The deep state and its allies have launched a torrent of lawsuits, teaming up with activist judges to try to tie President Donald Trump’s hands on policy, and when the chief justice of the Supreme Court finally intervened, he did so on behalf of the lawless aggressors.
Make no mistake: he sided with the revolt from within, the woke bureaucrats and their close allies in leftist groups who have weaponized the legal system against the people’s elected president, Donald Trump.
Why?
John Roberts is an institutionalist’s institutionalist. He seems not to have a populist bone in his body, and that has blinded him to the true injustice of the situation.
What Happened?
When woke bureaucrats stared down the barrel of a second Trump term, they strategized about how best to tie the new president’s hands. Public-sector unions made new collective bargaining agreements to protect work-from-home perks. Employees changed their titles to hide “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” Perhaps most importantly, bureaucrats and their allies outside the administration geared up to sue the Trump administration, targeting friendly judges.
Sure enough, the ink was barely dry on the president’s executive orders rooting woke ideology out of the government before public-sector unions (which represent federal bureaucrats) and leftist groups had taken the new administration to court. They also hand-picked jurisdictions with judges more likely to give them the injunctions they seek.
Many of the unions and leftist groups filing these lawsuits also staffed and advised the Biden administration, as I expose in my book, “The Woketopus: The Dark Money Cabal Manipulating the Federal Government.” The ACLU, for instance, pushed the Biden administration to open the border, and now the ACLU is filing lawsuits to block Trump’s border policies.
The judges—many of them appointed by Democrats, surprise surprise!—have taken the opportunity to issue “nationwide injunctions.” While temporary injunctions allow a judge to protect one of the parties in a case from harm while the court considers the case, judges have weaponized this power, claiming to protect people across the country who aren’t parties to the suit.
Just this week, judges blocked Trump’s order removing gender ideology from the military and the State Department’s move to restructure the U.S. Agency for International Development. Judges also ordered the administration to halt its freeze on federal spending, to restore deleted websites, and more.
Such moves arguably represent a grotesque abuse of the judicial power granted in Article III of the Constitution—orchestrated by woke activists and their deep state allies.
The Tren de Aragua Case
None of these judicial attacks on Trump’s authority inspired so much as a peep from John Roberts.
That changed Tuesday, however.
Over the weekend, James Boasberg, a Washington, D.C., district court judge, presumed to order the administration to return flights carrying alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Trump had invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to fast-track the removals. The act gives Trump authority in case of an attempted, ongoing, or threatened “invasion or predatory incursion” from a “foreign nation or government.” Trump cited Tren de Aragua’s ties to the government of Venezuela and gang members’ crossing into the U.S. as justification.
The Left orchestrated a judicial coup against the policy.
The ACLU filed a lawsuit opposing the flights. Boasberg issued an emergency order Saturday, blocking the flights for 14 days while he considered the case.
“Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” the judge stated, according to The New York Times. “This is something you need to make sure is complied with immediately.”
He issued his order verbally before putting it in writing. The Justice Department has insisted that the flights, which arrived in El Salvador after the judge’s order, did not violate the order because they had already left the U.S. by the time he issued the written version. Critics say the administration should have returned the flights or prevented them from taking off after Boasberg gave his verbal order.
Trump’s Response
Trump has pledged to comply with the judges’ orders, though he has rightly contested them in court.
He responded angrily Tuesday to Boasberg’s order, however. The president noted that he won the 2024 presidential election in part by promising to oppose illegal immigration.
“I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do,” Trump wrote. “This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!”
Only at this point did Chief Justice Roberts get involved. He released a rare statement to the press, chiding Trump.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
This may not seem like a big deal, but the Supreme Court almost never weighs in on news, so it sent shock waves across Washington.
Out to Lunch
To call this response tone deaf would be an understatement.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., one of the lawmakers who has introduced articles of impeachment against these judges, put it well.
“This isn’t a disagreement concerning a judicial decision — this is a full-on, broad-based effort of radical judges to stop President Trump and the mandate he received from the American people to carry out his agenda,” Crane said.
The problem isn’t that one judge happened to rule in a way Trump didn’t like. Instead, the president is facing a deep state judicial insurrection that is actively seeking to remove his rightful authority. Rather than stepping in to address the real problem, Roberts carried water for the judicial insurrection.
Why?
Roberts has chided Trump before. In 2018, when Trump denounced a judge who ruled against one of his immigration policies as an “Obama judge,” Roberts issued another rare public statement.
“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” he said. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
The judiciary should be unbiased. Statues of Lady Justice wear a blindfold because true justice does not “pay respect to persons,” i.e. resolve disputes based on riches or popularity rather than the merits of a case.
Yet the public-sector unions and leftist groups suing Trump know how to use the system to their advantage, and the judges in many of these cases aren’t playing fair.
To be fair, Roberts often takes conservative positions on important issues, and he has defended Trump’s rightful authority in the past. He wrote the opinion in the case granting Trump legal immunity for official acts he took as president, and he wrote the opinion in Loper Bright v. Raimondo (2024), a pivotal case that enables Americans to challenge administrative agencies in court.
Roberts is still a conservative, but his preference for institutions and the status quo have blinded him to the needs of the moment. For instance, he refused to join the court’s majority in striking down the abortion precedent Roe v. Wade, focusing on a technicality.
Like Anthony Fauci before him, Roberts sees Trump as a threat to his sacred institution, rather than the corrective to corruption within that institution. Trump may not always be right, but Roberts is missing the forest for the trees.
When it comes to the judicial insurrection, Roberts should get his own house in order before he blames Trump.
It may be right to criticize someone who yells “fire” in a crowded theater when there is no fire. In this case, however, not only is the blaze very real, but it’s licking at the robes of the chief justice himself. Rather than dousing the flames, he’s using a megaphone to shout down the man who raised the alarm—all in the name of decorum.
Woe to those who cry, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.
