And Then They Came for the Judges

Since Donald Trump’s return to the White House, every week has come with some “high noon” reckoning — a lonely, do or die moment when Americans face a choice between fight or flight. Suddenly and unfairly, history shines a spotlight on us, and all the reassuring civics lessons we learned in school fly out the window. It may come in the form of a powerhouse law firm wilting before a badgering president’s demands for free legal services, or is perhaps personified by the refusal of a lowly civil servant to turn over the personal files of citizens to Elon Musk or Tom Homan. In High Noon in America, Capital & Main looks at the people and institutions that succeeded or failed to stand up against intimidation.

“We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us,” Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told a Nevada rally earlier this year. “Look at every level of office around and support brawlers who fight, because those are the ones who can actually win against Republicans.” Since then many progressives, including electeds in AOC’s party, have heeded her call, with less sputter and more snarl in their current responses to Trump’s initiatives. 

It was a different story in Old Milwaukee, though. Voices along the partisan divide responded fairly predictably to the FBI’s April 25 arrest of Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, who was accused of interfering with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s apprehension of an undocumented immigrant. Republicans fell back on their “Lock her up!” mode while Dems were quick to express constitutional outrage. 

Well, mostly, as Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley seemed to channel his inner Chuck Schumer when he ventured, “Like any individual in this country, I believe she is entitled to due process. We should let the facts come to light and the legal process play out.” Not exactly Patrick Henry stuff, although some fire crept into the county’s top elected official during an afternoon presser, where he described the FBI’s unprecedented actions as “weaponizing federal law enforcement.”

And, in fact, the federal felony charge of obstruction against Dugan, who normally presides over misdemeanor cases, appeared less an attempt to intimidate a seemingly liberal jurist than to cow other judges into thinking twice about slowing down the administration’s deportation machinery. Still, on paper at least, Dugan faces six years in federal prison — does this mean jaywalkers should fear being put on Death Row?

But Crowley’s initial response suggested a politician — and, perhaps, a Democratic Party — whose resistance to President Trump is marshmallow-firm. Such worries have arisen this year ever since Senator Schumer’s cave-in to the GOP’s draconian spending bill in March. The minority leader memorably justified his action by claiming his support for the bill was “to minimize the harms to the American people.” It was clearly in reply to Schumer’s milquetoasty statement that Ocasio-Cortez called for Nevadans to choose brawlers to represent them against Trump.

Schumer is no brawler. Nor, apparently, is Crowley. But Democrats’ painful memories of political weakness go further back than these two men, to the 2000 presidential battle to have all of Al Gore’s Florida votes counted. Then, Jeffrey Toobin wrote, as polite party leaders ”were hunched over their calculators, the Republicans were breaking bar stools over their heads.” While we wait for the facts to come to light and the legal process to play out in Judge Dugan’s case, we should expect the bar stools to come out again.

Judging by a recent speech, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is a brawler who could probably wield a bar stool or two himself. Speaking to a New Hampshire audience, he called out “do-nothing Democrats” who were shrinking from battle with the administration.

“It’s time,” said Pritzker, “to stop thinking that we can reason or negotiate with a madman, time to stop apologizing when we were not wrong. Time to stop surrendering when we need to fight.”

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