The Chicago Tribune on how Chief Justice Roberts is right and Vice President Vance is wrong:

President Donald Trump returned to office bent on pursuing a more expansive view of executive power than he did in his first go-round. The manifestation of that intent by his young administration has been the dizzying flurry of executive orders targeting universities, law firms, foundations and other bastions of what Trump views as elitist resistance to his agenda; undermining by executive fiat congressionally established and funded federal bureaucracies, like the Department of Education; and detaining and often deporting noncitizens of various types.

There have also been calls to impeach federal judges who temporarily halt Trump initiatives. Indeed, Trump himself has openly castigated judges who have blocked his legally questionable actions.

“These Judges want to assume the powers of the Presidency, without having to attain 80 Million Votes,” Trump wrote March 20 on his Truth Social platform. “They want all of the advantages and none of the risks.” On that same day, Trump demanded, inappropriately, that Chief Justice John Roberts get federal judges in line. “If Justice Roberts and the United States Supreme Court do not fix this toxic and unprecedented situation IMMEDIATELY,” Trump wrote, ‘our Country is in very serious trouble.”

An array of federal judges in districts throughout the country have overruled or temporarily halted many of the Trump administration’s actions. That’s prompted petitions to the U.S. Supreme Court for a ruling to bar any single district judge from issuing an injunction covering the entire country.

Trump even has ignored the Supreme Court itself.

Kilmar Abrego García remains in an El Salvador prison nearly six weeks after the high court ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” Abrego García’s return to the U.S. They’d ruled his due process rights were violated and he should have an opportunity to contest his deportation. (Trump officials argued, absurdly in our view, that the court’s language meant only that they would have to allow Abrego García to return if he could somehow make his way back to the U.S. border. ...)

All of which brings us to an illuminating back-and-forth recently between Roberts and Vice President JD Vance.

Roberts in a May 7 “fireside chat” in Buffalo, New York, confronted the simmering issue head on: “In our Constitution,” he said, “the judiciary is a coequal branch of government separate from the others with the authority to interpret the Constitution as law and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president.”

Vance, in an interview with The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat ..., laid out an entirely different view. “I know this is inflammatory,” Vance said, “but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.” ...

Presidents have been grumbling about unelected judges from the beginning of the republic. Still, Roberts is right. ...