Foreign-Born Reps Defending Anti-ICE Rioters Prove Founders Were Right To Be Wary Of Foreign Influence In Government
A republic cannot endure when leaders do not see themselves as stewards of a specific people, culture, and nation.A republic cannot endure when leaders do not see themselves as stewards of a specific people, culture, and nation.Punch a cop, get a charge — even if you’re in Congress
With a recent assault on the very federal law enforcement officers they are charged with overseeing, Democrats haven’t just embraced criminals; they’ve become them.
Last month, three Democratic lawmakers — Reps. Rob Menendez Jr., Bonnie Watson Coleman, and LaMonica McIver, all from New Jersey — led a mob of protesters in storming the Delaney Hall Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. They waited for a bus full of detainees to arrive, then rushed the open gate and physically clashed with federal officers.
Our republic will not survive if America’s elected leaders are allowed to act like this. They not only committed crimes in public but then hid behind their Article I powers as a shield.
This wasn’t symbolic. This was an elected mob laying hands on law enforcement.
The video tells the story: shoving, punching, and chaos. These three members of Congress — who represent more than two million Americans — assaulted officers doing their jobs. Then, astonishingly, they claimed they were the victims, despite clear footage proving otherwise.
All of this over what turned out to be nothing.
After the chaos, ICE officials offered the lawmakers a guided tour of the facility. The Democrats quietly admitted they found no signs of mistreatment. Their entire stunt, billed as a protest of conditions, collapsed under the weight of reality. They walked in demanding accountability and walked out with nothing but bad footage and a pending felony charge.
Yes, a felony.
Rep. McIver now faces a federal charge of assaulting a law enforcement officer, announced on May 20 by Acting U.S. Attorney Alina Habba. President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have made it clear: This administration backs the rule of law. If you punch a cop, you get charged — even if you have a congressional pin on your lapel.
The left tried to frame the incident as “congressional oversight.” But oversight doesn’t mean storming gates or skipping security checks. ICE policy allows members of Congress to tour facilities — even unannounced. But it does not allow them to create security threats, bypass screening, or lead mobs onto federal property. Those procedures exist to protect staff, detainees, and lawmakers alike.
This was not oversight. It was lawlessness, pure and simple.
RELATED: Memo to Democrats: ‘Oversight’ isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card
Since President Trump restored control of the southern border, anti-border Democrats have become unhinged. No longer able to rely on waves of illegal crossings, they’ve begun imitating the tactics of the very criminal aliens they once defended — storming barriers, resisting authority, and attacking officers.
Now, that’s the legacy of the modern Democratic Party.
But legal consequences alone aren’t enough. Congress must act.
The House should censure all three lawmakers involved. Censure is not a punishment; it’s a statement of principle. And lawmakers have been censured for far less than leading an assault on federal agents. The House has a duty to uphold the integrity of its own body. That means sending a message: If you behave like a thug, you’ll be treated like one.
Our republic will not survive if America’s elected leaders are allowed to act like this. They not only committed crimes in public but then hid behind their Article I powers as a shield.
America’s founders warned about this.
In "Federalist 1," Alexander Hamilton posed a choice: Would Americans build a government based on “reflection and choice” — or surrender to “accident and force”? That question remains. If lawmakers now claim the right to break the laws they swore to uphold, we’re no longer living in a constitutional republic. We’re living under mob rule.
And if we let this slide — if Congress fails to hold its own accountable — then we’ll have no one to blame when the next mob storms another federal building under another political banner.
Democrats love to remind us: “No one is above the law.” Fine. Then prove it.
Trump’s trade tactics echo founding-era common sense
Prominent voices on the left and within movement conservatism have argued that President Trump’s approach to foreign trade is strange, unorthodox, and even un-American. This is not surprising. After all, doctrinaire commitment to free trade — and doctrinaire distaste for protecting American industry — has been the dominant view among elites of both major political parties for at least a generation.
Against this backdrop, it is no wonder that Trump’s actions on trade appear as a wholly irrational disruption of a system that, according to our political elites, does not need to be discarded.
Hamilton would find it perfectly sensible of Trump to hold that other nations should give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market.
This view of the matter, however, is based on an incomplete understanding of the American political tradition. Trump’s approach to trade policy has deep roots in American history, as we can see if we cast our gaze further back than we are accustomed to doing. It does not go too far to say that America’s founders would find Trump’s approach to international commerce perfectly intelligible and respectable.
The most obvious way to link President Trump to the founders is to invoke the justly celebrated name of Alexander Hamilton. The “Report on Manufactures,” Hamilton’s most famous state paper during his tenure as George Washington’s treasury secretary, laid out policy objectives that are essentially the same as those being defended by Trump and the members of his Cabinet who are responsible for trade policy.
It was necessary, Hamilton contended, to exert the government’s authority to promote American manufacturing to counteract the “artificial policy” of other nations that sought to exclude or disadvantage American goods. The ultimate aim of such a policy, he explained, was not the “vain project of selling everything and buying nothing” — it was instead to secure America’s vital national interests.
Hamilton argued that national “independence and security” are the “great objects” of all governments, thus requiring each country to “possess within itself all the essentials of national supply,” especially “the means of subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defense.” Having such goods available within one’s own country, he continued, “is necessary to the perfection of the body politic, to the safety as well as the welfare of the society.”
No strange departure
It is hard to see much daylight between Hamiltonian trade principles and President Trump’s desire to have the products necessary to American security and prosperity built in the United States.
The nationalist character of Hamilton’s thinking about trade policy, moreover, did not emerge after the founding as some strange departure from its essential principles. Rather, such nationalism was evident earlier, especially in the prominent part Hamilton played in the debates over the ratification of the Constitution.
Writing in "The Federalist Papers," Hamilton observed that one of the great advantages of a union of states under one government was the power it would confer on the nation to “oblige foreign countries to bid against each other for the privileges of our markets.” Elsewhere in “The Federalist Papers,” Hamilton suggested that the restrictive trade policies nations sometimes pursue are not properly viewed as “injuries” but simply as “justifiable acts of independent sovereignties consulting a distinct interest.”
Hamilton, then, would find it perfectly sensible of President Trump to hold that other nations should be willing to give America something of value in exchange for access to our vast market. His arguments similarly anticipated Trump’s frequent remarks that while other nations will inevitably act in their own interest, they likewise must understand that we intend to act in our own interest as well.
The preceding argument is enough to show that Trump’s thinking about trade policy has venerable roots in the American political tradition. After all, who is more American than Alexander Hamilton?
We can go further, however. Trump’s approach broadly represents not just the Hamiltonian strain of American economic nationalism but the common sense of the founding-era generation itself. Indeed (and as I have observed elsewhere at greater length) the authority to regulate trade with foreign nations was included in the Constitution precisely for the purposes for which the Trump administration is now wielding it.
Regulating commerce was uncontroversial
In his massive and highly regarded "Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,” Joseph Story — John Marshall’s great colleague on the early Supreme Court — observed that the power to regulate foreign commerce was so obviously necessary in a complete and effective government that it was hardly even a matter of controversy at the Constitutional Convention.
Commerce, Story suggested, is important to “the prosperity of nations.” Nevertheless, the prosperity of American commerce had been thwarted by the restrictive policies of other nations during the time America was governed by the Articles of Confederation, which conferred on the government no authority to regulate America’s foreign trade.
On Story’s telling, before the Constitution was adopted, American commerce “was regulated by foreign nations with a single view to their own interests; and our disunited efforts to counteract their restrictions were rendered impotent by a want of combination.” Under the Constitution, however, the government of the United States has the power to control access to the entire American market and hence has the ability to retaliate against the excessively self-regarding trade policies of other nations.
The Trump administration is simply using this constitutional power in an attempt to secure an arrangement that is more mutually beneficial for the United States and our trading partners.
Just as the founders anticipated
Story’s understanding of these matters was by no means idiosyncratic or partisan. On the contrary, essentially the same views were expressed by James Madison, the “father of the Constitution.”
Writing to James Monroe in 1785, Madison expressed his personal wish that “no regulations of trade, that is to say, no restrictions or imposts whatever, were necessary.” “A perfect freedom” of trade, he continued, “is the system which would be my choice.” Nevertheless, he immediately added, for such a system to be “attainable, all other nations must concur in it.” And if any other nation imposed restrictions on American trade, Madison continued, it would be appropriate for America to “retort the distinction” — in other words, to impose retaliatory restrictions of its own. Indeed, Madison held that to question the propriety of such economic retaliation would be “an affront to every citizen who loves his country.”
Similarly, in the preface to his notes on the Constitutional Convention, Madison observed that the lack of a commerce power under the Articles of Confederation had “produced in foreign nations ... a monopolizing policy injurious to the trade of the U.S.” and further suggested that the appropriate response would be a “countervailing policy on the part of the U. States.” Such a policy became possible because the new Constitution included a power to regulate trade with foreign nations — the power the Trump administration is wielding to secure more advantageous trade relations for America, just as the founders anticipated.
None of this is to say that the founders would have approved of the specific steps the Trump administration has taken in the last several weeks. No one can pretend to know how they would apply their principles to the changed circumstances of the present. Nor is it to say that the founders would approve the extent to which the Congress has delegated its foreign commerce power to the president. It is to say, however, that Trump’s aims, and the kind of tools he is using to achieve them, would be unobjectionable to those who founded our nation and established our form of government.
Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at the American Mind.
Why tariffs are the key to America’s industrial comeback
On April 2, President Trump announced a sweeping policy of reciprocal tariffs aimed at severing America’s economic dependence on China. His goal: to reshore American industry and restore national self-sufficiency.
How can the United States defend its independence while relying on Chinese ships, machinery, and computers? It can’t.
Tariffs aren’t just about economics. They are a matter of national survival.
But time is short. Trump has just four years to prove that tariffs can bring back American manufacturing. The challenge is steep — but not unprecedented. Nations like South Korea and Japan have done it. So has the United States in earlier eras.
We can do it again. Here’s how.
Escaping the altar of globalism
Tariffs were never just about economics. They’re about self-suffiency.
A self-sufficient America doesn’t depend on foreign powers for its prosperity — or its defense. Political independence means nothing without economic independence. America’s founders learned that lesson the hard way: No industry, no nation.
The entire supply chain lives offshore. America doesn’t just import chips — it imports the ability to make them. That’s a massive strategic vulnerability.
During the Revolutionary War, British soldiers weren’t the only threat. British factories were just as dangerous. The colonies relied on British imports for everything from textiles to muskets. Without manufacturing, they had no means to wage war.
Victory only became possible when France began supplying the revolution, sending over 80,000 firearms. That lifeline turned the tide.
After the Revolution, George Washington wrote:
A free people ought not only to be armed, but ... their safety and interest require that they should promote such manufactories as tend to render them independent of others for essential, particularly military, supplies.
Washington’s first major legislative achievement was the Tariff Act of 1789. Two years later, Alexander Hamilton released his “Report on Manufactures,” a foundational blueprint for American industrial strategy. Hamilton didn’t view tariffs as mere taxes — he saw them as the engine for national development.
For nearly two centuries, America followed Hamilton’s lead. Under high tariffs, the nation prospered and industrialized. In fact, the U.S. maintained the highest average tariff rates in the 19th century. By 1870, America produced one-quarter of the world’s manufactured goods. By 1945, it produced half. The United States wasn’t just an economic powerhouse — it was the world’s factory.
That changed in the 1970s. Washington elites embraced globalism. The result?
America has run trade deficits every year since 1974. The cumulative total now exceeds $25 trillion in today’s dollars.
Meanwhile, American companies have poured $6.7 trillion into building factories, labs, and infrastructure overseas. And as if outsourcing weren’t bad enough, foreign governments and corporations have stolen nearly $10 trillion worth of American intellectual property and technology.
The consequences have been devastating.
Since the 1980s, more than 60,000 factories have moved overseas — to China, Mexico, and Europe. The result? The United States has lost over 5 million well-paying manufacturing jobs.
This industrial exodus didn’t just hollow out factories — it gutted middle-class bargaining power. Once employers gained the ability to offshore production, they no longer had to reward rising productivity with higher wages. That historic link — more output, more pay — was severed.
Today, American workers face a brutal equation: Take the deal on the table, or the job goes to China. The “race to the bottom” isn’t a slogan. It’s an economic policy — and it’s killing the American middle class.
Offshoring has crippled American industry, turning the United States into a nation dependent on foreign suppliers.
Technology offers the clearest example. In 2024, the U.S. imported $763 billion in advanced technology products. That includes a massive trade deficit in semiconductors, which power the brains of everything from fighter jets to toasters. If imports stopped, America would grind to a halt.
Worse, America doesn’t even make the machines needed to produce chips. Photolithography systems — critical to chip fabrication — come from the Netherlands. They’re shipped to Taiwan, where the chips are made and then sold back to the U.S.
The entire supply chain lives offshore. America doesn’t just import chips — it imports the ability to make them. That’s not just dependency. That’s a massive strategic vulnerability.
And the problem extends far beyond tech. The U.S. imports its steel, ball bearings, cars, and oceangoing ships. China now builds far more commercial vessels than the United States — by orders of magnitude.
How can America call itself a global power when it can no longer command the seas?
What happens if China stops shipping silicon chips to the U.S.? Or if it cuts off something as basic as shoes or light bulbs? No foreign power should hold that kind of leverage over the American people. And while China does, America isn’t truly free. No freer than a newborn clinging to a bottle. Dependence breeds servitude.
Make America self-sufficient again
Trump has precious little time to prove that reindustrializing America isn’t just a slogan — it’s possible. But he won’t get there with half-measures. “Reciprocal” tariffs? That’s a distraction. Pausing tariffs for 90 days to sweet-talk foreign leaders? That delays progress. Spooking the stock market with mixed signals? That sabotages momentum.
To succeed, Trump must start with one urgent move: establish high, stable tariffs — now, not later.
Tariffs must be high enough to make reshoring profitable. If it’s still cheaper to build factories in China or Vietnam and just pay a tariff, then the tariff becomes little more than a tax — raising revenue but doing nothing to bring industry home.
What’s the right rate? Time will tell, but Trump doesn’t have time. He should impose immediate overkill tariffs of 100% on day one to force the issue. Better to overshoot than fall short.
That figure may sound extreme, but consider this: Under the American System, the U.S. maintained average tariffs above 30% — without forklifts, without container ships, and without globalized supply chains. In modern terms, we’d need to go higher just to match that level of protection.
South Korea industrialized with average tariffs near 40%. And the Koreans had key advantages — cheap labor and a weak currency. America has neither. Tariffs must bridge the gap.
Just as important: Tariffs must remain stable. No company will invest trillions to reindustrialize the U.S. if rates shift every two weeks. They’ll ride out the storm, often with help from foreign governments eager to keep their access to American consumers.
President Trump must pick a strong, flat tariff — and stick to it.
This is our last chance
Tariffs must also serve their purpose: reindustrialization. If they don’t advance that goal, they’re useless.
Start with raw materials. Industry needs them cheap. That means zero tariffs on inputs like rare earth minerals, iron, and oil. Energy independence doesn’t come from taxing fuel — it comes from unleashing it.
Next, skip tariffs on goods America can’t produce. We don’t grow coffee or bananas. So taxing them does nothing for American workers or factories. It’s a scam — a cash grab disguised as policy.
Tariff revenue should fund America’s comeback. Imports won’t vanish overnight, which means revenue will flow. Use it wisely.
Cut taxes for domestic manufacturers. Offer low-interest loans for large-scale industrial projects. American industry runs on capital — Washington should help supply it.
A more innovative use of tariff revenue? Help cover the down payments for large-scale industrial projects. American businesses often struggle to raise capital for major builds. This plan fixes that.
Secure the loans against the land, then recoup them with interest when the land sells. It’s a smart way to jump-start American reindustrialization and build capital fast.
But let’s be clear: Tariffs alone won’t save us.
Trump must work with Congress to slash taxes and regulations. America needs a business environment that rewards risk and investment, not one that punishes it.
That means rebuilding crumbling infrastructure — railways, ports, power grids, and fiber networks. It means unlocking cheap energy from coal, hydro, and next-gen nuclear.
This is the final chance to reindustrialize. Another decade of globalism will leave American industry too hollowed out to recover. Great Britain was once the workshop of the world. Now it’s a cautionary tale.
Trump must hold the line. Impose high, stable tariffs. Reshore the factories. And bring the American dream roaring back to life.
Judicial impeachment is a remedy — not a rebellion
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement last week declaring that “for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” His remarks come amid renewed debate over the scope of judicial accountability, as some conservatives, including President Trump, have called for the impeachment of Judge James Boasberg over his handling of cases related to deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Roberts’ assertion, while reflective of modern norms, oversimplifies history. The reality is more complicated: Judicial impeachment has, at times, been driven by judicial decisions and the conduct surrounding them. While impeachment should not be a routine mechanism for challenging case outcomes, history shows it has been used when a judge’s rulings indicate persistent bias, a disregard for legal constraints, or an abuse of judicial authority.
If a judge consistently rules in a manner that defies constitutional limits, impeachment is not a rejection of judicial independence — it is a safeguard against judicial tyranny.
The clearest rebuttal to Roberts’ statement is the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase in 1804. Chase, a staunch Federalist, was accused of allowing his political views to shape his rulings, particularly in cases related to the Sedition Act. The House of Representatives impeached him for what was effectively a judicial philosophy that his opponents found intolerable.
The Senate ultimately acquitted Chase, but the very fact that he was impeached — explicitly for his conduct on the bench — undermines the claim that judicial decisions have never been a basis for impeachment.
Chase’s case is not an outlier. In 1803, Judge John Pickering was impeached and removed, partially for erratic behavior but also for making decisions Congress viewed as improper and politically motivated. Judge West Humphreys, a Confederate sympathizer, was removed in 1862 in part because his rulings reflected active opposition to federal law. These cases show that, historically, judicial decisions and their consequences have been central to impeachment discussions.
The constitutional framework
Roberts’ statement implies a rigid wall between impeachment and judicial decision-making, but the Constitution draws no such line.
Article III, Section 1 provides that judges hold office “during good Behaviour,” a standard distinct from the more lenient protections given to elected officials. Article II, Section 4 allows impeachment for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” That last phrase, historically interpreted to include abuses of power, opens the door to judicial decisions being relevant — not as mere policy disagreements, but as evidence of a judge’s failure to uphold his duties impartially.
Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 81 acknowledged that judicial misconduct, including decisions reflecting personal bias or disregard for the law, could be grounds for impeachment. The notion that impeachment exists only for personal corruption, rather than judicial overreach or defiance of legal norms, is a modern interpretation rather than an ironclad constitutional principle.
When does a ruling become impeachable?
The key distinction between a bad decision and an impeachable ruling is that the latter falls into a pattern of rulings that indicate a judge is abandoning his role as a neutral arbiter. A single controversial opinion does not justify impeachment, but if a judge repeatedly defies precedent, injects personal ideology into his decisions, or rules in ways that ignore constitutional limits, impeachment could be an appropriate remedy.
Consider the executive branch: A president is not impeached simply for enacting an unpopular policy, but if he abuses his authority, Congress has the power to remove him. The same reasoning applies to the judiciary. If a judge consistently rules in a manner that defies constitutional limits, impeachment is not a rejection of judicial independence — it is a safeguard against judicial tyranny.
A guardrail, not a weapon
None of this is to say that impeachment should be a routine check on judicial power. Judicial independence requires that courts be protected from political retaliation.
But the absolutist claim that impeachment is never an appropriate response to judicial decisions erases historical precedent and ignores the Constitution’s broader framework. Impeachment is not a tool for re-litigating every case, but neither is it an untouchable relic of the past.
Whether or not Congress agrees with Trump that Judge Boasberg should be impeached, it is essential that both judges and lawmakers recognize impeachment as a legitimate constitutional mechanism when a judge is no longer upholding his duty. The debate should not be about whether judicial decisions can ever warrant impeachment — they have before, and they will again — but about where the line is drawn between bad rulings and a true abandonment of judicial responsibility.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
How Trump can dismantle the imperial judiciary once and for all
When Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist No. 78 that the Supreme Court would wield “neither force nor will” over politics, he never envisioned the judiciary having the final say on every political decision in the country. Now imagine his reaction if he were told during the American Revolution that, in the future, a single lower-court judge could unilaterally grant citizenship to illegal immigrants’ children, override the will of elected branches, and even force the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to maintain information about transgenderism on its website. He might have preferred staying under King George’s thumb.
In just the past two weeks, liberal judges in carefully chosen jurisdictions have issued rulings that reshape major policy decisions. They have effectively granted citizenship to children of future illegal immigrants, blocked Trump from offering federal workers early retirement buyouts, ordered the National Institutes of Health to maintain wasteful grant programs, mandated that male inmates be housed in women’s prisons, restricted access to key government data, and dictated appropriations for USAID staff and private organizations.
No one should assume that an unconstitutional court ruling is binding on Congress or the president.
What’s next?
The possibilities are endless if the country continues to accept the dangerous myth that every ruling from a federal judge is the final, unquestionable law of the land — even on deeply political questions. It’s time to challenge this unchecked judicial overreach.
A generation of politicians have been brainwashed into believing that a judge can, with a mere stroke of a pen, establish a universally binding political rule that other branches must obey — unless another court overturns it. In reality, each branch of government has its own tools and resources to influence policy and is obligated to use them in accordance with its interpretation of the law and the Constitution. Some may argue that allowing one branch to have the final say simplifies governance, but that is tyranny, not constitutional government. It’s time for Trump to make this distinction clear.
Courts render judgments — that’s all
Yes, courts issue judgments in civil and criminal litigation. But as Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address, it is a legal fiction to assume that “the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions.”
Lincoln strongly disagreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dred Scott v. Sandford, which declared that black people were property without rights. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation during the war, and ultimately, former slaves were granted citizenship under the 14th Amendment. At the end of the day, the executive branch issues citizenship documents, not the judiciary. Lincoln had a constitutional duty to interpret the law as he understood it.
Trump must assert Lincoln’s understanding of separation of powers. Lincoln made it clear: The Constitution, not any single branch of government, is the law of the land. When courts issue rulings, those rulings bind only the parties involved and serve as precedent within the judiciary. “We nevertheless do oppose that decision as a political rule,” Lincoln said in his sixth debate with Stephen Douglas.
Trump must make it clear that lower courts are not equal to the president in authority — let alone supreme over him on every policy matter.
In other words, no one should assume that an unconstitutional court ruling is binding on Congress or the president.
When asked what could restrain Congress if backed by a majority of its constituents in enacting an unconstitutional law, James Madison stated that ultimate power resides with the people. “Nothing within the pale of the Constitution but sound argument [and] conciliatory expostulations addressed both to Congress [and] to their Constituents,” he explained.
Petitioning a court is one avenue to challenge unconstitutional actions, but it is not the final one. As Thomas Jefferson said late in his life, “Each of the three departments has equally the right to decide for itself what is its duty under the Constitution without regard to what the others may have decided for themselves under a similar question.” Ultimately, public engagement and elections determine the balance of power.
No supremacy
If the Framers had intended for the judiciary to hold supremacy over the other branches, they would not have left its entire structure, purview, and power to the discretion of Congress. In fact, Congress could, if it so desired, abolish all lower courts and leave only a single Supreme Court justice with jurisdiction over the four categories granted under Article III, Section 2.
From the outset, Trump must make it clear that lower courts are not equal to the president in authority — let alone supreme over him on every policy matter. According to Article I, Section 8, and the judicial vesting clause of Article III, Section 1, Congress has full authority over the creation of “inferior courts and tribunals.”
In fact, it was never a given that Congress would establish lower courts at all. During debates at the Constitutional Convention, some delegates proposed allowing state courts to oversee most federal issues, with a direct appeal route to the Supreme Court. This historical reality underscores that the judiciary was never meant to dictate policy to the executive and legislative branches.
Roger Sherman, one of the most respected Founding Fathers and a drafter of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, “The constitution does not make it necessary that any inferior tribunals should be instituted, but it may be done if found necessary.”
Nobody wants an imperial presidency, but an imperial judiciary is an even greater threat.
In 1812, the Supreme Court ruled that lower courts “possess no jurisdiction but what is given them by the power that creates them, and can be vested with none but what the power ceded to the general government will authorize them to confer.” In Sheldon v. Sill (1850), the Court reaffirmed this principle, ruling that “Congress, having the power to establish the courts, must define their respective jurisdictions.” Justice Robert Grier, writing for a unanimous Court, left no ambiguity: “Courts created by statute can have no jurisdiction but such as the statute confers.”
Even the Supreme Court is not supreme over the other branches — only over the congressionally created “inferior” courts. The Constitution mandates only the position of chief justice and grants original jurisdiction in a few specific cases, such as disputes between states and matters involving foreign diplomats. As for its appellate jurisdiction, Congress vested the court with that power in 1789, and under Article III, Section 2, Congress retains the authority to make exceptions and regulations governing its scope.
No logical person can argue that the Framers intended the courts — even the Supreme Court — to reign supreme over the other branches. If its entire structure depends on legislation and Congress can strip it of jurisdiction over nearly any issue at any time, the judiciary was never meant to be the final authority over all political questions.
Nobody wants an imperial presidency, but an imperial judiciary — one that is unelected and unaccountable — is an even greater threat. If Democrats believe Trump exceeded his authority by firing USAID workers or blocking funding for private organizations, they can refuse to pass a budget bill unless it includes that funding. Some have already threatened to do so.
Ultimately, the American people — not the courts alone — will decide who is right through public debate and the looming threat of a government shutdown. Courts cannot force Trump to fund foreign countries any more than Trump can dictate how judges rule in a murder trial.
A republic, not a rule by judges
It wasn’t until 1958, in Cooper v. Aaron, that Chief Justice Earl Warren brazenly declared the Supreme Court “supreme in the exposition of the law of the U.S. Constitution” and called it “a permanent and indispensable feature of our constitutional system.” No previous generation believed in such a dangerous myth — that the weakest and unelected branch should rule over the others. It’s time to restore the balance that existed before Cooper v. Aaron.
The Congressional Research Service noted in a 2017 report that the “early history of the United States is replete with examples of all three branches of the federal government playing a role in constitutional interpretation.” Members of Congress once took their duties seriously, and as the CRS observed, they never passively accepted the courts as having “a final or even exclusive role in defining the basic powers and limits of the federal government.”
We must stop accepting the false premise that the judiciary has the authority to police the other branches while also serving as the sole enforcer of its own boundaries of power. This idea is tyrannical and contradicts the fundamental structure of a constitutional republic with three coequal branches, in which the judiciary is the weakest. As James Madison put it, “If the constitutional boundary of either be brought into question, I do not see that any one of these independent departments has more right than another to declare their sentiments on that point.”
So what happens when the legislature and the president disagree? Do we treat the courts as the final arbiter, as nearly everyone on both sides of the Kavanaugh confirmation hearing seemed to believe? Not at all.
In his second “Helvidius” essay, Madison — debating Alexander Hamilton over the Washington administration’s stance toward France — argued that such friction is not only inevitable but healthy. He wrote:
It may happen also that different independent departments, the legislative and executive, for example, may in the exercise of their functions, interpret the constitution differently, and thence lay claim each to the same power. This difference of opinion is an inconvenience not entirely to be avoided. It results from what may be called, if it be thought fit, a concurrent right to expound the constitution.
In other words, the branches are supposed to fight it out. This is the essence of a functioning republic — messy, but far superior to the North Korean-style consolidation of power in an unelected judicial branch, which has become the norm today.
It’s time to restore the proper balance.
Restoring America with common sense
Because common sense is the key to understanding America’s original design at every level, America was long known as “The Common Sense Nation.” Now, President Trump and his “common-sense revolution” might succeed in making America the common-sense nation once again.
Unalienable rights and self-evident truths are the core ideas of the American founding. Those ideas are also the core ideas of a philosophical school known as “common-sense realism,” inspired by Adam Smith, Thomas Reid, and other representatives of the Scottish Enlightenment. In the words of Arthur Herman, “Common Sense Realism was virtually the official creed of the American Republic …” As historian Allen Guelzo explained in “The American Mind,” his indispensable college lecture series, “before the Civil War, every major collegiate intellectual was a disciple of Scottish common-sense realism.”
The founders were true revolutionaries, believing that the people were capable of self-rule by virtue of their common sense.
America’s founders were guided by the ideas and the thinking of the common-sense realists. Jefferson, Madison, and Hamilton, especially, were thoroughly trained in common-sense realism by their teachers, who brought those ideas and that manner of thinking from Scotland to America.
Today, the centrality of Scottish common-sense realism to the founding of our nation and to its ongoing sense of purpose is all but unknown. The founders would be astonished by our ignorance of the men who inspired their work. Admittedly, it has been a struggle — for more than a century, American academia has labored to obliterate the memory of what was once known by virtually every American.
Of course, academia has also been working hard to destroy “common sense” in its ordinary usage, too, insisting that men and women are arbitrarily designated categories and that the imperative of every English professor is to support violent insurgency. As a witty friend of mine likes to say, “Say what you want about the liberal arts, but they’ve found a cure for common sense.”
Thomas Paine was the great champion of ordinary common sense at the time of the founding. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Paine’s short book “Common Sense.” This pamphlet was and remains the best-selling American book in publishing history, and it was read aloud in taverns and village squares. It had a decisive influence on American public sentiment in favor of the Revolution. Paine turned the spotlight of common sense upon monarchal rule to devastating effect.
“One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in Kings,” Paine wrote, “is that nature disproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it to ridicule, by giving mankind an Ass for a Lion.”
The founders’ wild and crazy idea was that the people are sovereign. At the time, this construction was a contradiction in terms. The monarch was the sovereign. To say that the American people are sovereign was to say that the American people would rule and that government in America would be the agent of the people. Talk about turning the world upside down!
The founders were true revolutionaries, believing that the people were capable of self-rule by virtue of their common sense. Today, the progressives — whose purpose from their beginning has been to dismantle the America of the founders — often justify their claim to power by claiming that Americans do not have enough common sense to be able to rule themselves. That is a back-handed reference to the fundamental role of common sense in the founders’ America.
It certainly feels as if we are now engaged in a titanic struggle to determine America’s future. Perhaps the best way to understand the meaning of that struggle is to see it as an effort to restore rule by the common sense of the American people. President Trump and his common-sense revolution may be precisely what patriotic Americans have longed for — and what America has long needed.
Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearPolicy and made available via RealClearWire.
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