Something different from Profootballtalk-it says a lot

A quick break from football, for something more important
By
Mike Florio

Published April 18, 2025 08:29 PM
Hello. Good evening. Or good morning. Possibly, good afternoon. Whenever you find this, you’ll be getting fair notice from the get go.

If you prefer to stick to football, don’t read it.

It’s simple. If you’re in the PFT Rumor Mill, keep scrolling. If you somehow tripped over this elsewhere, click out of it. Or swipe in whichever direction you need to swipe in order to get it off the screen of your device.

If you stick around, don’t complain about what comes next. You can disagree with me; you’re fully entitled to your own opinions and beliefs. Just don’t whine about how this isn’t about football. You’ve gotten fair warning to not read it.

Good? Good.

And, not good. I addressed it at the outset of Friday’s PFT Live. The feedback has been overwhelmingly (and surprisingly) positive. For those who primarily consume our content on this platform, here’s the situation.

Our country currently is in a crisis. It’s blossoming in multiple ways, through multiple pieces of litigation. The main issue that has been weighing me down mentally and emotionally in recent days is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

My concerns are irrelevant to whether he’s a member of MS-13. Or whether he should or shouldn’t be deported. Or whether he is or isn’t a good husband and father. The source of my stress is that his case exposes a basic, fundamental threat to our system of government.

It’s hard to type those words without regarding them as over the top. I wish they were. They aren’t. At the core of all of the rhetoric and rambling and ad hominem attacks and both-sides, “what-about?” [censored] resides a core question of whether the executive, legislative, and judicial branches will continue to be co-equal. As the founders intended. And as the country has operated, for nearly 250 years.

Here’s the problem. Currently, the executive branch has no regard for decisions of the judicial branch that conflict with the executive’s agenda. They’ll never complain about the victories. They will routinely and aggressively attack the defeats, by all means necessary. Including flat-out refusing to comply with them.

That’s not how it’s supposed to be. I worked in the legal profession for 18 years. When you win, you win. When you lose, you lose. You may not like losing, but you’ve lost. You deal with it, and you move on.

Not this executive branch. When this executive branch loses, the judges are vaguely threatened with impeachment. They are attacked as impeding the will of the government. And their orders are ignored.

Yes, they’re appealed. And appealed. At some point, the appeals have been exhausted and the “L” must be taken and respected.

This isn’t about red. It’s not about blue. It’s about red, white, and blue. If you believe in this country, and if you accept the basic concept of law and order, you necessarily should be troubled by the failure of the executive branch to accept the outcomes of the judicial branch.

In the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia — and in other cases — that’s not happening. The executive branch is openly refusing to honor the orders of the judicial branch.

The problem was best articulated and summarized in a Thursday ruling written by J. Harvie Wilkinson III. He’s not some garden-variety liberal activist. He’s a respected and longstanding judge, who was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in 1984, by Ronald Reagan. He was reportedly on the short list of potential Supreme Court appointees in 2004, by George W. Bush. He is, was, and always has been a conservative jurist.

Here’s some of what he wrote, at a time when the executive branch refuses to comply with multiple directives of the judicial branch, up to and including a Supreme Court that the current executive previously stacked with supposedly like-minded justices: “Now the [executive and judicial] branches come too close to grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both. This is a losing proposition all around. The Judiciary will lose much from the constant intimations of its illegitimacy, to which by dent of custom and detachment we can only sparingly reply. The Executive will lose much from a public perception of its lawlessness and all of its attendant contagions. The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.”

In far less artful terms, Judge Wilkinson is saying that, if the executive branch refuses to accept and respect the decisions of the judicial branch — decisions that serve as an important check and balance against the power of the executive branch — everyone loses. The executive branch, the judicial branch, and ultimately the rule of law and our overall system of government.

Basically, the current executive is picking a fight that it believes it can win, because he and his hand-picked lieutenants believe there’s nothing the judicial branch can do to implement its orders if the executive branch is determined to not comply. In 1974, for example, the Supreme Court delivered a ruling that ultimately brought down a president, by compelling Richard Nixon to release the notorious Watergate tapes.

President Nixon complied with the ruling. He didn’t say, in essence, “Make me.” The current executive branch is playing the “make me” card. Over and over again.

If, for example, the judicial branch believes that specific persons have shown sufficient contempt of court to be incarcerated, the executive branch can refuse to implement the order to take the person into custody and deliver him, or her, to the designated facility. Even before that, the Department of Justice, which is an arm of the executive branch, can refuse to exercise prosecutorial discretion in a way that would initiate the formal process of making accountable those who openly defy the orders of the court system.

At a time when the term “Constitutional crisis” is bandied about all too frequently, this is exactly what we have. The courts have spoken, and they continue to speak. The executive branch has refused to comply, and it continues to do so.

During the most recent election, both sides claimed that, if the other side wins, we’ll lose our democracy. It’s currently happening, folks. In slow but inevitable motion.

“We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos,” Judge Wilkinson wrote. “This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time.”

The language is beautiful and poignant. The message is dire. Unless and until the executive branch commits to respecting all decisions of the judicial branch, our system will begin to disintegrate. And the executive branch will become a monarchy, an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship.

I know it sounds hyperbolic. In this case, it’s true.

Again, it’s not about the facts of any one case. It’s about the outcome of a process that has been in place since the birth of the republic to resolve disputes. In every case that is resolved by the courts, someone wins and someone loses. In the Abrego Garcia case and others like it, the executive branch has realized that a win remains possible, in the form of ignoring that it has lost.

In the most memorable scene from 2004’s Miracle, Kurt Russell (playing Herb Brooks) forced the members of the U.S. Olympic hockey team to skate and skate and skate until one fundamental question was answered correctly: Who do you play for?

We’re not playing for party. We’re not playing for ideology. We’re not playing for our own financial or social interests. We’re playing for the United States of America. And if the current executive branch refuses to acknowledge the basic truth that it is, or should be, playing for the United States of America, the system has necessarily commenced its collapse.

Judge Wilkinson clings to the hope that the executive branch will abandon its current course. All Americans who truly love this country should have that hope. And we all should pray that it comes to fruition.

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