How Donald Trump Breaks Judges.
Hannah Dugan, a judge at the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, could hardly have imagined on any other day that her service would end as a harbinger of the new America. But this was no ordinary time. It was the Trump era, and in this era, the law seemed to become a pawn - a game where the referees, the judges, became targets.
Dugan had dared to show her independence. She had dared to place the letter of the law above hysteria. A man, Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, was to be arrested in her courtroom - a man who, according to the rules of the system, deserved a fair hearing. But the agents of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had other plans. They wanted him immediately. A drama unfolded, and Dugan, visibly upset, refused to turn her courtroom into a stage for power. She led Flores-Ruiz and his attorney through a door normally reserved for jurors, away from the agents' grasp.
But in a country where the word "law" became more and more a pawn, Dugan's decision had consequences. She was indicted by a grand jury - a panel of citizens who decide whether enough evidence exists to bring charges. It is an instrument of the federal criminal justice system, operating in secrecy. The charge against Dugan: aiding in preventing an arrest and obstruction of justice. The Trump administration turned her into an icon of defiance, a warning torch for all those who dared to resist the new order.
Was it not 1934 when, in other countries, the law became a weapon? When judges and lawyers became targets of state vengeance for daring to oppose the new masters?
Just as in Germany, where the People's Court was established on April 24, 1934, and began operating on August 1, 1934, becoming an instrument of oppression, or in the McCarthy era of the United States, which officially began on February 9, 1950, when Senator Joseph McCarthy presented a list of alleged communists in Wheeling, West Virginia, and ended with McCarthy's censure by the U.S. Senate in December 1954. An era when judges and lawyers who defended the Constitution were branded as "communist sympathizers." It is the old story - the law, which becomes a tool of the powerful, loses its soul.
Dugan's case is a lesson, a tale of what happens when the powerful begin to dictate decisions to judges. A drama in which a judge, for attempting to fulfill her duty, is made into a symbol - a symbol of oppression by those who claim to defend the law.
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