Chief Justice Roberts’ 2024 year-end report “It has raised the specter of public defiance of federal court rulings by elected officials across the political spectrum,” it warned. When I read that claim, I had no idea who the chief was referring to. I know critics have talked about stripping jurisdiction, expanding courts, term limits, etc., but are you openly defiant? Who suggested that?
Ruth Marcus theory. She wrote that Roberts was bashing J.D. Vance. She points out several things Vance has said over the years. (I missed one part. Politico Magazine I have cited some of these sources) I follow law and politics very closely and have never heard of these statements. Let’s look at them one at a time.
firstMarcus wrote about candidate Vance’s September 2021 appearance on Jack Murphy Live. podcast. You can listen to the entire podcast here. hereOr read your report card. here. And here is the section that Marcus quotes in part (27:13): (She omitted the “level of constitutional crisis” part.)
If I were to give him one piece of advice, it would be that what Trump should do is fire all mid-level bureaucrats and replace all civil servants in the administrative state with our own people. And the court will stand before the court, and when the court stops, you stand before the country like Andrew Jackson and say the Chief Justice has made his decision. Now let him implement it. Because even if the Republicans win the election, I think this is a crisis at the constitutional level if they allow bureaucrats to continue to control the entire country. Then we lose. We have been permanently defeated. We gave up forever.
Vance returns to that topic a few minutes later on the podcast (32:39).
And I think the fundamental problem with the administrative state is that public officials fail to deliver real results and elected officials, especially the President, have no real recourse when public officials step out of line. Now the left doesn’t care about this. Because government officials are all part of their team. But we should really care about this. Because the officials are about 90 to 10 on our team. So I think what the Senate can do is push the legal boundaries. Insofar as the Supreme Court essentially makes it possible for democratically accountable people in the executive and legislative branches to fire the middle levels. , up to high-ranking civil servants, to me is the meat of the administrative state. This does not mean that civil servants will be replaced. This doesn’t mean, for example, that we fire everyone every time there’s a new president. But if only they knew they could be fired, the reality is that a lot of this red tape is like a fundamental fact of the federal government: the people who implement the policies are often not fully accountable to the people who actually choose to implement those policies. When that happens, it is not a true constitutional republic. But unfortunately, that is exactly where we are today.
Here Vance makes it clear that he is not asking for a defiance of the court. He will find out how far the courts will allow the president to go. This is a viable strategy within limits.
Considering the entire podcast, Vance is not actually calling for a complaint to the Supreme Court. The Andrew Jackson line is almost cliché at this point. In any case, it is from an unknown source. It’s almost certain that Jackson said that.
secondMarcus cites Vance’s February 2025 appearance on ABC. George Stephanopoulos asked Vance about appearing on the podcast.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Fire everyone in government and take it to the Supreme Court?
Do you think it’s okay for the president to complain to the Supreme Court?
VANCE: No, no, George. I’m not saying fire all government employees. I said replace middle-level officials with people who are responsive to the government’s agenda. That is called democracy.
STEPHANOPOULOS: All civil servants of the administrative state.
VANCE: One of the problems is — no, George, I said middle-level officials. And one of the problems with this government is…
STEPHANOPOULOS: You said, “All civil servants of the administrative state.”
VANCE: Let me conclude my answer by someone who actually doesn’t — who doesn’t — let me finish my answer, George. You asked a question. We face a serious problem with administrators and bureaucrats in government who are unresponsive to elected branches.
Let me give you one real-world example of this. Donald Trump, who defeated ISIS in 2019, said troops in Syria and Jordan should be redeployed out of the region. There were several Pentagon officials who fought with him on that issue.
So what happened? There are people sitting like ducks in the Levant right now, three of whom have just been murdered because the bureaucracy did not listen to the political department.
George, it is a fundamental element of our government that whoever is in charge must follow the rules, whether you agree with him or not. If those people don’t follow the rules, of course they should be fired, and of course the president should be able to run the government as he sees fit. This is how the Constitution works. This has been frustrated too many times by the way our bureaucracy has worked over the last 15 years.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Doesn’t the Constitution say that the president must comply with lawful Supreme Court rulings?
VANCE: The Constitution says the Supreme Court can rule. But the Supreme Court — and, look. I hope they don’t do this, but if the Supreme Court were to rule that the President of the United States cannot fire a general, that would be an illegal ruling, and in fact the President would have to have Article II privileges under the Constitution to run. Army as he sees fit.
This is basic constitutional legitimacy. You’re talking about the assumption that the Supreme Court is trying to run the military on. I don’t think that’s going to happen, George. But if so, the president will have to respond. There are several instances in American history where presidents have done just that.
STEPHANOPOULOS: You didn’t say “military” in your response, and you made it very clear that you believe the president can challenge the Supreme Court.
Stephanopoulous only quotes part of the podcast, not the part where Vance says the president should go “as far as the Supreme Court will allow.” And I think Vance’s explanation is consistent with what he said. Vance is also right about what would happen if the Supreme Court prevented a president from firing a general. Does anyone disagree?
thirdmarcus points From a March 2024 interview in Politico Magazine:
On several occasions (most recently in an interview with Stephanopoulos), Vance has suggested that a second-term Trump presidency should summarily fire a significant number of mid-level federal officials, and publicly refuse to do so if the Supreme Court steps in to stop him. order
I asked him if this was an accurate description of his views.
“Yes.” he said
I asked him for an explanation.
“To me, this is not the job of limited government, this is the job of democracy. Likewise, we need bureaucrats to respond to elected institutions of government,” he said. “The counterargument is, ‘Aren’t you creating a constitutional crisis?’ And my answer is, ‘No.’ When an elected president says, ‘You’re recognizing a constitutional crisis.I can control my government employees,’ and the Supreme Court intervened and said, ‘you shouldn’t do that‘ — It’s like a constitutional crisis. It’s not like Trump or anyone else would respond. “When the Supreme Court tells the president he can no longer control the government, we need to be honest about what’s really going on.”
Here I think Vance is again hinting at a hypothetical constitutional crisis. When we get to the point where the court itself is clearly violating the Constitution, I think we need to have a different conversation. Frankly, I appreciate Vance’s candor. Roberts can hide behind a veneer of judicial power, but there are limits to the court’s power. And we shouldn’t pretend otherwise.
Let’s go back to Roberts’ quote.
But over the past few years, elected officials from across the political spectrum; It raised the specter of public defiance of federal court rulings. These dangerous proposals, no matter how sporadic, must be resolutely rejected.
Judgment, plural. Director, were you talking about JD Vance? I think that’s a stretch.
And this is another reason why I absolutely hate podcasts. This was a 90-minute debate in which Vance scored a lot of points. If you just pick out a few words here and there and ignore the broader context, you’ll miss a lot. There’s a good reason I record podcasts.
