The Republican backlash against U.S. District Judge Sparkle Sooknanan intensified Monday as Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) announced plans to introduce articles of impeachment over her decision blocking President Donald Trump’s voter citizenship verification database.

Hamadeh said he will introduce the articles on Thursday, accusing the judge, appointed by former President Joe Biden, of exceeding her constitutional authority when she halted the administration’s revised Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, database.

“Judge Sparkle L. Sooknanan’s egregious overreaching ruling blocking President Trump’s common-sense effort to verify the citizenship of those who want to vote in our elections was the final straw,” Hamadeh wrote Monday on his congressional X account.

“It was a blatant and unlawful subversion of the President’s executive authority and a direct assault on election integrity,” he added. “On Thursday, Congressman Hamadeh will be introducing articles of impeachment to remove her from the bench and restore the rule of law.”

In a separate post on his personal X account, Hamadeh wrote that Sooknanan’s “power grab against President Trump cannot be tolerated,” accusing “rogue judges” of undermining the rule of law.

Sooknanan has emerged as a prominent judicial adversary of the Trump administration after issuing a ruling last month that blocked the implementation of a modified version of the SAVE database, which combines Department of Homeland Security citizenship records with Social Security Administration data to help states verify voter eligibility.

In her 75-page opinion, Sooknanan concluded the administration likely violated the Privacy Act and Social Security Act by sharing the revised database with states despite concerns over inaccuracies. She found that some eligible voters had already been incorrectly flagged as noncitizens, resulting in canceled voter registrations.

“The federal government has knowingly trampled on the privacy rights of American citizens in a manner that threatens the sacred right to vote,” Sooknanan wrote. “This Court cannot stand idly by while that happens.”

The Trump administration has disputed the ruling, arguing the alleged database inaccuracies do not justify blocking the program, and the Justice Department has signaled its plans to appeal the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

The order issued by Sooknanan matters greatly to Hamadeh’s home state of Arizona. The state’s Republican Senate President Warren Petersen filed an amicus brief to the docket, arguing the judge should grant a stay “because elections are already underway.”

“And the public interest favors maintaining existing election-related processes and systems for States while the appeal proceeds,” the brief argued, pointing to the government’s claim that many “state and local agencies rely on the modified SAVE system to maintain accurate voter-registration lists and verify eligibility for” voting.

The ruling has made Sooknanan a lightning rod among conservatives. Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) questioned her dual-citizenship history following the decision, while Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) renewed her call for a constitutional amendment requiring federal judges, members of Congress, and Senate-confirmed executive branch officials to be natural-born U.S. citizens.

Sooknanan also became the subject of a bar complaint filed last week by the watchdog group Democracy Restored, which accused the judge of dishonesty and conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice during her tenure as a senior DOJ official.

Despite Hamadeh’s pledge, removing Sooknanan from office would face long odds. Even if the Republican-controlled House impeached her by a simple majority — itself far from certain in the closely divided chamber — the effort would almost certainly stall in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is required to convict and remove a federal judge.

Federal judges hold lifetime appointments under Article III of the Constitution and can be removed only through impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate. Only eight federal judges have been removed through that process in the 250 years of U.S. history.