‘700 District Judges Pretending They’re President’: Gingrich Says Rogue Judges Make It Impossible For US To Survive

Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich appeared on Fox Business Tuesday to share his concerns about the power wielded by district judges in the United States.

District judges have increasingly used nationwide injunctions to halt the implementation of President Donald Trump’s policies across the entire United States. During an appearance on “Kudlow,” Gingrich warned at the current state of affairs where, in his view, 700 district judges act as if they have presidential powers, meddling in detailed aspects of the presidency and threatening the governance of the country.

“You can’t have 700 district judges pretending that they’re president. You can’t have judges who decide that every single detail of the presidency is somehow open to them to screw it up. It makes it impossible for the United States to survive as a country,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich said that the Founding Fathers’ concerns about judicial supremacy reflects today’s concerns about overreaching judges.

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“Jefferson said that anybody who thinks he can have judicial supremacy, that that would be an oligarchy, that it would end the possibility of the people deciding,” Gingrich told host Larry Kudlow when the host said that the Founders feared a judicial dictatorship. “And it was interesting that in the American Revolution, the number two demand after no taxation without representation was to get control of the judges because they’d been the king’s judges. They had imposed things on people. They didn’t represent the people. ”

Drawing on historical examples, Gingrich mentioned Abraham Lincoln’s strong opposition to judicial supremacy.

“The fact is when Lincoln talks about government of the people, by the people and for the people, he was strongly opposed to any sense of judicial supremacy. And in fact, in his first inaugural, faced with Chief Justice Taney, who had just introduced him, Lincoln gave a stern lecture that the Supreme Court had gone too far and that it was wrong,” Gingrich said.