Abraham Lincoln is sitting at his desk, having signed the Emancipation Proclamation, when an Army General tells him his proclamation has been overturned by a judge with a court order. That is one of the great cartoons from the pen of Gary Varvel, a genius at conveying essential truths. He captures in a cartoon the crisis our country would have been in if we had federal judges in power then like we have today. That crisis would have been a failure to save the Republic after the Civil War and give the slaves their freedom.

Today, we are the slaves, hoping for freedom from the ruling elite called the Biden administration that opened our borders to a foreign invasion by an assortment of aliens that not only broke our laws but murdered our people – our families, friends, and neighbors.

We are in a similar situation today as Lincoln was then, as federal judges constitute a new Confederacy, doing everything possible to defeat the American central government, this time headed by President Donald J. Trump. We are in the midst of a life-and-death struggle to save the Republic from a foreign invasion engineered by the Biden administration.

The difference is that the court injunction depicted in the cartoon directed at Lincoln was a fiction and the court injunctions directed at Trump are real and are having a very negative impact on his promise to reverse our slide into socialism and a foreign takeover.

That is because Trump is unwittingly accepting these "lower" courts' jurisdiction over the foreign policy of the United States.

The solution is that Trump must fire his lawyers and act. He was elected as president and he cannot and should not depend on intervention by the Supreme Court to save him.

In one of my columns from 2023, "We Need Another Lincoln," I wrote about the forces that were arrayed against Trump, after his surprise victory in 2016 and struggle to win again in 2020. I noted that communists had openly organized a rebellion, in the form of the George Floyd riots, in open violation of the Communist Control Act—a law that was still on the books but not enforced. Congress had abolished internal security panels while Big Tech platforms like YouTube were terminating the accounts of conservatives like myself, wiping out my 500 anti-communist videos. Under Biden, the economy was characterized by more federal spending, inflation, and debt, as well as the country being subjected to an invasion by foreigners.

That was because, in the election of 2020, Trump avoided being another Lincoln, leaving the door open for Joe Biden and his Obama-era personnel to take control. Trump, after encouraging a “peaceful” protest of the election results on January 6, 2021, vacated the White House.

But now that Trump is back in the White House, he is making some of the same mistakes.

A newspaper ad published at the time by Tom Zawistowski, President of the TEA Party affiliated We the People Convention, had advocated executive actions by Trump to save his presidency that were like those implemented by President Abraham Lincoln in his efforts to save the Union during the Civil War. “In the months following the start of the Civil War,” said the Tea Party ad, “President Abraham Lincoln struggled to preserve the Union. Many objected to Lincoln’s extraordinary use of presidential authority, in particular his suspension of the right of Habeas Corpus.”

Habeas Corpus is related to due process. Lincoln identified the enemies of the Republic and had them arrested and detained. The difference between then and now is that Lincoln was going after Americans perceived to be sympathetic to the southern secessionists. Trump has promised to go after illegal non-citizens, making his legal case even more valid and legitimate. He is trying to preserve the Union that Lincoln saved.

At the time, in a message about the January 6 defendants, Trump said, “It’s the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Our country is going – not socialist, they’ve skipped over that – they skipped over socialism. Our country is going communist.”

Trump has had some revenge, with his victory in 2024, but the same anti-American forces have simply shifted their ground to the courts. And the same problem facing Lincoln is now facing him – can he save the Union?

Today, Trump has some control over the Department of Justice – but not over the federal courts, and not even the “Republican” Supreme Court. The “weaponization” of justice problem has been transferred from one branch to another.

If Trump in office cannot implement his policies, such as mass deportations, who is the president? And what is the purpose of having elections?

Trump, of course, has the same old problem – an obnoxious and far-left media, singing to the tune of the Democratic Party, the same political grouping opposed to Lincoln. Consider the media's treatment of the illegal alien invasion. They did not insist that the invaders follow the law when they crashed through our border. They were complicit in the invasion and covered for Biden’s convenient dementia, among other cases of media malpractice.

In Trump's interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, we saw the following exchange when Moran insisted on “due process” for the illegal alien invaders:

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Did we give them a hearing when they [the illegal alien invaders] came in?

TERRY MORAN: Well, the law requires that every single person who is going to be deported gets a hearing first.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well –

TERRY MORAN: Do you acknowledge that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I'll – I'll have to ask the lawyers about that. All I can say is this: If you're gonna have 21 million people, and if we have to get a lot of 'em out because they're criminals, we're gonna have to act fast. We can't – do you think we can give 21 million trials? Let's say each trial takes two weeks. Is that what you want us to do?

With this exchange, we see Trump’s problem. He is relying on lawyers who do not understand his constitutional ability and obligation as president to stop a foreign invasion. They need to read the history books, especially about the Lincoln presidency.

Vice-president J.D. Vance had it right – telling Fox News, “The judge doesn’t decide if the Alien Enemies Act applies – the president does. If you tell the president he can’t deport illegal criminals, you’re saying he can’t be president. We reject that, and so will the Supreme Court.”

The first part of his response was correct. The second was wrong. Depending on the Supreme Court is the wrong way to proceed, even though they have ruled in favor of the law in the past.

In his proclamation, Trump said, “As President of the United States and Commander in Chief, it is my solemn duty to protect the American people from the devastating effects of this invasion.” He added that the alien enemies, “wherever found within any territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are subject to summary apprehension” and therefore can be detained and expelled.

A congressional study noted that there was no opposition to the law and that “The absence of objection to the Alien Enemy Act by the same generation that drafted the Constitution has been held by the Supreme Court to provide evidence of both the Act's constitutionality and the prevailing understanding of the legal principle underlying it – that is, the fundamentally different position held by aliens on the basis of their formal allegiance to a government with which the United States is at war.”

In the modern era, there are no declarations of war, only resolutions by Congress or declarations by the president about foreign threats. Trump has acted in accordance with his lawful emergency powers. He is trying to save Americans who have been targeted by these alien invaders. In effect, we are today’s slaves, living in fear because Biden opened the country to a hostile foreign takeover. We are the real Americans whose cherished system of law and order has been subverted by an enemy invasion. We are literally fighting for our lives, and we elected Trump to stop the invasion.

The study reported, “A bill in the 119th Congress would repeal the Alien Enemy Act, H.R. 630/S. 193. This bill, the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, has been introduced in successive Congresses since the 116th Congress but has never been reported out of committee.”

In other words, the Congress has never repealed it. Every day Trump bows to the courts is another day we have lost to the invasion, possibly losing hundreds more of our citizens to mayhem, murder, and drug trafficking by the Mexican cartels working with the Chinese.

Trump and Vance apparently hope the Supreme Court will uphold what Trump is doing. But what if they reverse course? Then it is time for Trump to be Lincoln and challenge his enemies in Congress to impeach him.