“In America, we don’t do kings.” That was the message of the leftist protesters who swarmed the streets nationwide on June 14 in opposition to President Donald Trump and his agenda.
“Trump must go now!” they chanted, waving signs that likened the president to a dictator and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to his “Gestapo.” Their complaint was alleged despotism. But if Democrats really opposed authoritarianism, they wouldn’t be celebrating its emergence in the courts.
There are no kings in the United States — just a bunch of black-robed activists who seem to have forgotten the difference between ‘Your Honor’ and ‘Your Majesty.’
When U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani brazenly overstepped her authority on July 7 to block Congress from stripping Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid funding through the budget reconciliation bill — a clear usurpation of the legislative branch’s power of the purse — the response from the left wasn't outrage. It was praise.
"Good," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote on X. “Democrats will never stop fighting this backdoor abortion ban from the Republicans.”
— (@)
Schumer’s apparent admission that Medicaid funds abortions aside, his comments also belie his party's disingenuous indignation over supposed federal overreach.
That selective outrage was on full display in April amid the arrest of a Wisconsin judge for allegedly escorting Eduardo Flores-Ruiz — an illegal immigrant who had previously been deported — out the back jury door of her courtroom to help him evade federal immigration authorities.
The ICE agents in question had a valid administrative warrant for Flores-Ruiz’s arrest, yet leftists railed against efforts to hold Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan to account for her alleged obstruction.
"By arresting a sitting judge over routine courthouse management, the Trump regime has signaled its eagerness to weaponize federal power against members of the judiciary who do not align with its political agenda,” writer Mitchell Sobieski fumed in a Milwaukee Independent op-ed.
If impeding federal law enforcement now qualifies as "routine courthouse management," that's a big problem.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson, a Democrat, complained that the Trump administration was “scaring people” by enforcing federal immigration law.
“They’re scaring people in this community; they’re scaring people in immigrant communities all across the United States,” Johnson told reporters.
Never mind the law-abiding U.S. citizens who remain scared that their daughters, sisters, or mothers could be the next Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, or Rachel Morin — all victims of murderers in the country illegally.
Apparently, their fears are irrelevant.
As for Dugan, her claim that “judicial immunity” precludes her from being prosecuted for alleged obstruction of justice is as monarchical as it gets.
Judges are but one facet of the American justice system, and as Democrats loved reminding us all 15 minutes ago: “No one is above the law.”
Of course, Democrats’ lack of interest in reining in the judiciary is nothing new. After all, the Democratic Party has long relied on activist judges to impose its will on the American public.
With Roe v. Wade in 1973, liberals leveraged a sympathetic U.S. Supreme Court to force nearly a half-century of unregulated abortion onto a country that was — and still is — deeply divided on the procedure.
In 2015, leftists used the same playbook to mandate same-sex marriage nationwide via Obergefell v. Hodges.
In the age of Trump, however, judicial activism has become an even more flagrant problem.
Last year, then-candidate Trump was frequently forced to split his time between the campaign trail and the courtroom as he fended off contrived criminal indictments and lawsuits, nearly all of which were conveniently presided over by liberal judges.
RELATED: Rogue anti-Trump judges obliterated by SCOTUS’ landmark ruling
At the same time, radical judges in Colorado and Illinois, along with Maine’s Democratic secretary of state, attempted to strip voters of their right to decide the presidential election by removing Trump’s name from the ballot.
Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court stepped in to quash that authoritarian plot. Unfortunately for the justices, it's a move they've had to repeat several times since the president’s inauguration in January.
In a line of cases challenging Trump’s policy pursuits, rogue district court judges have issued sweeping injunctions blocking him from implementing his agenda nationwide in cases without a class certification — a practice that the Supreme Court has lately admonished as “likely” judicial overreach.
Still, lower-court judges are finding other ways to overstep their authority. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, for example, appears to have decided that his court, not the nation's high court, reigns supreme in the land.
Even after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted Murphy’s nationwide block on third-country deportations in June, Murphy continued to insist that the Trump administration allow six illegal immigrant defendants to challenge their removal before deporting them to a third-party country.
That move even rankled liberal Justice Elena Kagan, who had initially sided with Murphy.
“I do not see how a district court can compel compliance with an order that this Court has stayed,” Kagan wrote, concurring with the majority that the deportations could proceed.
Yet not even the top court is immune to political activism, it seems.
In her dissent from the court's ruling against blanket injunctions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Joe Biden appointee, described the majority’s decision as “profoundly dangerous.” In her view, containing temporary judicial relief to those requesting it somehow grants the president “unchecked, arbitrary power” and “undermines our constitutional system.”
Jackson’s words were acrimonious enough that Justice Amy Coney Barrett included a stinging rebuke in the court’s ruling.
“We will not dwell on Justice Jackson’s argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself,” Barrett wrote. “We observe only this: Justice Jackson decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”
An imperial judiciary, indeed!
No, there are no kings in the United States — just a bunch of black-robed activists who seem to have forgotten the difference between “Your Honor” and “Your Majesty.”
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.
The Supreme Court last week delivered not just a legal decision but a resounding moral affirmation: Children deserve protection from online pornography.
For decades, I’ve been told that “free speech” includes the right to exploit. I’ve watched Big Porn hide behind the First Amendment like a shield, as if this billion-dollar industry, built on addiction, abuse, and shattered innocence, was a sacred American institution. But on Friday, in upholding Texas’ pornography age-verification law, the court drew a line in the sand.
For children, exposure to pornographic material isn’t a neutral event. It reshapes the brain. It numbs empathy. It seeds confusion, fear, and addiction.
And I say: Thank God.
As the brother of a child survivor of sexual exploitation, I know firsthand the consequences of a culture that normalizes sexual harm. I know what it’s like when an industry like porn sees children as commodities. I’ve seen too many young people stumble into the world of violent, degrading content with nothing more than a click. No gatekeepers. No warnings. No protection.
That ended last week.
Texas’ age-verification law was never about silencing speech. It was about defending the voiceless and restoring the most basic responsibility we have as a society: to guard our children from harm.
That’s why my team at Jaco Booyens Ministries joined this case as a friend of the court. Our team submitted a brief to the Supreme Court that shared the lived experiences of survivors, the neurological science on childhood trauma, and the irrefutable consequences of exposure to online pornography.
As our brief stated in Free Speech Coalition v. Paxton: “There is no liberty in trauma. There is no freedom in addiction. When minors are exposed to pornography, they are not exercising constitutional rights, they are being wounded by the unchecked rights of others.”
Still, the porn industry screamed “censorship.” Companies sued, claiming this was a violation of their “rights.” But what about our children’s right not to be harmed? What about the parents fighting to keep predators out of their homes?
The court acknowledged what every honest parent already knows: Access to this kind of content isn’t harmless. It isn’t “education.” It is psychological, emotional, and spiritual violence. During oral arguments, Justice Amy Coney Barrett captured the heart of the issue when she asked, “Why should it be so easy for a 12-year-old to access this kind of material online, when we all know it can be incredibly damaging?”
That wasn’t a rhetorical flourish; it was a recognition of truth.
For children, exposure to pornographic material isn’t a neutral event. It reshapes the brain. It numbs empathy. It seeds confusion, fear, and addiction. I can no longer pretend this is just about speech. This is about harm. Real harm. And the court, at long last, chose to see it.
RELATED: Supreme Court slaps down Big Porn — putting kids before profit
I can’t change what happened to my sister. But I can fight to make sure it doesn’t happen to someone else. I can help protect the next generation. I can work to make it harder for exploitation to find its way into our living rooms, our schools, our smartphones. I can help make justice more than just a word. I can help make it action.
To the justices who stood with us: Thank you. You did not bow to corporate pressure. You honored the Constitution as a document of liberty, not license. You remembered that freedom must be rooted in truth, and the truth is that unrestricted pornography destroys lives.
This victory isn’t just for Texas; it’s a win for every child in America. It sends a clear message to every state in this nation: You have the power to protect your children. You can draw the line. You don’t have to wait for permission. And beyond our borders, this ruling sends a powerful global signal: I still believe — and I know many others do too — that children are worth protecting, that their innocence is not up for sale, and their safety is not negotiable.
Let this ruling be a turning point — for our families, for our faith, for our future.
It was a rough day for liberals both on and off the U.S. Supreme Court.
The high court sided in Mahmoud v. Taylor with Maryland parents who want to protect their children from LGBT propaganda in Montgomery County Public Schools. This ruling enraged non-straight activists, including the Human Rights Campaign, which called the decision "devastating."
In Free Speech Coalition, Inc. v. Paxton, the Supreme Court upheld the Lone Star State's age verification law protecting children from pornography. Activists called the ruling "wrongheaded" and "invasive."
The Supreme Court indicated in Trump v. CASA, Inc. that the national injunctions weaponized against the Trump administration by district court judges "likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts." Democrats melted down over the ruling, calling it "deplorable" and "a vile betrayal of our Constitution."
The court ruled 6-3 in each of these cases, and in all three, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was in the dissenting minority.
Not only did Jackson not get her way, her apparent ignorance and judicial freewheeling was exposed for all to see in CASA, where she noted in a dissenting opinion that the majority's decision not only "diverges from first principles" but is "profoundly dangerous, since it gives the Executive the go-ahead to sometimes wield the kind of unchecked, arbitrary power the Founders crafted our Constitution to eradicate."
'In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court's opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment.'
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who delivered the opinion of the court in CASA, noted that Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent focused on "conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity." Jackson, on the other hand,
chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a 'mind-numbingly technical query' ... she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush.
Barrett noted that her untethered colleague apparently believes both that "the fundamental role of courts is to 'order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law — full stop,'" and that "if courts lack the power to 'require the Executive to adhere to law universally' ... courts will leave a 'gash in the basic tenets of our founding charter that could turn out to be a mortal wound.'"
RELATED: MASSIVE VICTORY: SCOTUS sides with parents; Alito nukes LGBT indoctrination campaign
The former Notre Dame Law School professor tried to make sense out of Jackson's position, though admitted that it was "difficult to pin down."
Barrett suggested that Jackson either believes that universal injunctions are appropriate whenever a defendant is part of the executive branch — a position that "goes far beyond the mainstream defense of universal injunctions" — or, "more extreme still," that "the reasoning behind any court order demands 'universal adherence,' at least where the Executive is concerned."
"In her law-declaring vision of the judicial function, a district court's opinion is not just persuasive, but has the legal force of a judgment," wrote Barrett. "Once a single district court deems executive conduct unlawful, it has stated what the law requires. And the Executive must conform to that view, ceasing its enforcement of the law against anyone, anywhere."
Barrett proceeded to insinuate that former President Joe Biden's DEI appointee was ignorant of the relevant American legal history and precedent and may have skipped analysis of relevant readings because they involved "boring 'legalese.'"
"We will not dwell on Justice Jackson's argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries' worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself," wrote Barrett.
Although she would not dwell on Jackson's understanding, Barrett nevertheless pointed out that the liberal justice "decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary."
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Under Colorado's argument, a state could "forbid a regulated licensed professional from affirming homosexuality if that were consistent with the then-prevailing 'standard of care.'"
Whether a legal novice or pro, any reader can pick up 'Listening to the Law' and come away with a baseline understanding of how the courts operate.
From beginning to end, O'Donnell treated her 'interview' with Justice Barrett as an opportunity to try and discredit the Supreme Court.
Jackson would be wise to follow Barrett's example in demonstrating how judges are supposed to conduct themselves.
Unless the Supreme Court reins in lower-court judges or Congress asserts its power over the courts it established, judicial tyranny may persist.
After the Supreme Court on Friday held that federal district courts lack the authority to enter nationwide injunctions, President Donald Trump slammed the lower courts for their “colossal abuse of power.” Trump held a press conference at the White House with Attorney General Pam Bondi after the ruling came down, noting the lower courts’ attempts […]
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