Amid mounting concerns about White House disregard of court orders, Wyoming’s congressional delegates made clear last week that they continue to support President Donald Trump’s defiance of the federal judiciary.

And they are willing to insult their own constituents in defense of that position. 

Rep. Harriet Hageman and Sens. Cynthia Lummis and John Barrasso publicly derided a distinguished swath of the Wyoming Bar while dismissing concerns those constituents raised in a March 26 letter warning that Trump and his allies’ threats could erode the country’s rule of law. 

Wyoming’s federal delegation lashed out at the letter’s signees the same week federal judges warned that the Trump administration was striking at the core of the constitutional system that protects Americans from an unruly or oppressive government. 

The more than 100 Wyoming jurists who put their name on the letter asking the delegation to protect the rule of law included three former state Supreme Court justices, an ex-governor, two former state attorneys general appointed by governors from both political parties, veteran attorneys and young Wyoming lawyers making their start in the profession. 

Among the names were those of Republican and Democrat politicians and the former law partner of Rep. Harriet Hageman’s husband. Though their leanings covered the political spectrum, they shared one thing in common: Mounting concern that the rule of law is under extreme duress. 

In response, Lummis, Hageman and Barrasso described the signatories as “biased, misguided” and “liberal,” in a press release issued last week. 

The delegation’s response came in two phases — the first was an April 11 letter rebuffing the Wyoming jurists’ concerns. Overreaching judges, not President Donald Trump’s threats, have placed the federal judiciary in the crosshairs, the delegation wrote.

That letter ended with an olive branch. “We look forward to working with each of you to secure a prosperous future for Wyoming and to ensure a return to the non-partisan rule of law,” the delegates wrote. 

On April 15, however, after WyoFile reporting made their letter public, the delegation dropped any niceties and issued a press release headlined: “Wyoming Delegation Responds to Biased, Misguided WY Judges and Lawyers.”

The delegate’s letter itself was “extremely dispiriting,” Jackson attorney Bill Schwartz, one of the letter’s signees, told WyoFile on April 17. But he had not yet seen the press release. 

“Well, that’s just preposterous,” he said, when a reporter described it to him. “These are very accomplished lawyers, from every part of the state, that went to the same law school as [Lummis and Hageman] did… Many of us know at least one of the delegates. And we know they know better.” 

The delegation’s answer has dismayed the letter signers, who saw in it deeply worrying signs for the country’s democratic rule. 

“We are, in my judgment, in very dangerous times,” Jackson attorney Bob Schuster wrote in an email to his fellow signees. “My concerns are only heightened by the cynical and unprincipled response from our Congressional delegation,” he added in the email obtained by WyoFile.

The three politicians, for their part, say they’re responding to “liberal former judges and lawyers attempting to publicly pressure the delegation into falsely condemning President Trump and allowing judges to continue blocking the agenda more than 70% of Wyoming residents support,” according to the press release.

In today’s Wyoming politics, “if you have an independent thought sometimes that makes you a liberal,” Gillette attorney Tom Lubnau said. As a Republican politician, Lubnau served in the Wyoming House from 2004 to 2014, rising to become Speaker of the House in his final term. 

“I’m going to take every opportunity I have to defend our court system and our constitutional system,” Lubnau told WyoFile. “Do I think the system is perfect? No. Do I think it’s the best system man has devised? Yes.” 

Lummis, Hageman and Barrasso did not respond to interview requests from WyoFile. 

Lawyers and former judges who signed the letter say that even in the more restrained portion of the delegate’s response, the politicians misstated fundamental tenets of American law. Though disheartening, the delegation’s response has galvanized the letter’s signees to continue speaking up, and has led other Wyoming jurists to reach out and offer support, Schwartz said. 

The delegation issued its response during a week of ongoing clashes between the president and federal judges over the rights of migrants detained by the Trump administration and shipped to a prison in El Salvador. 

On Wednesday, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. issued an order suggesting he could soon begin proceedings to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court. Trump had called for that judge, James Boasberg, to be impeached after Boasberg issued an injunction temporarily halting the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to detain people. 

Trump invoked the act to justify his administration’s imprisonment of Venezuelans and other Latin Americans in El Salvador, without court hearings. The act was last used during World War II, when it led to the infamous internment of Japanese-Americans, including at Heart Mountain in Wyoming. 

The Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation has also called on the delegation to check Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. “The misuse of the Alien Enemies Act at that time makes us particularly sensitive to any future abuse of the law,” the foundation wrote in an April 1 statement. 

The delegates did not respond to that message, though it was delivered to each of them, officials from Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation told WyoFile Monday.

Concern over Trump’s suggestion that Boasberg should be impeached was central to the Wyoming jurists’ letter to the delegation. The signees called on Hageman, Barrasso and Lummis to speak against the idea that a judge could be personally targeted for a ruling the president didn’t like. Trump’s threat also drew a rare rebuke from U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts.

The George W. Bush appointed chief justice said Trump was challenging two centuries of precedent, and that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” 

What’s at stake is far broader than the rights of those now imprisoned in El Salvador under Trump’s invocation of wartime powers, according to the signees of the letter to Wyoming’s delegation.

Schwartz, the Jackson attorney, and others pointed to a Thursday ruling and admonition penned by conservative, Ronald Reagan appointed judge Harvie Wilkinson, as an example of their concerns. 

“The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” Wilkinson wrote. “This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.” 

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” he continued. 

Lummis on Thursday labeled Boasberg’s injunction pausing the deportations to, and imprisonments in, El Salvador as “one of the most shocking examples” of judicial overreach during the Trump administration. 

“Boasberg ordered planes full of dangerous illegal aliens and alleged Tren de Aragua gang members to turn around mid-flight and return to the United States,” Lummis wrote in an opinion column published by Cowboy State Daily.

In the first three months of Trump’s presidency, judges have issued 15 nationwide injunctions on federal policies, Lummis wrote, one more than they did throughout the entirety of President Joe Biden’s term. “We must remember that judges are not policymakers – and they have not been elected by the American people to legislate. The people of Wyoming deserve a government where their elected representatives make the laws,” she wrote. 

Her fellow Wyoming Bar members say she’s being disingenuous at best. 

“You would think that any reasoned response to our letter might have paused to consider one of the first cases any of us read in our Constitutional Law course — Marbury v. Madison,” Schuster, the Jackson attorney, wrote in his email to colleagues. 

That 1803 case established that the courts can find that laws passed by Congress and executive actions are unconstitutional. The delegation, Schuster continued, is arguing that “the Court really did not mean what they said and that its 222 years of lasting precedent … is vaporous.”