Trump Has Options Against Judicial Overreach
On March 18 President Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge, to which Chief Justice Roberts retorted by urging an appeal instead. Roberts is apparently panicked about the prospect of many impeachments raining down on federal judges based on their shocking decisions.
The recent interference by a federal court in D.C. with President Trump’s deportation of Venezuelan gang members is an egregious overreach by the federal judiciary. Presidents, not judges, are elected to protect national security against a foreign invasion.
Impeachment is not the only option available to Trump and Republicans in Congress to provide a check-and-balance against the federal judiciary as established by our Constitution. Founding Father Alexander Hamilton described the judiciary as the “least dangerous” branch because the other two branches decide what power to give it, and what rulings to enforce.
Congress has defunded the enforcement of improper judicial decisions in the past, and has withdrawn jurisdiction entirely from federal courts over many topics. Why should a federal court even have authority over a decision by a president to deport dangerous illegal aliens?
Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78 that federal judges have “no influence over either the sword or the purse; no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society; and can take no active resolution whatever. It may truly be said to have neither FORCE nor WILL, but merely judgment; and must ultimately depend upon the aid of the executive arm even for the efficacy of its judgments.”
In other words, it is entirely up to President Trump whether and how to enforce a decision by a federal court. It is also entirely up to Congress whether and how to fund federal courts, define the scope of their jurisdiction, and finance the implementation of any judicial decisions.
Yet District Court Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the Trump Administration to provide details by noon on March 18 about the deportation of Venezuelan gang members, including flight information. But the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in response that it would not comply with Judge Boasberg’s demand for more information.
Newly confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi and other DOJ attorneys told Boasberg “there is no justification to order the provision of additional information, and that doing so would be inappropriate” because DOJ feels Boasberg’s “oral statements were not independently enforceable.” Trump’s DOJ has already appealed and stated the government “should not be required to disclose sensitive information bearing on national security and foreign relations until that motion is resolved.”
Trump’s DOJ had requested immediate reassignment to another judge because of his “highly unusual and improper procedures—e.g. certification of a class action involving members of a designated foreign terrorist organization in less than 18 hours with no discovery and no briefing from the Government.”
DOJ’s appeal has gone to the D.C. Circuit, which is dominated by Democrat-appointed judges likely to rule against Trump. From there, it will go to the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the appellate process that Chief Justice Roberts requests be followed.
The Federalist Papers as quoted above are the best source for interpreting the Constitution because its ratification was achieved based on these writings. House Republicans would do well to quote and act on what Alexander Hamilton said about how to curb the federal judiciary.
On March 18 Congressman Brandon Gill (R-TX) immediately filed articles of impeachment against federal Judge Boasberg for interfering with this deportation of Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador. They are reportedly being held in a prison there under a contract with the United States to take illegal aliens.
Impeachment of federal judges was the approach used by President Thomas Jefferson, but it was unsuccessful. President Andrew Jackson adopted a different style of simply declining to enforce a court ruling he considered improper, as Alexander Hamilton envisioned.
The Constitution does not require the executive branch, over which the president presides, to enforce decisions that he feels are improper or unconstitutional. Our Founders intentionally dispersed power among the three branches of government as a safeguard against the judiciary or any other branch of government asserting more power than it should.
President Abraham Lincoln said, “If the opinion of the Supreme court covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the executive and the court, must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution.”
That was Lincoln’s response to the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Dred Scott case that sided with slave owners and denied all rights to blacks. “Each public officer, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others,” Lincoln said while repudiating that horrible decision.
World Realigns Based on Social Issues
The stunning realignment of world powers unfolding before our eyes is largely due to social issues, not economic or geopolitical ones. Europe and NATO are run by liberals who want to embrace the transgender ideology and hold gay pride parades, while Russia has said “nyet” to that while enacting pro-life laws instead.
The liberal hatred of Russia predates the war in Ukraine, and many of the thousand-strong anti-JD Vance protesters who lined narrow snow-covered Vermont roads on March 1 were motivated by social issues. Some waved LGBTQ flags while others were part of transgender activism, both of which Russia prohibits and would exclude from territory it annexes.
In 2020, Russians amended their Constitution to ensure that marriage remains only “the union of a man and a woman,” and in 2022 Russia broadened its ban on “LGBT propaganda” to include adults. Transgender treatment is not allowed in Russia, while transgender adults cannot adopt children.
On November 30, 2023, the Supreme Court of Russia held that the “international public LGBT movement” is “extremist.” Displaying the LGBTQ rainbow flag in Russia can result in fines and imprisonment.
Pandering to liberals’ hatred of Russia’s social policies, Obama refused to attend its Winter Olympics in 2014 and spoke disparagingly of the country. In December 2016 Obama insulted Russia as a “smaller” and “weaker country,” which fails to “produce anything that anybody wants to buy except oil and gas and arms.”
Democrats falsely insisted that Trump’s presidential victory over Hillary Clinton was due to Russia, and Democrats used their fiction to disrupt two years of Trump’s first administration. Ukrainian president Zelensky, who refuses to allow an election to replace him, campaigned in Pennsylvania for Democrat Kamala Harris against Trump last fall.
The Left cannot accept any victory by Russia. When Vice President JD Vance told Zelensky at the White House that his regime is “going around and forcing conscripts to the front lines because you have manpower problems,” Zelensky did not deny it.
Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-IN) is the only member of Congress born in Ukraine. She recently described Zelensky’s government as “worthless,” and observed that “the American people want to see what we’re getting in return” for the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve sent there.
We should stop arming Ukraine to fight for NATO’s liberal social agenda. On March 2, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wisely declared, “If NATO’s moving on without the U.S., we should move on without NATO. Time to leave.”
This echoes what Phyllis Schlafly said against NATO in 2016, when she wrote that NATO repudiates George Washington’s advice “to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world.” Phyllis repeatedly warned against our entanglement through NATO in foreign wars in 1996, 1998, and 1999, during the wars of NATO aggression in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Serbia.
It is not the moral duty of the United States to intervene in every foreign war. As Trump says, the Ukraine-Russia war would have been over quickly if the United States had not propped Zelensky up with aid that thereby prolonged it.
On March 3, Trump properly halted the delivery of military aid by the U.S. to Ukraine, after Zelensky harmfully declared that peace with Russia is “still very, very far away.” “This is the worst statement that could have been made by Zelensky, and America will not put up with it for much longer!” the president responded on TruthSocial.
There was in excess of $1 billion in arms and ammunition scheduled for delivery to Ukraine. Trump was right to withhold that, at least until Zelensky makes a good-faith effort toward ending a war that has killed or wounded more than a million people.
“We should spend less time worrying about Putin, and more time worrying about migrant rape gangs, drug lords, murderers, and people from mental institutions entering our Country – So that we don’t end up like Europe!” Trump tweeted on March 2.
Russia is more like conservative states in the U.S. on social issues than Europe and Zelensky are, as Russian laws reject the trans agenda and abortion-on-demand as many states here do. Yet on February 28, Zelensky warned Trump that our country “will feel it in the future” as the next victim of Russia if we decline to continue fighting it in Ukraine.
That warning of our American president by a foreign official was both unjustified and insulting, and Trump properly admonished Zelensky for it. “Don’t tell us what we’re going to feel. We’re trying to solve a problem,” Trump responded.
Trump continued, “You’re in no position to dictate that. Remember this, you’re in no position to dictate what we’re going to feel. We’re going to feel good. We’re gonna feel very good and very strong,” and Trump’s right due to his strong leadership.
Trump Trounces Liberal Gov on Transgender Issue
The federal government has been sending billions in taxpayer dollars to states for their public schools, including Maine. Maine does not have to accept this money but if it does, then it has to comply with the conditions attached just as households can place conditions on charities that receive their donations, or donate the money elsewhere.
At the recent governors’ meeting at the White House, President Trump politely asked Maine’s Gov. Janet Mills if she is “not going to comply with” his executive order protecting girls’ sports against boys viewing themselves as transgendered, as he had heard from the media. She indicated that she would not comply, and argued instead that she is “complying with state and federal law” by allowing transgendered teenagers, born as male, to play in girls’ sports.
Trump responded that “we are the federal law” in reference to how the executive authority under the Constitution is vested in the president, and how Trump had cited the federal statute enacted by Congress. Trump then continued, “you better do it, you better do it, because you’re not going to get any federal funding at all if you don’t.”
“And, by the way, your population, even though it’s somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn’t want men playing in women’s sports.” Mills interrupted Trump by brusquely saying, “See you in court,” and was photographed smiling smugly at her table.
“Good, I’ll see you in court, I look forward to that, that should be a real easy one,” said Trump. Then Trump added one of his trademark zingers that infuriates the Left, “And enjoy your life after governor because I don’t think you’ll be in elected politics.”
This 57-second confrontation in which Trump rebuked the entrenched liberal Maine Governor illustrated how much better Trump is than any other Republican politician. Who else would have stood up against a tough, bossy liberal woman attorney as Trump just did?
At issue is whether federal transgender policy should be carried out and enforced by elected leaders – or whether a small dissenting minority can use the courts to overcome the will of the majority. The federal government headed by Trump can and should use funding as a lever to enforce compliance by states and schools that receive the funding.
Trump’s Department of Education immediately opened an investigation into Maine schools, showing that he will follow through on this and all his campaign pledges. Nine days earlier, on February 12, Trump’s Education Department announced that it will also investigate the interscholastic athletic leagues in Minnesota and California for violating Trump’s ban on allowing boys to compete unfairly in girls’ sports.
A week earlier, Trump’s Education Department gave notice that it is investigating the Massachusetts interscholastic league and the University of Pennsylvania and San Jose State University, about this same issue. Virtually every state has an association that governs high school sports, and the league in Washington State has been considering setting up a program separate from girls’ sports for transgender athletes.
On February 20 Trump’s Department of Education also issued a statement applauding the conformance by the interscholastic athletic leagues in New Hampshire and Wisconsin with Trump’s executive order banning men in women’s sports. These are two important presidential swing states, and New Hampshire holds the first-in-the-nation presidential primary.
Trump’s shutting down of the “transgender insanity,” as he accurately describes this, is part of his overall block on federal funding of woke ideologies. On February 13 Trump’s Education Department announced the termination of over $350 million in grants to promote wokeness.
The amount of federal spending on boondoggles in public education is staggering. In the small state of Maine alone, the federal government wastes more than $280 million annually in funding its public schools, which “ranked dead last on a list compiled by U.S. News comparing the quality of public high schools between states.”
Liberals have run Maine public schools into the ground. “During the 1990s, Maine typically ranked first or second on the NAEP” exams, but school policies in Maine have ruined its public schools since then, reports The Maine Wire.
Maine Gov. Mills remains defiant. The day after the public confrontation, Gov. Mills issued a written statement claiming that Trump is violating the Constitution by using federal funds to enforce compliance with his executive order, and that she is standing up for the “rights of transgender Mainers” based on the Maine Human Rights Act passed in 2021.
But missing from Mills’ statement is any recognition of the rights of girls to fair competition in school sports, as thousands of girls are being denied the right to a level playing field by the transgender invasion. Once popular, Mills’ disapproval rating surpassed her approval rating even prior to her meeting with Trump.
Planes Collide with DEI
After Delta Airlines reaffirmed its full commitment to the DEI ideology, one of its planes crash-landed, flipped upside down, and burst into flames at Toronto Airport. Everyone miraculously survived this latest plane crash that happened once the plane was oddly cleared to land amid a crosswind having gusts up to 40 mph on its approach to the airport.
DEI means that “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are the priority in hiring and promotion, and protection against firing inept workers. President Trump has issued two Executive Orders against DEI, and many large corporations have recently rescinded or rolled back their DEI programs, including Amazon, Disney, Google, GE, GM, and Pepsi, while major banks are taking DEI off their websites.
Donald Trump’s trademark phrase was “You’re fired!” long before he ran for president. Now, as president for the second time, he’s been refreshingly firing everyone who stands in the way of transforming the federal government from DEI to a merit-based system.
Trump should consider firing those in charge of air travel safety, including investigators of these crashes. The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) asserts exclusive authority over analyzing such crashes in the United States, but this federal agency is liberal like other federal agencies.
The initial statements by the NTSB chairwoman on Feb. 14 seemed to avoid holding anyone accountable for the mid-air collision in January in D.C., despite how it killed all 67 people on the American Airlines plane and a military helicopter. No collision of this magnitude should happen today, and any suggestion that no one was severely at fault is grounds for firing the investigators.
Yet at this rate no air traffic controller will be fired for this deadly collision near Reagan National Airport, even though the day before a similar mid-air collision near the same airport was averted only by an alert pilot aborting his landing and recircling. Air traffic controllers are federal employees and they adopted a policy a decade ago to make it nearly impossible to fire any of them, no matter how incompetent.
During the Obama Administration the use of a merit and skills-based exam, the AT-SAT, was deemphasized in hiring air traffic controllers. Instead a biographical test based on DEI became more important in hiring decisions in this occupation on which the lives of thousands depend daily.
An air traffic control expert, Michael Pearson, told Just the News that the numerous errors made by air traffic control in the recent D.C. crash included failing to “tell the jet that the helicopter was in sight” and failing to give timely “safety advisories” when alerted about the impending collision in the sky. In addition, the “helicopter route was horrible” while “the controller didn’t apply the rules properly,” Pearson said.
But the air traffic controllers’ association, which functions like a union in impeding the ability to fire workers, has immunized the federal employees against being fired by adopting the Air Traffic Safety Action Program. Under this policy “employees are promised that no punitive or disciplinary actions will be taken as a result of reporting errors that could impact safety, provided those errors are not the result of gross negligence or illegal activity.”
The NTSB is already protecting its fellow federal government workers by speculating that the altitude meter in the military helicopter may have somehow malfunctioned, and that a belated warning was “stepped on” by an interruption and hence may not have been heard. But air traffic controllers should ensure their messages are timely heard and acted upon, or else take immediate action to warn others as the DC controllers failed to do.
Missing from the NTSB statements is criticism of air traffic control for not alerting the helicopter pilots to divert their course until less than 30 seconds before the collision. Subsequently the air traffic controller told the helicopter pilot to fly “behind” the landing aircraft, which lacked an urgent altitude change needed.
Pete Buttigieg, who oversaw the air traffic controllers for four years in the Biden Administration, is turning the tables by demanding, “The flying public needs answers.” So while the biased NTSB withholds real answers, Buttigieg blames Trump to boost his expected campaign for president in 2028.
A lawsuit has been pending for many years in federal court challenging how air traffic control hiring practices have disadvantaged qualified candidates from the leading training program, called the Air Traffic-Collegiate Training Initiative. This lawsuit, captioned Brigida v. US Dept of Transportation, was certified as a class action in February 2022 in federal court in DC.
Several hundred employees of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have been fired by Trump, but not any air traffic controllers or their supervisors. The recent two crashes, one in Canada, suggest that replacing DEI with a merit-based system for air traffic control is badly needed.
