John Roberts Sends Pathetic Message to Trump on Takeover of Courts

Chief Justice John Roberts offered a gentle rebuke of Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the judiciary. 

During a fireside chat Wednesday night marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in Buffalo, Roberts emphasized the importance of judicial independence. 

“In our Constitution, judges and the judiciary is a coequal branch of government separate from the others with the authority to interpret the constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts said. “And that innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent.

“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,” he said.

The chief justice’s impartial recounting of the nation’s founding document flies in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to sidestep the checks and balances provided by the judiciary. 

Roberts also doubled down on his rare public criticism of Trump, after the president called to impeach a federal judge who ruled against his illegal deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. 

“Well, I’ve already spoken to that, and impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions,” Roberts said. 

But Roberts’s mild criticism may not be enough, as the administration has escalated into making direct threats. When announcing his inane plan to reopen Alcatraz Sunday, Trump listed “judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals” alongside the “criminals” and “thugs” he hoped to imprison there. 

Josh Gerstein, a senior legal affairs reporter at Politico, suggested that there may be a method to Roberts’s missing madness. 

“Subdued Roberts seemed to be keeping his powder dry since many of the big fights, like law firms, deportations, contempt, are making their way to the court or already there,” Gerstein wrote on X Thursday.  “A reasonable strategy, but that’s not some rousing defense of the judiciary or separation of powers.”

Gerstein noted that Roberts’s “‘judicial independence’ stuff” was “thinner” than his 2024 Year End report on the federal judiciary, which had compared political bias to doxxing and disinformation as some of the “illegitimate activity” that threatens independent judges. At the time, his comments seemed to echo Trump’s complaints about critics who went after judges that ruled in his favor. Now the Trump administration has taken to attacking so-called “activist” judges who rule against him. 

Roberts’s refute is comparatively limp when held beside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s recent indictment of the right-wing campaign of threats being used to intimidate judges.

“The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said last week.

Trump had a press conference Thursday to explain to everyone that the beautiful, spectacular trade deal that he’s made with Britain is actually unfinished.

“The final details are being written up in the coming weeks; we’ll have it all very conclusive, but the actual deal is a conclusive one,” Trump said to reporters with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the other line. “We think just about everything has been approved, so good for both countries.”

While details remain extremely unclear, this “deal” is said to include greater market access and mutually lowered tariffs.

Trump taking a victory lap for an unfinished, undefined deal immediately raised eyebrows.

“Why Britain? And why now? … You’ve described this deal as a full and comprehensive deal, and yet … clearly, there’s much more work left to do,” said James Matthews of Sky News. “With respect, are you overstating the reach and significance of this deal, because you’re a president who needs a result at a difficult time?”

Trump proceeded to ramble, almost completely avoiding Matthews’s question.

“I think that it’s a great deal for both parties.… It opens up a tremendous market for us. It works out very well, very well. A lot of assets, you see the chart. Those are tremendous assets. But we’ve been trying, and when you say, ‘Why us?’ meaning your country; we’ve been trying for years, and they’ve been trying for years to make a deal.… This is a maxed-out deal, not like you said it, really incorrectly. This is a maxed-out deal that we’re gonna make bigger. And we’ll make it bigger through growth.”

The framework of the deal that has been announced would reduce U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 0 percent and reduce auto tariffs to 10 percent, while leaving in a baseline 10 percent tariffs on all other products. Trump also bragged about greater market access in the United Kingdom for American beef, before being reminded by a reporter that the U.K. doesn’t accept American beef because of its higher food standards.

The Trump administration apparently deported two U.S. citizen children—ages 5 and 4—after surreptitiously luring their mother to an immigration appointment. 

Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband, Omar, had just dropped off their three children at school in Austin, Texas, last Thursday when they were pulled over by Texas state troopers ostensibly for having an expired license plate. But then, the police officers turned the couple over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as suspected undocumented immigrants. 

Omar was sent to an ICE detention center and then deported to Mexico, but Parra Vargas was fitted with an electronic bracelet and told to report to a processing center near Austin on Tuesday. An Austin-based criminal justice and immigration advocacy organization, Grassroots Leadership, said to the Daily Beast that “she was told that if she showed up, then she would be eligible for asylum as well as a work permit.”

Parra Vargas complied, and showed up on Tuesday with her three children, two of whom are U.S. citizens, for what she thought was a routine appointment. But then she and all of her children seemed to disappear in ICE custody. Grassroots Leadership scrambled its legal team to try to find them. 

“We were just trying to figure out where she was,” a spokesperson for the organization said. “ICE was not giving us information.”

Even entering Parra Vargas’s information into ICE’s online detainee locator wasn’t showing any results. Then Parra Vargas called the organization to tell them that she had been deported to Mexico with her three children.

“When she called from the other side of the border, she said that she signed a paper, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was,” the spokesperson said. “She did not understand what she was signing.”

ICE seems to have disregarded the fact that two of Parra Vargas’s children are citizens and could have stayed in the U.S. with a caretaker. She does not appear to have been informed of her options, Grassroots Leadership said. 

“She never had a chance to consult with anybody,” the organization’s spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “Any efforts from our end to be able to advocate for her release, or even for our legal team to be able to work on her release, none of that was possible because we weren’t even able to locate her.”

Parra Vargas’s situation fits a pattern of haphazard and cruel immigration actions from the Trump administration. Her two U.S. citizen children aren’t the first Americans to be swept up by ICE or even deported in President Trump’s second term. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen with learning disabilities, was detained by a Border Patrol officer while visiting Tucson, Arizona, and spent 10 days in ICE detention before being released. 

Late last month, the Trump administration was caught lying about undocumented immigrant women being deported with their U.S. citizen children. Similar to Parra Vargas, the women were prevented from communicating with legal counsel while in ICE custody. It appears that in order to get around the pesky constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, the Trump administration is deporting them anyway if they’re kids. 

RFK Jr.’s old running mate thinks someone is controlling him—and it isn’t Trump. 

Former vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan was both surprised and dismayed by the nomination of Casey Means, a pseudoscientific doctor with zero clinical experience, for U.S. surgeon general. 

“Yes, it’s very strange. Doesn’t make any sense. I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that neither of these siblings would be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be). I don’t know if RFK very clearly lied to me, or what is going on,” Shanahan wrote on X Wednesday evening. “It has been clear in recent conversations that he is reporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn’t President Trump). With regards to the siblings, there is something very artificial and aggressive about them, almost like they were bred and raised Manchurian assets.”

The other sibling Shanahan is referring to is Means’s brother Calley, who is an adviser to RFK Jr.

There’s a lot going on here. What’s actually strange is how shocked and betrayed Shanahan seems to feel about this. The man whose ticket she ran on has for decades pushed conspiracy theories about vaccines causing autism, Black people having naturally stronger immune systems, and the Covid-19 pandemic being prolonged by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, among other views. This all sounds perfectly in line with someone like Means, a snake oil salesman who has called vaccine mandates “criminal.” 

And who does she possibly think is controlling RFK Jr. if not Donald Trump? Laura Loomer? QAnon? His MAHA disciples? The remnants of the worm in his brain? It’s likely RFK Jr. is just lying to Shanahan in these “recent conversations” they’ve had. She might even be lying to herself. 

“Calley and Dr. Casey Means, siblings on a mission to end corruption and help Make America Healthy Again,” Shanahan wrote in response to a post from Calley Means last September. Means thanked her and called her an inspiration. What changed between now and then?

Someone here is misrepresenting their views on the Means nomination. It’d be helpful if Shanahan started naming some names as to who this mysterious puppet master controlling RFK Jr. is. 

Donald Trump threw yet another tantrum Thursday about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s latest alert that the president’s tariffs will cripple economic growth.

“‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Other than that, I like him very much!

“Oil and Energy way down, almost all costs (groceries and ‘eggs’) down, virtually NO INFLATION, Tariff Money Pouring Into the U.S.—THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ‘TOO LATE!’ ENJOY!” Trump added.

The Federal Reserve chair issued a fresh warning Wednesday about inevitable stagflation. “If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they’re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment,” said Powell.

Since first imposing his sweeping “reciprocal” tariff policy, Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for not lowering the interest rates to offset any economic damage, dubbing him “Mr. Too Late” and “a major loser,” and even calling for his termination.

As tariff tensions rise, Trump has taken to pushing his own lies about prices.

While the price of oil has been falling, it spiked Thursday, buoyed by optimism about trade talks between the U.S. and China. That has not, however, translated into cheaper prices at the gas pump. Trump has repeatedly claimed the price of gas is only $1.98, but U.S. drivers were actually paying more than $3 a gallon as of Monday.

Trump’s claims about the falling price of groceries are also questionable.

“I’m not aware of any data that supports that,” said Tucker Balch, a finance professor at Emory University, who spoke to ABC News about Trump’s claims of lowered prices in the checkout aisle. The already high prices of groceries have stayed relatively stable throughout the first 100 days of Trump’s presidential term, according to data from the federal government.

Trump has also lied about how much money his tariffs are actually making. In April, he claimed that they were raking in $2 billion per day. In reality, they’d collected closer to $250 million each day, according to Customs and Border Protection.