Justice Samuel Alito warned that Congress could use its control over funding to interfere with the Supreme Court.
He spoke at the Federalist Society’s Antonin Scalia Memorial Dinner to an audience of more than 1,000 conservative lawyers.
In his description of Congress’s leverage, lawmakers could “turn off the lights at the Supreme Court” by cutting off funding.
He argued that preserving judicial independence was essential to keeping the constitutional system adopted in 1789 intact.
The justice did not mention the election results or the coming change in congressional control.
Democrats have previously considered using funding as leverage over the court, which has a conservative majority.
Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett visited Capitol Hill over the summer to press for the judiciary’s budget and additional security funding. Their visit came amid increased threats.
Alito called the judiciary the least powerful of the three branches and described it as “vulnerable” to both Congress and the executive.
He likened the difference in power to that between a hand grenade, a 500-pound bomb and a nuclear weapon, while cautioning that even the least dangerous of the three could still do harm.
That vulnerability, in his account, coexists with the ability of judges to overreach.
He criticized some lower court orders blocking presidential policies in recent years as “unjustified” and argued that some judges had abused their authority.
“They are dedicated and they are skillful, but they’re not perfect and they make mistakes,” Alito said of the lower court judges.
The dinner is named for the late Justice Antonin Scalia and takes place during the Federalist Society’s November convention.
Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett appeared together at the dinner last year, following an appearance by Neil Gorsuch and Stephen Breyer the year before.
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