“I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power,” the Attorney General of the United States, Jeff Sessions said in an interview on Mark Levin’s conservative radio talk show. The reaction on social media has been a mixture of righteous outrage and dumbfounded ridicule that the Attorney General could be so dumb as to be amazed by this event. While the statement is self-evidently ridiculous, dismissing the Attorney General’s remark as dumb words from a dumb guy is naive.

I really am amazed that a judge sitting on an island in the Pacific can issue an order that stops the president of the United States from what appears to be clearly his statutory and constitutional power – Jeff Sessions

Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III has worked in government for more than forty years. He was initially hired as an Assistant United States Attorney in 1975. He has a college degree. He is a graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law which has produced numerous federal judges. The role of the judiciary as a check on executive power does not come as a surprise to him. Sessions is familiar with Marbury v. Madison, the landmark case before the Supreme Court in 1803 which established the basis for judicial review. Further, he is familiar with the Constitution itself, whose Supremacy Clause establishes the rights and obligations set out in the Constitution as having greater authority than federal law and executive orders.

The State of Hawaii joined the Union fifty seven years ago. Sessions was 13. I’m sure he remembers when the flag added a fiftieth star. Prior to that it had been a United States territory since before Sessions’s father was born. Calling it merely “an island in the Pacific” is a way to make the Americans who live there separate from us, distant from “real America.” It’s a deliberate rhetorical choice to downplay our common heritage and an implicit appeal to white supremacy. It marks those “pacific islanders” as not like the rest of us. Language has power. Jeff Sessions well knows that that “island in the Pacific” is one of the United States, and the judges there have the same duty and authority to enforce the Constitution as those in his native Alabama.

This is not an issue of Sessions being unfamiliar with the law nor with confusion over his new role as attorney general compared to senator. He did not make this argument dismissing the authority of a federal judge in a court of law where it would be unconvincing in the face of centuries of precedent. Rather, Sessions was speaking through a conservative radio show to an audience of partisans. He was not stating a sincere belief in the judge’s lack of legal authority. He was rallying conservatives around the idea that any opponents of the current administration are illegitimate, even sitting federal judges exercising their authority under the Constitution of the United States.

The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned! – February 4, 2017

Sessions’s remark is part of a pattern to undermine the authority of the opposition. In the aftermath of the failed Muslim ban, the president himself attacked the federal judges who ruled against it, calling their legitimacy into question.  He raged on Twitter, calling Judge James Robart, who was appointed by George W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate a “so-called judge” and promising that the ruling would be overturned. Presidential advisor Stephen Miller went so far as to say that the powers of the president “will not be questioned.” The administration wants to be seen as having supreme authority and any limits to be invalid. These are not off-the-cuff statements made without thought, but a deliberate effort to undermine the checks and balances placed on the presidency. Former CIA officer Evan McMullin compared these efforts to his first hand experience with foreign autocrats. All Americans should be similarly concerned.