By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JAN. 13, 2026 | Do you wonder how U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts sleeps at night watching the antics of President Donald Trump unfold each day? After obtaining the highest legal position in the entire country, does he ever worry about the direction Mr. Trump is taking our country? Doesn’t he realize that in his position of chief justice, there might be some direction he could take to straighten out the awful mess that the president is causing?
Granted, the chief justice has just but one vote of the nine justices. But in his position, there are numerous ways he can influence the justices in their decisions. He is the key person.
Yet the Court has been timid to rein in the president. Granted, we don’t want the Court making laws. We only want it interpreting the law as guided by previous court rulings that upheld the Constitution.
Perhaps one of the most far-reaching actions of the president has been his deployment of ICE (United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to seek out immigrants, legal and illegal, for deportation from our country. This has thrown terror into the immigrant population, which came here for freedom. And now they find these ICE actions threatening their lives, splitting families and spreading fear.
Recently in Minneapolis, another horrible Trump outcome was the cold-blooded killing of 37 year-old Renee Good, an unarmed neighbor observer, by an ICE agent, a scene captured by many on video. She seemed to be doing no wrong, yet the Trump Administration has already labeled her as a domestic terrorist. The film of the shooting doesn’t show her doing anything sinister. Yet the ICE agent killed her.
It’s another senseless death at the hands of Trump troops that solved no problem.
Chief Justice Roberts must have seen these images on screens. Do such outright shootings of people like this incident have any effect on the jurist in trying to steer our nation’s highest court? Is he as frustrated about what he can do as those of us watching this film feel?
Meanwhile, adding to the preposterousness of the Minneapolis incident, here comes Vice President J.D. Vance throwing gasoline on the situation, trying to justify the ICE agent in the shooting.
Why does he have to jump into yet another incident? His conclusions from watching the film followed the same old logic, that anything the ICE agents do is justified. Luckily, there was more than one person filming the shooting, allowing people to draw far different conclusions than what Vance did trying to defend the ICE agent.
It must be difficult and frustrating for Chief Justice Roberts to have to sit quiet as incident after incident unfolds. He is unable to do little until lower court cases like this finally make their way through the appellate courts to his Chambers. At some point, he must throw up his hands, saying something to himself like “How can we stop these many illegal actions by the president?”
Slow as the law moves, we must hope that the Chief Justice can move with his colleagues to curtail many of the illegal actions that President Trump has embarked on.
Recently the Supreme Court rejected the Trump Administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, a decision that seemed to limit Trump’s power to use military forces within the United States. Maybe that is a small step to restore law and order, and turn back some of the illegal moves of the Trump Administration.
Do that a few more times, and the chief justice may sleep better at night.
We sure will.
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