Martyrs don’t bend the knee — even to the state



In 1535, Saint Thomas More went to his death, not in defiance of his king but in ultimate service to both God and England. His final words — “I die the king’s faithful servant, and God’s first” — captured the essence of true religious liberty: the freedom to fulfill the duty to worship God rightly. As the patron saint of religious liberty, More challenges lawmakers and church leaders to renew their commitment to defending that sacred duty.

To More, religious liberty wasn’t just freedom from state interference. It meant the freedom to obey God, even at the cost of his life. His last declaration made clear that duty to God comes before any loyalty to civil authority. Pope Leo XIII put it plainly in “Immortale Dei”: “We are bound absolutely to worship God in that way which He has shown to be His will.”

When laws hinder the duty to worship God rightly, they chip away at the foundation of religious liberty the founders meant to preserve.

More lived this principle, choosing martyrdom over surrender to the world. His death makes clear that real freedom begins with obedience to God — a truth rooted in the moral obligations of human nature. To defend religious liberty is to affirm the duty to give God the worship He deserves, a duty no earthly power — not even a king — can rightly deny.

America’s founders understood this well. They saw religious liberty not as license, but as the right to fulfill one’s duty to God. James Madison wrote, “It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”

RELATED: Why Trump's religious liberty agenda terrifies the left — but tells the truth

imagedepotpro via iStock/Getty Images

America’s founders drafted the Constitution with the understanding that citizens would practice their religious duties — not as optional acts, but as essential to a free and moral society. As John Adams put it, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

That understanding now faces growing threats. When laws hinder the duty to worship God rightly, they chip away at the foundation of religious liberty the founders meant to preserve. Consider the case of Colorado baker Jack Phillips. For refusing to make cakes that violated his faith, Phillips endured more than a decade of legal battles, fines, protests, and business losses. He wasn’t seeking special treatment — he simply wanted to live out his faith. Although the Supreme Court eventually sided with him, the fight drained years of his life and resources. Religious liberty delayed for a decade amounts to religious liberty denied.

True religious freedom, as More and the founders envisioned it, demands strong protections for people and institutions to live out their beliefs in every area of life, not just within a sanctuary or under the narrow shelter of exemptions.

To fulfill the vision of religious liberty embodied by Thomas More and upheld by America’s founders, Americans must renew their commitment to strengthening religious institutions through laws that promote the common good. Elected leaders cannot separate their faith from their public responsibilities. Religious truth shapes just governance.

Having just celebrated Religious Liberty Week, we would do well to recall More’s words: “God’s first.” True religious liberty begins with the duty to worship God as He commands. That duty forms the bedrock of a free and just society.

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.

This red-state attorney general has declared war on the First Amendment



We thought the Supreme Court had finally purged anti-religious discrimination from Establishment Clause jurisprudence. After years of confusion — conflating the ban on state-sponsored religion with an invented mandate to scrub faith from public life — the Court, through a series of rulings on religious schools and public funding, had restored sanity. It returned the law to its pre-Warren era understanding: Equal treatment of religion does not violate the Constitution.

Yet, here we are again.

Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.

In a move that stunned observers, Oklahoma’s own Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond and the state supreme court now argue that states cannot recognize religious charter schools.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. The case centers on St. Isidore, a Catholic online school seeking to join Oklahoma’s charter school system. Drummond contends the school’s religious affiliation disqualifies it. He sued the state charter board — a move usually made by the ACLU or militant secularist groups.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court sided with him. The court claimed that granting charter status to a Catholic school would violate the First Amendment by effectively establishing Catholicism as a state religion. Justices labeled charter schools “state actors” and argued that any religious affiliation disqualifies a school from public recognition.

This logic turns the First Amendment on its head. The Constitution does not require hostility toward religion. It requires neutrality. Denying a religious school access to a public benefit — simply because it is religious — violates precedent.

Oklahoma’s Charter Schools Act permits any “private college or university, private person, or private organization” to apply for state funding to open a charter school. Excluding religious applicants contradicts not one but three major Supreme Court rulings.

In Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc v. Comer (2017), the court ruled that excluding a religious school from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified “solely because it is a church” is “odious to our Constitution.” That case involved a grant for playground resurfacing. If states can’t deny rubber mulch, they can’t deny full charter status.

In Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue (2020), a 5-4 majority held that state constitutions barring aid to religious institutions over secular ones violates the Free Exercise Clause. Public benefits, the Chief Justice John Roberts emphasized, cannot be denied “solely because of the religious character of the schools.”

Then came Carson v. Makin (2022), where Maine tried to distinguish between religious status and religious use, barring religious schools from voucher funds. The court rejected the distinction. Roberts, writing again for the majority, ruled that the program “operates to identify and exclude otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” He warned that attempts to judge how a religious school carries out its mission invite unconstitutional state entanglement.

So how, after such ironclad precedent, do we find a Republican state attorney general and a court in a state Trump carried in every county ruling that religious schools can’t even apply for public funding?

The answer lies in years of lukewarm Republican control. These are Republicans in name only, who blocked judicial reform and refused to challenge activist courts. Now, Drummond wants a promotion. He’s announced his run for governor after already overruling the state education superintendent’s decision to ban pornography in public libraries.

This case reveals a larger pattern. Courts act as a one-way ratchet. Even after strong Supreme Court rulings, liberal lower courts defy precedent. They delay, split hairs, and distinguish without merit. The high court may reverse Oklahoma, but its rulings rarely secure lasting victories.

And the irony? Those who claim that equal treatment of religion violates the Establishment Clause are the ones betraying its meaning.

During the House debate on the First Amendment in 1789, James Madison explained: “Congress should not establish a religion, and enforce the legal observation of it by law, nor compel men to worship God in any manner contrary to their conscience.”

That principle — freedom of conscience without coercion — shaped the American experiment. Far from excluding religion, the founders assumed its influence. As Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, “The Americans combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive of one without the other.” He added that politics and religion formed an “alliance which has never been dissolved.”

It’s time for the Supreme Court to reaffirm that alliance — clearly, decisively, and without leaving room for lower courts to ignore. And in Oklahoma, it’s time to elect Republicans who still believe the Bible belongs in the Bible Belt.

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.

Trump Is Right To Push Back Against Judicial Supremacy

A federal judge has no power to usurp Executive Branch authority or dictate foreign policy to the president.

History affirms Trump’s right to use the Alien Enemies Act against gangs



President Donald Trump on Friday issued a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. Predictably, this move drew the ire of anti-borders activists, who classified it as an attempt to circumvent due process protections for illegal aliens. Critics claimed that the legislation can be used only in times of war, but do they have a legal leg to stand on? For several significant reasons, they do not.

The Alien Enemies Act was first passed in 1798 as one of four pieces of legislation collectively — and erroneously — referred to as the “Alien and Sedition Acts.” These laws were implemented in response to the undeclared Quasi-War with France — bolstering the federal government’s power to react to national security threats.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that noncitizens have no constitutional right to stay in the US unlawfully.

Contrary to popular open-border narratives, these laws were not originally universally reviled. Many Americans saw them as necessary measures to ensure the safety and sovereignty of their newly established nation. Out of the four laws, however, only the Alien Enemies Act survived; the others either expired or were replaced before the Supreme Court established judicial review in 1803 with Marbury v. Madison.

Where does that leave the Trump administration today? Historically, the Alien Enemies Act has been used during wartime or in response to an invasion, such as the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II. The law itself was written broadly, however. It states that when the United States is at war with a foreign nation — or when an “invasion or predatory incursion” occurs — the president has the authority to detain and remove citizens of the hostile country.

The key question now is whether the law applies to foreign nationals like Tren de Aragua and other non-military individuals who have entered the country illegally. That hinges on the definition of “invade” or "predatory incursion.” Interestingly, neither term is defined explicitly in U.S. law, nor has the Supreme Court clarified it.

However, history offers some clues. Colonial-era legal documents allowed British subjects to defend themselves against foreign threats described as "destruction, invasion, detriment, or annoyance.” In Federalist 41, James Madison referred to the need to protect against "pirates and barbarians," suggesting that non-state actors engaged in criminal activities could qualify as invaders. Similarly, in Federalist 43, Madison warned of threats from hostile nations and the “ambitious or vindictive enterprises of [a state’s] more powerful neighbors.”

Based on these historical interpretations, two conclusions emerge. First, an invasion doesn’t have to come from a foreign government’s military. Second, as the Texas Public Policy Foundation notes, criminal organizations like cartel-linked gangs could be classified as engaging in an invasion or predatory incursion if their activities undermine U.S. sovereignty. That’s exactly what Tren de Aragua is doing.

Trump justified his decision by pointing out that Tren de Aragua is a designated foreign terrorist organization with thousands of members who have illegally entered the U.S. According to his statement, the gang is engaging in "irregular warfare and hostile actions" aimed at harming Americans, destabilizing communities, and furthering the Maduro regime’s influence.

The U.S. Constitution gives the government broad powers to respond to evolving global threats, and the Supreme Court has historically limited its review of immigration-related decisions. Additionally, the Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that noncitizens have no constitutional right to stay in the U.S. unlawfully.

In Kleindienst v. Mandel, the court ruled that unadmitted, nonresident foreigners have no right to entry or continued presence in the country. Similarly, Mathews v. Diaz upheld congressional authority to make laws for noncitizens that would never apply to U.S. citizens.

Given such precedent, it is hard to argue that the president lacks the authority to remove gang members who threaten American security just because Venezuela hasn’t formally declared war. But never underestimate the extent to which those manifesting “Trump derangement syndrome” will interfere with legitimate attempts to protect U.S. citizens from the likes of Tren de Aragua.

This Yale professor warns of Elon Musk’s ‘fascism’ — and misses the real threat



Timothy Snyder may not be well known in American conservative circles, but his European influence is substantial. I hadn’t heard of the Yale historian until I moved to Vienna, Austria, where he enjoys a kind of celebrity status. European leaders frequently refer to his ideas, whether they are criticizing Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency or comparing JD Vance’s criticism of censorship at the Munich Security Conference last month to the Holocaust. These talking points have crossed the Atlantic, reaching U.S. media through figures like CBS News moderator Margaret Brennan. Snyder’s influence among the American left continues to grow.

I recently attended Snyder’s “Making Sense of an Unsettling World” lecture at Vienna’s Institute for Human Sciences. His casual demeanor, paired with a Zelenskyy-style quarter-zip — a nod to the Ukrainian leader he has met and advised — reinforces his “rebel professor” image. This blend of defiance and intellect captivates and galvanizes college students, making Snyder both a compelling and polarizing figure.

Snyder’s call to 'defend institutions' fails to recognize that institutions can be corrupt, bloated, and unaccountable.

After the predictable barrage of ad hominem attacks on Trump — of which there were many — Snyder shifted his focus to the most controversial figure in the administration: Elon Musk. As Snyder spoke, I couldn’t help but notice the vast ideological divide between the left and the right. This gap felt particularly sobering, not just because of its seemingly unbridgeable nature but also because Snyder's perspective undermines the very foundation necessary to bridge such divides: dissent and dialogue enabled by free speech.

Snyder accuses Musk of building a privatized, fascistic government by dismantling America's institutions. According to Snyder, we common folk are mere pawns in Musk’s algorithmic “system,” which he claims is designed to predict and manipulate human behavior. The goal, Snyder argues, is clear: to destroy institutions, privatize government functions, and siphon taxpayer dollars into Musk’s pockets.

Negative vs. positive freedom

Snyder’s argument centers on a critique of the conservative notion of “negative freedom” — the idea that freedom is best preserved by minimizing external restraints on the individual. He dismisses this concept as “freedom against,” portraying it as a tool ripe for exploitation by figures like Elon Musk. In Snyder's view, Musk uses this version of freedom to turn the masses “against” institutions, only to privatize them for personal gain later.

In contrast, Snyder champions the left-leaning principle of “positive freedom,” or “freedom for.”This approach suggests that freedom is only legitimate when exercised in service of ideals codified and enforced through institutions. According to Snyder's 2016 manifesto, which evolved into his New York Times best-selling pamphlet "On Tyranny," institutions “preserve human decency” and serve as the greatest barriers to tyranny. In this framework, Musk emerges as Snyder’s villain, a modern-day figure following in the footsteps of 20th-century fascists who dismantled institutions to consolidate power.

Institutions need accountability

Snyder’s alarmism about Musk exposes the deep divide between the left and right on the nature of freedom and the role of institutions. While critiques of corporate and political power are valid, Snyder’s perspective assumes that institutions should be defended without question, a stance that conflicts with conservatives’ healthy skepticism of concentrated power — a skepticism the left once shared.

Positive freedom, as Snyder envisions it, relies on the belief that government can act as a benevolent force. This assumption contradicts James Madison’s warning that “if angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.” But angels don’t govern us. Washington bureaucrats are subject to the same ills and vices that make government over the masses necessary. Defending institutional authority without scrutiny undermines the conservative commitment to negative freedom — the principle that individual liberties should be checks against excessive power.

Snyder’s solution, then, is not just to oppose authoritarian figures but to resist decentralization itself. He cites Aristotle and Plato to argue that inequality leads to instability and that demagogues exploit free speech to seize power. In Snyder’s world, speech is only “free” when it supports institutional interests rather than challenges them. Yet his call to “defend institutions” fails to recognize that institutions can be corrupt, bloated, and unaccountable. Snyder assumes institutions are inherently legitimate, ignoring the need for them to be accountable to the people they serve.

Where Snyder falls short

Snyder’s argument falls apart here. The left's crusade against so-called oligarchs like Musk isn’t about returning power to the people — it’s about re-centralizing it under authorities leftists consider ideologically acceptable.

Negative freedom is dangerous to them because it allows individuals to dissent, challenge state-sanctioned narratives, and question institutional orthodoxy. Yet it is precisely this freedom that has protected human decency from the imposition of top-down tyranny.

Snyder is right that institutions should be defended when they uphold the people's dignity, rights, and liberties. But just as institutions act as a check on the whims of the populace, the dissent of the people serves as a vital check on the inherent corruptibility of institutions. As Madison argued, both safeguards are essential.

When Snyder and his growing following on the global left seek to suppress dissent for the sake of institutional authority, they don’t prevent tyranny — they empower it.

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.

Ilhan Omar Proves Why Some Foreigners Should Never Be Allowed To Hold U.S. Office

Omar's remarks prove she has no grasp of what it means to be 'American' and therefore should be disqualified from holding American office.