When the winds of authoritarianism shake the pillars of American democracy, working-class people have always delivered the reinforcements needed to carry our republic through the storm.
Today, our union of 14,000 public educators is answering that call by standing in solidarity with the Delaware Chapter of the American Constitution Society in defense of our nation’s core principles of equality, justice, and the rule of law.
While the Delaware State Education Association has been consistently outspoken against the relentless attacks on the American public education system, our union is equally vested in preserving the fairness and impartiality that long have stood as the defining hallmarks of the American judicial system.
From school desegregation and equal educational opportunities for children with disabilities to more recent rulings in support of fair and equitable funding for all school districts, the American judiciary has consistently guided our nation through the political moods of the moment to solid legal and moral ground anchored by the precepts of decency and fairness.
That clarity of purpose and clearly defined separation of power is currently being tested by a federal executive branch that seemingly bears no allegiance to any moral compass outside of its own insatiable thirst for political retribution.
In less than 90 days, the Trump Administration has attempted to impose its will on the American people through one unconstitutional edict after another – a form of governing by fiat that the Constitution explicitly guards against through the checks and balances on executive power vested in the co-equal legislative and judicial branches of government.
Apparently unwilling to accept any limits on his power, the President and the 13 billionaires who serve in his cabinet – including the world’s richest person – have vowed to use their vast wealth to unseat members of their own party who stand in their way.
More troubling is the eagerness with which the Trump Administration has employed the power of the Presidency to punish the lawyers who represent their perceived enemies and threaten the judges with whom they disagree.
In just a few short months, we have seen personal attacks, firings and demotions of Justice Department lawyers and assistant U.S. attorneys for fulfilling their professional responsibility.
We have seen the President issue executive orders targeting a handful of specific law firms, each of which represented clients who challenged his policies in court, employed lawyers involved in prosecutorial investigations against him, or represented people who previously investigated him. One of those orders was rescinded only after the law firm agreed to donate $40 million in free legal work to support causes the President favors.
We have seen the President, Vice President and their allies seek to undermine the federal court system, describe highly esteemed judges as lunatics, evil and corrupt, call for the impeachment of judges who rule against them, and even reveal sensitive personal information about the children of judges.
And we have seen the Trump Administration repeatedly and openly defy judicial orders while displaying contempt for the foundational American principle of due process as its mass deportation campaign moves dangerously close to what can only be described as government-sanctioned kidnapping.
Due process has likewise been stolen from American families whose civil rights complaints sit in limbo after the Trump Administration gutted almost the entirety of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights while providing no suitable recourse for their concerns to be heard.
Thousands of school districts across the county also are being provided no due process as the Trump Administration threatens to withhold millions of dollars in federal education funding as part of its plot to systematically punish democratically elected institutions that dare to value diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility over absolute loyalty to Donald J. Trump.
“History is no stranger to such lawless regimes,” Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently wrote of the Trump Administration. “... [b]ut this Nation’s system of laws is designed to prevent, not enable their rise.”
As the single largest labor union in Delaware, DSEA urges our elected representatives to protect American jurists and preserve the judiciary as an equal branch of government, just as we urge working-class Delawareans to reject the continued erosion of our constitutional democracy.
