Democrats crown judges while crying about kings



“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.

Judges above the law

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.”

Democrats love activist judges

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

  Liudmila Chernetska via iStock/Getty Images

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.

Monarchy reaches the highest court

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.

Leaked DHS email reveals Antifa violence in Portland is 'organized,' not 'opportunistic'



Investigative reporter Catherine Herridge obtained a leaked email from a former top Homeland Security official on Monday revealing that Antifa violence in Portland is, in fact, organized.

What's the background?

Although the black-clad militant protesters have been mainstays in unrest across the country for years, those who claim to be members of Antifa often refuse to acknowledge centralized organization of their group.

Mark Bray, author of "Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook," recently claimed in an essay for the Washington Post that the government cannot designate Antifa as a "terrorist organization," which President Donald Trump has threatened to do, because Antifa "is not an organization."

Bray also claimed that Antifa is not associated with Black Lives Matter, the Democratic Party, or "liberal financiers like George Soros," and that Antifa is not actually fascist.

What does the email say?

The email — sent by Brian Murphy, former acting under secretary for intelligence and analysis at DHS, who has now become a government whistleblower — stated the violence seen in Portland over the summer has been "organized."

Murphy's message, sent July 25, was to inform staff of a definition change, that future references to the violent activity taking place in Portland would be referred to as being "violent Antifa anarchists inspired."

The individuals are violently attacking the Federal facilities based on these ideologies. We can't say any longer that this violent situation is opportunistic. Additionally, we have overwhelmingly intelligence regarding the ideologies driving individuals towards violence and why the violence has continued. A core set of Threat actors are organized, show up night after night, share common [Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures] and drawing on like minded individuals to their cause.

I recognize we may not be able to attribute every individual as VAAI however we need to look at the totality of the intelligence both current and previous and recognize the motivation for the violence and why people have shown up to commit violence for about 60 days. And why the individuals are using social media to encourage the VAAI on the ground to carry out acts of violence.

Murphy concluded the email, "Threat actors who are motivated by Anarchist or ANTIFA (or a combination of both) ideologies to carry out acts of violence against State, Local, and Federal authorities and infrastructure they believe represent authority or represent political and social ideas they reject."

#Whistleblower #PortlandProtest Breaking: According to this @DHSgov internal email, obtained @CBSNews, former Actin… https://t.co/Glc5te3Q8N
— Catherine Herridge (@Catherine Herridge)1600124417.0
are organized and show up night after night, and share common TTPs (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures)..”"Threat… https://t.co/o4kG3pkm1w
— Catherine Herridge (@Catherine Herridge)1600124418.0

Recognizing centralization within Antifa is significant because it could make future prosecution of the group easier.

Indeed, acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said last month the government is "targeting" the leaders of Antifa and other groups perpetuating unrest across the country.

Adam Schiff welcomes whistleblower complaint against Trump admin with open arms despite last month accusing said whistleblower of lying to Congress



House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) promised Wednesday the immediate launch of an investigation into whistleblower allegations that senior Trump administration officials censored information on intelligence reports that "made President Trump look bad."

Among the information allegedly censored were details regarding the rising threat of white supremacism and Russia's attempt to interfere in the 2020 election, according to former Department of Homeland Security official Brian Murphy, who filed the formal whistleblower complaint with the department's inspector general this week.

In a press release, Schiff said that he and his committee would probe Murphy's "grave and disturbing" allegations of "serious wrongdoing" by senior Trump officials, including acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolfe and acting Deputy DHS Secretary Ken Cuccinnelli.

"We will get to the bottom of this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American people, and put a stop to the politicization of intelligence," he sternly promised.

Here's the kicker

What Schiff conveniently did not mention is that no more than five weeks earlier he had accused Murphy of lying to Congress.

According to a New York Times report in August, Schiff said that his committee had been conducting "rigorous oversight" of Murphy's actions as acting under secretary in the department's Intelligence and Analysis branch and were "concerned that Murphy may have provided incomplete and potentially misleading information to Committee staff during our recent oversight engagement." (emphases added)

At the time, Murphy had just been reassigned from his position after it was discovered his unit was compiling intelligence on journalists in Portland, Oregon.

The Times report noted that it wasn't only Schiff who had complaints about Murphy's questionable workplace conduct:

In 2015, Mr. Murphy joined F.B.I. headquarters to work on an effort known as Countering Violent Extremism, or C.V.E., after serving as an assistant special agent in charge of counterterrorism in Chicago. Mr. Murphy was known as an ambitious investigator who was once profiled in a self-aggrandizing article about a terrorism case he had worked on. But some former agents and Justice Department officials familiar with Mr. Murphy's work at the time, who requested anonymity to discuss internal discussions at the agencies, expressed concern about some C.V.E. proposals, his tendency to ignore the rules and failure to coordinate his activities. (emphases added)

Furthermore, in the press release, Schiff acknowledged that his committee's investigation into the I&A — and thus Murphy — is ongoing, which makes the timing of Murphy's complaint all the more peculiar.

At the least, it might appear to some that Schiff's opinion of Murphy as a reliable source shifted considerably at the precise moment that Murphy's stance toward the Trump administration turned hostile.

DHS spokesman Alexei Woltornist flatly denied Murphy's allegations Wednesday, saying the department "looks forward to the results of any resulting investigation and we expect it will conclude that no retaliatory action was taken against Mr. Murphy."