Vice President JD Vance ripped into Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts for saying the courts are an equal branch of government whose job is to “check the excesses” of the executive branch.
Earlier this month, Roberts responded to calls from MAGA to impeach judges who ruled against Donald Trump’s policies by saying, “In our Constitution, the judiciary is a coequal branch of government, separate from the others, with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law, and strike down acts of Congress or acts of the president.”
“That innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent,” he continued during a fireside chat in Buffalo, New York. “Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive, and that does require a degree of independence.”
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His remarks drew applause from the crowd.
Less than a week later, Roberts warned a group of graduating law students that the rule of law was “endangered” and called for an end to “trashing the justices” of the Supreme Court. The comments came as Trump and his supporters have attacked federal judges—including conservative Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—and ignored judicial rulings.
But instead of heeding Roberts’ warnings, Vance—who as a graduate of Yale Law School would be well aware of the separation of powers and the role of the judiciary—responded by accusing the courts of mounting an effort “to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.”
“I saw an interview with Chief Justice Roberts recently where he said the role of the court is to check the excesses of the executive. I thought that was a profoundly wrong sentiment,” Vance said in a podcast interview with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat that aired Wednesday. “That’s one-half of his job. The other half of his job is to check the excesses of his own branch.”
Federal judges have repeatedly ruled the Trump administration must give migrants due process, which has inevitably slowed down the president’s mass deportation efforts.
When a judge temporarily halted deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the judge, James Boasberg, was a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator.”
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote.
The Supreme Court later allowed the deportation flights to resume but said the migrants had to be given a chance to challenge their deportations.
The court also unanimously ruled in April that the U.S. government must “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison, and share the steps it was taking with the district court.
Instead of following the ruling, Attorney General Pam Bondi appeared on Fox News and insisted Abrego Garcia’s wife and 5-year-old son—who are both U.S. citizens—were better off without him.
Later, she attacked the judges who have issued rulings upholding due process for migrants, calling them “deranged” and threatening to arrest them. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, meanwhile, has ranted that a cabal of “communist judges” were trying to “shut down the machinery of our national security apparatus.”
Last week, Trump sent the Supreme Court justices a thinly veiled warning in a case involving nationwide injunctions against the president’s attempts to end birthright citizenship, which is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“The Radical Left SleazeBags, which has no cards remaining in its illegal bag of tricks, is, in a very coordinated manner, PLAYING THE REF with regards to the Supreme Court,” Trump wrote as the court prepared to hear oral arguments in the case.
“They lost the Election in a landslide, and with it, have totally lost their confidence and reason. They are stone cold CRAZY,” he continued. “I hope the Supreme Court doesn’t fall for the games they play. The people are with us in bigger numbers than ever before.”
Vance’s remarks Wednesday struck a similar theme.
“You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they’re not allowed to have what they voted for,” Vance said. “That’s where we are right now. We’re going to keep working it through the immigration court process, through the Supreme Court as much as possible.”
Douthat didn’t ask him to elaborate on the “as much as possible” part.
