Courts Have A Vital Function In A Democracy, Though Not In An Autocracy...And We're Still The Former

Good News From John Roberts, Alabama And Wisconsin

I was surprised yesterday when I saw a NY Times headline about John Roberts saying the courts must check the excesses of Congress and the president. He was speaking at a gathering on judges and lawyers on Wednesday in Buffalo, which is where he’s from. He also shot down Trump’s, Musk’s— and MAGA’s generally—  diatribes about impeaching judges who issue rulings you disagree with.

Asked to expound on his views on judicial independence, Roberts said “It’s central,” adding that the job of the judiciary was “to obviously decide cases but in the course of that to check the excesses of Congress or the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.”

In mid-March, Trump called for the impeachment of a federal trial judge who had tried to pause the deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, calling the judge, James Boasberg, a “Radical Left Lunatic.” Hours later, the chief justice issued a rare public statement.

“For more than two centuries it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” the chief justice said then. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

The statement, which did not name Trump or Judge Boasberg, echoed two earlier moments when the chief justice has weighed in about political matters in recent years.

In 2018, he issued a statement after Mr. Trump called a judge who had ruled against his first administration’s asylum policy “an Obama judge.”

“We do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges,” Chief Justice Roberts said in a statement then. “What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them. That independent judiciary is something we should all be thankful for.”

Yesterday “a federal court with a Clinton appointee and 2 Trump appointees ruled that Alabama engaged in intentional discrimination when it refused to draw a congressional plan with a second Black majority district after courts, including the Supreme Court, repeatedly rejected maps with just one such district.” The judges told the state that the 2026 election will be run with the court-approved map.

And also yesterday, Congressman Mark Pocan told us that “The people of Wisconsin deserve fair maps.” Everyone does… but Wisconsin has especially unfair maps and it appears that those maps are going to be addressed by the state Supreme Court. Marc Elias’ law firm has filed a suit challenging the state’s congressional maps, asking the Supreme Court to reconsider the maps ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

“The lawsuit,” reported Annabella Rosciglione, “argues that the maps violate multiple clauses of the Wisconsin Constitution. The current map, redrawn by Gov. Tony Evers (D-WI), favors Republicans. The state has a near even split between registered Republicans and Democrats, but of Wisconsin’s eight U.S. House seats, just two are Democrats: Reps. Gwen Moore and Mark Pocan each represent heavily Democratic areas… In 2023, after the Wisconsin Supreme Cour flipped to a liberal majority, a lawsuit challenging the state’s legislative maps was successful, and those districts were redrawn… The 2024 new legislative maps allowed Democrats to pick up a number of seats in the state Assembly and state Senate in the last election.”

After the suit was filed, Randy Bryce, a likely 2026 congressional contender said us that he’s “had to deal with gerrymandering every time I’ve run for office. Voters should choose the candidate not the other way around. Wisconsin is a blue/purple state. Just check the statewide elections and see how they’ve gone. There’s no way in hell that a purple state should have a 6-2 GOP majority. With fair maps there’s no way Bryan Steil gets paid to do nothing for another two years. Fair maps is what Wisconsin voted for when we recently elected Justice Crawford.”

Emily Berge is the progressive Democrat taking on Derrick Van Orden this cycle. “This lawsuit,” she told us, “underscores what so many of us in western Wisconsin already know: the people of our state are not being fairly represented in Congress. Wisconsin is a 50/50 state, but our congressional map is rigged to favor one party. That’s not democracy— that’s gerrymandering. I’m running because voters should choose their representatives, not the other way around. Fair maps mean real accountability, real competition, and a government that reflects the will of the people— not political insiders. It’s time to restore that balance in the 3rd District and across Wisconsin.”