July 22, 2025

Respect Umpires — on the Field and in the Courtroom

By: Will Rogers

This article was originally published on The Baltimore Sun.

I’ll never forget calling balls and strikes for the first time. It was youth baseball, so low stakes. I made hundreds of calls in my short stint. Were they always right? No. I bungled my share, but I was even-handed. No one likes it, but that’s the sport. You know what people like even less? When parents or coaches scream at the umpire to overturn a call. The call won’t get overturned and all they’re doing is ruining the game. Respecting the umpire even when you think they’re wrong is a better choice and offers a lesson that could help our politics today.

We grow up learning what makes American democracy special — separation of powers, co-equal branches and checks and balances. I’ve practiced these principles for more than 15 years as a national security professional in two branches of government: in the U.S. Senate and at the Department of Defense. I haven’t always agreed with the third branch of government, but when the judiciary exercises its discretion to check overreach, it’s performing a constitutional service — not playing politics.

Congress shouldn’t let the administration’s contempt slide. None of us should.

Consider the legal jousting over President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th-century wartime statute. The president invoked the law in March to justify the swift deportation of Venezuelan migrants on the pretense that they posed a national security threat. Civil liberties groups filed suit against the government in the D.C. District Court, where Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order against the government — an order it allegedly ignored even while it appealed to the Supreme Court.

The administration’s supporters argued that the district court overreached in attempting to substitute the court’s judgment for the president’s on national security. President Trump went so far as to suggest that Judge Boasberg was “highly conflicted” because President Barack Obama appointed him to the federal bench (President George W. Bush first appointed him to the D.C. Superior Court). But Judge Boasberg’s order was not an act of partisan politics or judicial overreach. It was the court doing its job to ensure that a law authorized for foreign enemies isn’t misapplied to civil immigration.

Read the full article on The Baltimore Sun.

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