A judge in China’s top court has labeled US President Donald Trump an enemy “of the rule of law” over his insults directed at a US judge who temporarily blocked the president’s travel ban, adding that Trump had set a poor example as head of the world’s leading democracy.
Chinese Supreme People’s Court Judge He Fan’s (何帆) blog post came after Trump on Saturday on Twitter called US District Judge James Robart a “so-called judge” whose “ridiculous” decision opened the country to potential terror attacks.
In his post, dated on Sunday, He wrote that under the US system’s separation of powers, a president who is dealt a judicial defeat should bear the loss silently rather than lash out at the judge in question.
Photo: Greg Lehman/Whitman College via AP
The widely reported controversy surrounding Trump’s ban follows recent remarks by China’s top judge that the concept of judicial independence was an “erroneous Western ideal” unsuited to China — seen as a demand for obedience from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders.
Those comments have reignited a debate on the topic within China’s legal community, which is in general tightly bound to uphold the party line.
He, an expert on the US justice system, did not voice his thoughts in that debate, although he frequently offers opinions on matters foreign and domestic.
He published a lengthy and widely read paean to former US Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia after his death last year.
He said Trump had set a poor example and lost respect for having “led the way in insulting a judge, with the vice president and his political party swarming to his defense [and] in a country known as the most democratic and most respectful of the rule of law.”
“The president who would curse a judge and the thug who would kill a judge are both public enemies of the rule of law,” He wrote, referencing the recent murder of a retired judge in southern China.
“Who cares that you control the armed forces and have nuclear weapons at your disposal. Your dignity has been swept away and you are no different than a scoundrel,” He wrote.
Trump had been considered by many in China as preferable to Democratic US presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who was seen as taking a harder line toward Beijing. However, Trump has also raised concerns over his comments on Taiwan, trade and other issues seen as diverging from long-established US policy toward China.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
As evening falls in Fiji’s capital, a steady stream of people approaches a makeshift clinic that is a first line of defense against one of the world’s fastest-growing HIV epidemics. In the South Pacific nation — a popular tourist destination of just under a million people — more than 2,000 new HIV cases were recorded last year, a 26 percent increase from 2024. The government has declared an HIV outbreak and described it as a national crisis. “It’s spreading like wildfire,” said Siteri Dinawai, 46, who came to be tested. The Moonlight Clinic, a converted minibus parked in a suburban cul-de-sac in Suva, is
RSS