U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves spoke Thursday to defend the judiciary and specifically respond to attacks on courts from President Donald Trump.
As CNN Supreme Court reporter Ariane de Vogue put it this afternoon, “this is pretty unprecedented.”
Without mentioning Trump by name, Reeves brought up a number of comments Trump has made railing against the judiciary:
“When politicians attack the courts as ‘dangerous,’ ‘political,’ and guilty of ‘egregious overreach,’ you can hear the Klan’s lawyers assailing officers of the court across the South. When leaders chastise people for merely “using the courts,’ you can hear the Citizens Council, hammering up the names of black petitioners in Yazoo City. When the powerful accuse courts of ‘opening up our country to potential terrorists,’ you can hear the Southern Manifesto’s authors, smearing the judiciary for simply upholding the rights of black folk. When lawmakers say, we should get rid of our judges, you can hear segregationist senators writing bills to strip our courts of their power. And when the executive branch calls our courts––in their word, ‘stupid,’ ‘horrible,’ ‘ridiculous,’ ‘incompetent,’ and a ‘laughing stock’ and a ‘complete and total disgrace’––you can hear the slurs and threats of executives like George Wallace echoing into the present.”
He brought up Trump’s infamous swipe at Judge Gonzalo Curiel as an example.
