A group of U.S. senators led by Missouri’s Eric Schmitt is calling out the American Bar Association for its blatant left-wing bias, and is promising to disregard its opinions on legislation and judicial nominees.

The six senators’ March 7 letter to the ABA comes after the association issued a statement March 3 bitterly opposing Trump administration talk of impeaching judges who block the president from restructuring and downsizing the executive branch.

Elon Musk, in particular, has noted the frightening nature of judges looking over the president’s shoulder in managing the executive branch, which raises questions about the separation of powers in the Constitution.

The ABA doesn’t see it that way, and is asking every lawyer in the country to rise up against the Trump administration.

“We call upon the entire profession, including lawyers who serve in elected positions, to speak out against intimidation,” the ABA statement reads.

The ABA statement cites what it calls the “four major principles of law that have guided our country for over 200 years: Defending Judges and Courts, Acknowledging the Role of the Courts, Adhering to the Rule of Law, and Respecting the Separation of Powers and the three co-equal branches of government with distinct duties and responsibilities.”

What the ABA statement doesn’t address is the fact that conservatives believe having trial court judges second-guess and even block a president’s personnel and policy moves violates the separation of powers and the role of the courts.

Moreover, the statement seems to suggest judges and courts are inviolate and should be defended no matter what.

“We write to express our disappointment with your recent statements on ‘the rule of law’ and ‘the legal profession,’” the senators’ letter reads. “Both lead us to conclude the American Bar Association (ABA) is a biased and ideologically captured institution.

“We call on our Senate colleagues to disregard the ABA’s recommendations, as well as ratings of judicial nominees and pending legislation. We also call upon President Trump and the Department of Justice to remove the ABA from the judicial nomination process entirely.”

The letter is signed by Sens. Schmitt; Mike Lee, R-Utah; Josh Hawley, R-Missouri; Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tennessee; and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio.

The letter notes the ABA’s statement on “the rule of law” came only after Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) – and that the ABA was a recipient of some of those funds.

“The ABA claims it ‘stands committed to its mission of defending liberty and pursuing justice.’ It does so by explicitly decrying the dismantling of USAID, though it provides no legal argument as to why such dismantling is illegal.

“The ABA further fails to disclose that the ABA has received millions of dollars in funding from USAID. It is questionable whether the ABA is committed to defending liberty or its own sources of funding. …

“Unfortunately, the ABA has shown itself to be an ideologically captured, leftist institution, as many warned in the first Trump Administration. It is a failed institution that is incapable of impartially rating nominees and making legislative recommendations.

“As such, we will not consider any ABA recommendations on pending legislation or nominees, and we call upon our colleagues to do the same.”

Bar associations dominate the selection of judges in states and counties utilizing what is known as the Missouri Plan. In Missouri itself, the Missouri Bar Association chooses up to three nominees that the governor has no choice but to appoint from to fill a judgeship in much of the state.

The result is a judiciary that is largely much more liberal than either the state’s voters or their elected officials.

It’s a system that needs to go, according to Will Scharf – a recent candidate for Missouri attorney general, and now White House staff secretary to President Trump.

“We have three branches of government in this state,” Scharf said in an exclusive interview with The Heartlander last year. “And with respect to one of them, with respect to the courts, we’ve said that for the most important judges we are going to turn over selection of those judges effectively to a cartel, to the Missouri Bar Association – we’re going to give a single profession a privileged position with respect to picking a third of our government.  

“I just don’t think that’s fair, and I think that’s anti-democratic. And I don’t think it makes sense. In practice, things have gone even further off the rails because those bar seats have been monopolized by the trial lawyers for a very long time now. It’s shifted our judiciary far to the left.”

The ABA has taken partisan, far-left positions on such things as abortion and the Second Amendment, Schmitt’s office notes. The ABA also denounced Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), the use of which Schmitt’s office terms a “right to engage in racial discrimination” that the ABA has conferred on bar associations.