May 28, 2025 |
JD Vance is a lot of things: Donald Trump’s loyal lap dog, an observant Catholic and a Yale-trained lawyer. During his recent interview with the conservative columnist Ross Douthat, the vice president made clear those are in descending order of importance.
Hours after meeting the new Pope, Vance explained how his faith might bend to the realities of his political position and why the rule of law should do the same. Never once did he suggest Trump’s grotesque behavior should ever be tempered, limited or even judged by standards of the law or moral teaching.
Indeed, it seemed clear that Vance’s Christianity ends at the point where Trump’s ego begins. The rule of law is useful so long as it enables rather than limits Trump’s exercising power. In this respect Vance is an ordinary sycophant in an extraordinary position of authority.
His main complaint during the interview was that the courts are not rolling over for Trump. He chastised the Chief Justice for being “profoundly wrong” in believing the role of the judiciary is to check excesses of the executive branch. In fact, the Chief said it was to “check the excesses of Congress or the executive.”
This was not the only instance in which Vance apparently forgot the role of Congress or the idea of checks and balances. He repeatedly complained about judges blocking the administration’s unlawful and unconstitutional actions — casting them as undemocratic. He whined, “I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.” |
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Later in the interview, he claimed that by “design” the courts “should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people’s elected president of the United States.”
It was not long ago — when Joe Biden was in office — that Republicans routinely pointed out that we do not live in a democracy but rather a constitutional republic in which power is mediated through multiple layers of government and ultimately constrained by the Constitution. Now, Vance is suggesting that an unchecked president is a “small-d democratic principle that’s at the heart of the American project.”
Setting aside the Constitution, federalism and separation of powers, Vance has — again — forgotten Congress. If we are to take seriously the idea of court deference, it would be to laws enacted by Congress, not unilateral proclamations of the president. The Constitution envisioned that Congress — as the body that enacts laws — would be the dominant branch. The role of the president is largely to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.
As for democratic elections, presidents are not popularly elected but rather selected by state electors. Indeed, the Constitution does not even require presidents be elected by voters — that is a choice the states have made. The U.S. House has always required popular vote elections. Since the ratification of the 17th Amendment in 1913, senators are also required to be elected by popular vote.
Vance, of course, knows this. He is a lawyer and a former senator. Yet, none of this fits his current desire to pay endless tribute to Donald Trump as all-knowing and all-powerful. |
Like the president, Vance is particularly focused on immigration and the inconvenience that comes with respecting migrants’ constitutional rights to due process:
I think you see the president’s frustration and I’ve obviously expressed public frustration on this, which is, yes, illegal immigrants, by virtue of being in the United States, are entitled to some due process. But the amount of process that is due, how you enforce those legislative standards and how you actually bring them to bear, is, I think, very much an open question.
This brings us to the heart of the matter. Trump (and therefore Vance) is upset because the courts are insisting that migrants have the right to contest their removal to a foreign gulag. It is getting in the way of a more efficient deportation machine. Vance says this quite explicitly: “Success to me is that …we have the infrastructure that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country.”
But constitutional rights aren’t a matter of available bandwidth. You don’t lose your right to a fair hearing because the government is busy or understaffed. The suggestion that due process should bend to meet the goal of efficiency is not just intellectually lazy — it’s institutionally dangerous.
Vance would like to dismiss due process as a technicality, a bureaucratic hurdle — or worse — a tool exploited by those with something to hide. That’s a dangerous and deeply cynical view. Due process is not a loophole. It’s a lifeline — the connective tissue that binds the Constitution to real lives, real people and real justice.
That is exactly why Trump and Vance want to diminish the right to due process, if not deprive migrants from receiving it altogether. It is also why Vance defended Trump’s suggestion that U.S. citizens could be next in line to be sent to foreign prisons where their rights are, in all practical terms, extinguished.
Due process is the only thing that separates lawful governance from authoritarian overreach. That is why Vance sat in the Vatican to defend the indefensible. It is why we can never give up on defending it as a fundamental right owed to everyone. |
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