The last bastion?

The 3 branches of government are supposed to provide “checks and balances” on each other. Or so went the theory for a few hundred years. We know the Executive branch is out for itself, pursuing one personally profitable transaction after another (did you know that by purchasing a few Trumpcoins, you could earn a personal audience with Dear Leader? Ps: this isn’t a joke) and governing by executive orders, making short shrift of established laws.

What IS a joke is the Legislative branch of the government (aka Congress): the Dems have no power and squandered away any negotiating power they might have had on the budget in March. As for the Republicans, who hold majorities in both the Senate and the House, they simply have no balls (or alternatively have fully merged into the cult of tRump.

That leaves the judicial branch, which, as mentioned before, is under assault — or simply being ignored altogether. We all heard of the judge who got arrested for simply trying to enforce due process in her own courtroom. Intimidation, much??!!

Then there is a bill House Republicans passed: HR 1526, the so-called "No Rogue Rulings Act." The bill, if enacted, would strip federal courts of their ability to declare presidential actions unconstitutional. In other words, it would neuter the courts’ most essential purpose under the Constitution: to check the abuse of executive power. John Marshall’s 1803 ruling in Marbury v. Madison established judicial review as a cornerstone of American democracy.

There is no democracy without an independent judiciary. There is no freedom without judges willing to say "No" to power. By moving to destroy both the authority and the personal security of judges, Trump and his congressional enablers have thrown a lit match into the dry tinder of constitutional governance.

And so here we are…