In Texas, a blatantly partisan federal judge who worked for a Christian law firm before Trump and GOP senators put him on the bench revoked the FDA’s approval of an abortion drug on Friday, April 7, 2023, blocking its use nationwide (see stories here).
The ruling was expected, because Judge Kacsmaryk is well known to not be impartial, but nevertheless stunned observers astonished by the hubris of a judge who presumes to know more about drug safety than the FDA’s medical experts. The simple explanation is that Kacsmaryk is a political judge, not one who decides cases based on the law.
And there’s not a chance in the world that a GOP-controlled house will impeach him for making biased decisions, or that a senate lacking a two-thirds Democratic supermajority would remove him from office if a future Democratic-majority house impeached him.
But in Wisconsin, where Republicans already had a state Assembly majority, and gained a state senate supermajority in last Tuesday’s election, they’re talking about impeaching a liberal judge who won a state supreme seat in the same election before she even takes office, because she allegedly was “soft on crime” as a circuit judge in Milwaukee.
Seem inconsistent? Sure does to me. By now, Republican hypocrisy is legendary. There is no guiding principle, no moral code, no fidelity to rule of law, or anything else that restrains them. They know what they want and will stoop to any underhanded maneuver to get it.
A constitution establishing a framework of government, and a set of governing laws under it, interpreted and enforced by a principled judiciary, is a social contract that residents of a given territory agree to live under in peace. It’s an alternative to the “law of the jungle.”
Republicans are ripping up our nation’s social contract. They now pick and choose which rules they’ll abide by, and sometimes prefer no rules at all, determined by what’s to their advantage or convenience. “Rules for thee, none for me.”
The Grand Old Party has left the reservation. This is a different generation of Republicans. The GOP is now a party of anarchists.
Related stories: A federal judge in Washington state almost simultaneously issued an order blocking Kacsmaryk’s ruling in a dozen states (see story here), while a legal reporter (profile here) called Kacsmaryk’s ruling “risible” and “dumb” (read that story here). Risible, yes, dumb no; Kacsmaryk is a smart guy who knows what he’s doing, which makes him more — not less — culpable for flouting judicial norms.