Thank you, Justice Roberts, for drawing a red line with Trump
For me, the most disturbing thing about the Trump presidency is the way each week, like a steady drip of acid, Donald Trump tries to erode the thing that truly makes us great as a country and the envy of so many around the world — the independence and nonpartisan character of our courts, our military, our FBI, our Border Patrol and our whole federal bureaucracy.
No modern president has been more willing to use U.S. service members or border police as props for his politics, to blithely declare without evidence that most of the 800,000 federal workers going unpaid during the government shutdown are Democrats, to refer to the Pentagon leadership as “my generals” and “my military,” and to denounce different federal judges who have ruled against him as a “so-called judge,” an “Obama judge” and a “Mexican” judge (even though he was born in Indiana).
Why is this so important? Because America’s core governing institutions weren’t built to be “conservative” or “liberal.” They were built to take our deepest values and our highest ideals and animate them, promote them and protect them. They are the continuity that binds one generation of Americans to the next and the beacon for how we work together to build an ever more perfect union.
The independent, nonpartisan quality of our institutions is why so many people want to immigrate to America. So when an American leader denigrates those institutions, tries to erode their independence or turns them into political props, he damages the very core of what makes our country unique.
And that’s why today I would like to give a shoutout to Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts for having the integrity and courage to call Trump out for this behavior, to draw a red line around the judicial branch and to signal to Trump — politely but firmly — to keep his hands off its independence and nonpartisan charter.
Roberts did so in November, after a federal judge in San Francisco put Trump’s asylum policy on hold and the president denounced him as an “Obama judge.”
Responding to a query from The Associated Press, Roberts said: “We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
That brushback pitch by Roberts — a high fastball right under Trump’s chin — was highly unusual but important. Of course, our judges are appointed by politicians with the hope that they’ll reflect their own or their party’s ideological bent on issues that come before them — and they often do.
But Roberts knows that central to our system is that every American is able to expect an impartial hearing before those judges, who, once they assume their place on the bench, should be loyal only to the Constitution and their interpretations of it.
I’ve spent four decades reporting from countries with weak institutions where the arbitrary whims of the leader or his party are the basis of all decision-making.
But Trump appreciates none of this. I don’t think he ever understood the separation of powers or the meaning of independent agencies. That’s why the shutdown doesn’t bother him.
This is not a test. This is a real, live emergency for our democracy.