In 1861, President Abraham Lincoln announced he was suspending the most basic of civil rights: the right of habeas corpus, which prohibits the government from imprisoning you without charges.
When a court ordered the federal government to release an unindicted U.S. citizen, Lincoln simply ignored the order. The Bill of Rights and the courts were now null and void. Such niceties could not be indulged when the very existence of the Republic was at stake.
Democrats today think they are the Republicans of 1861. They may not be fighting a literal war against secessionist slave states, but they have been delayed in their efforts to draw a mid-decade partisan gerrymander. In their mind, they are now justified in using any means necessary to gain and keep power — anything less is bowing to autocracy.
Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) won last year after saying she opposed mid-decade gerrymandering. She and her party promptly voted to replace the sensible, balanced, non-partisan congressional map with a shameless gerrymander.
Virginia Democrats pointed to similar Republican mid-decade gerrymanders to justify their act of vandalism. To this point, they could argue that turnabout is fair play, even if it means effectively disenfranchising your own people for partisan gain.
But Virginia Democrats didn’t follow the state constitution in their gerrymander. The proper procedure would have been (1) to vote in the legislature to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot, (2) to vote again after the next election, and then (3) to hold a popular vote on the ballot measure.
But the Democrats held their first vote during the 2025 election (after early voting had started), rather than before it. Nevertheless, state officials placed the proposed amendment on the ballot in April.
When Republicans sued, Democratic Attorney General Jay Jones (who is most famous for repeatedly wishing death on Republicans for the crime of being Republicans), argued that the state Supreme Court should not rule until after the public voted on the measure.
The court obeyed Jones. After the ballot measure passed, the court ruled, with a Democrat-appointed justice writing the opinion, that it was invalid.
That’s when Democrats went wild. They decided to not only assail the state Supreme Court’s ruling, but to disregard it.
Members of Congress started planning to remove the entire Virginia Supreme Court, not through impeachment but by legislating a new mandatory retirement age of 54 with no grandfather clause. Democrats could then pack the court with only partisan Democrats who would then overturn the recent decision and reinstate the Democrats’ illegal gerrymander.
Liberal blogger Matt Yglesias, presumably aware that liberals in recent years have tried to assassinate Republicans (including justices) in order to secure favorable policy, nevertheless posted on X that the justices “need to go.”
Marc Elias is the Democratic Party’s premier elections attorney. He was the top lawyer for John Kerry and Hillary Clinton, and he worked for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Elias proposed that Democrats simply abolish the government of Virginia.
None of these Democrats had a substantive critique of the Virginia Supreme Court. They just thought the court should have allowed the Democratic power grab because Republicans are really bad.
The Democrats in charge of Virginia are now filing a laughable appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. The only reason to do this, when their defeat is guaranteed, is to give them grist for attacking the Supreme Court.
If you spent the last decade listening to Democrats call themselves the defenders of democracy and the Constitution, and watching the legacy media nod in agreement, you might be surprised to see their behavior these days. But there’s no inconsistency. The Democrats have been pretty clear.
President Joe Biden made it clear that “MAGA Republicans” were a threat to democracy, and that by “MAGA Republicans,” he basically meant Donald Trump voters and conservatives. Thus, “saving democracy” was never about preserving norms or democratic procedures. It was always about defeating the threats to democracy: the Republicans.
Trump is, in fact, extraordinarily corrosive of our politics and government. He’s as bad as Joe Biden and Barack Obama in arrogating power to the executive. He’s worse than any previous president in loudly demanding loyalty from the justices he appointed. And to his eternal shame, he refuses to accept his loss in the 2020 election, and in his temper tantrum, he spurred a deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Democrats clearly have decided that they will respond to Trump’s power grabs and norm-breaking by grabbing power and breaking norms. They justify their attacks on the rule of law by claiming such attacks are necessary to save the rule of law.
But nobody who has been paying attention should assume this Democratic fervor will die off when Trump is gone. Every single Republican will be dubbed worse than Trump. We know this because they already said it.
Biden declared in 2012 that Republicans would reinstitute slavery. That same election, once-and-future House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared “democracy is on the ballot,” and adopted that as the central slogan in the final weeks of the election. If Romney wins, she was clearly asserting, democracy is done.
In 2016, the liberal commentariat argued that Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz were worse than Trump. Later, they argued that former Vice President Mike Pence was worse than Trump. They’re already arguing that Vice President JD Vance is worse than Trump.
Republicans could nominate Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) for president, and MSNow would spend three months convincing viewers she is Mussolini in heels.
Democrats speak as if they must gain power by any means necessary.
VIRGINIA DEMOCRATS GOT WHAT THEY DESERVED
Republicans spoke this way very recently. In 2016, many conservatives, including most conservative intellectuals, were wary about voting for Trump, even in the general election, because he was so clearly unfit for the job and unconcerned with the Constitution.
Writer Michael Anton penned a famous essay urging conservatives to discard all considerations besides power, because we conservatives were in the same position as the passengers in the back of the hijacked Flight 93 on Sept. 11, 2001.
Anton was wrong in 2016. Liberals are wrong today to emulate his desperate disregard for norms and standards. This won’t end well.