By Anitra D. Brown
The New Orleans Tribune
It’s true. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry actually said – loud enough for others to hear– that U. S. District Judge Susie Morgan should be impeached.
When I heard, I had the very same reaction I have when I watch a boisterous, wayward toddler frantically run down a crooked, uneven street, then trip and fall.
The abrupt tumble catches you off guard; but, it was expected. He acts this way often – reckless, inattentive, and uncontrollable. In fact, as the unruly toddler runs, you shout a warning, “Hey, stop running before you . . .”
You can’t even complete the cautionary imperative before he plummets. You pause to make sure he isn’t hurt too badly. Except for a scratch or two, he is okay. He picks himself up, and you do your very best to neither giggle nor grimace as any emotional display would only exacerbate the situation. He might think running and falling is a good way to get attention. Or he could be left with the notion that if behaves badly, he can get his way. So you give him a minute to get himself together, and you act as though you didn’t even see it.
That’s why when Landry said Judge Morgan should be impeached, I literally gave it no more than 20 seconds of my attention. I shook my head, rolled my eyes . . . just a little, then proceeded as though it never happened.
If you haven’t heard, earlier this week Landry announced that Judge Morgan should be removed from office because of manner in which she is presiding over the federal consent decree in which the New Orleans Police Department is currently under.
Just days before Landry advocated for Judge Morgan’s impeachment, she rendered an opinion that state police officers assigned to the so-called Troop NOLA under the Governor’s plan to expand the presence and authority of state police in New Orleans would not fall under the jurisdiction of the NOPD consent decree.
Judge Morgan went a little further by stating that details of just how Troop NOLA would work in concert with NOPD to increase safety and deter crime in New Orleans were “confusing and contradictory,” adding that the lack of specifics caused her some concern considering the progress NOPD has made under the federal consent degree. In short, she does not want to see policing in New Orleans by NOPD’s officers regress as a result of an unclear working relationship between Troop NOLA and the local law enforcement agency.
And that makes sense. To be sure, Judge Morgan is not the only public official to suggest that particulars of Landry’s Troop NOLA plan call for further discussion.
So when Jeff Landry says Judge Morgan should be impeached because of her handling of the consent decree, I know he is really upset because she bruised his ego. His suggestion was an overt act of petty aggression. He ran down the street, he fell to the ground, and now he is mad with Judge Susie Morgan . . . because he ran too fast on crooked, uneven pavement.
It was an attention-grabbing antic; and quite frankly, I am reluctant to lend any credibility to the utterances of anyone, but most of all a sitting governor, who would suggest that others face punitive action simply because they openly criticize him or his plan or because he does not like how they do their jobs.
It does not surprise me to see MAGA-style behavior from a governor who has not been shy at all with his plans to repress Louisiana with his MAGA agenda. Calling for Judge Morgan’s impeachment was just MAGA icing on the MAGA cake.
So I ignored it. If by some slim chance (akin to that of a snowball in hell), Landry is successful at getting some foolish, kindred spirit to even think about taking a baby step toward impeaching Judge Morgan, I will bet good money against a pile RTA tokens that it goes nowhere. (And I need all my money; so I am pretty confident.)
Federal judges are appointed for life. And they don’t get impeached because oppressive, tyrannical governors disagree with their opinions or dislike how they do their jobs. Those reasons fall woefully short of the “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors” outlined in Article II, section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. As a former attorney general, Landry knows this. In other words, anyone thinking he lashed out at Judge Morgan because he actually believes she has done anything that even remotely approaches impeachable can stop thinking that right now. Don’t be fooled.
But I will say this: Jeff Landry is doing and saying a lot of things we ought to be worried about. His calling for Judge Morgan’s impeachment is not one of them. Move along. There’s nothing to see here, folks.
In fact, Judge Morgan has, with great care and thoughtfulness, presided over the implementation of the consent decree as ordered by the U.S. Justice Department in 2011 as a result of a DOJ investigation that revealed serious deficiencies at NOPD relative to constitutional policing.
And from what I have seen she has been beyond fair. In fact, during the most recent public hearing on the decree, Judge Morgan had nothing but praise for NOPD’s progress. I listened in real time to the most recent proceeding in its entirety and was left wondering if it was a love fest or a status hearing, with all of the praise for NOPD and its progress — praise from Judge Morgan, from the DOJ, and from the monitor.
But progress does not mean completion. Judge Morgan knows that.
The Judge has been asked before, for various reasons, to lift the consent decree, including one such request from Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who suggested the decree has become a burden impacting morale, retention and recruitment. As attorney general, Gov. Landry went so far as to suggest that the decree needed to be lifted because it went against the state’s “sovereign right” to determine how to best protect and police the people of New Orleans.
So far, Judge Morgan’s response has been a resounding “NO”, because her job as well as that of DOJ officials and the consent decree monitor is not rubber stamp a checklist of policy changes. It is to make certain that the reforms are a part of a core transformation of the agency that will ensure that the progress becomes permanent and the improvements outlast the decree.
With that in mind, Judge Morgan has said NOPD is not ready for the decree to be lifted. If that is what has Jeff Landry all hot under the collar, he is just going to have to be mad. Thankfully, his being mad does not seem to bother Judge Morgan. I, for one, will not let it bother me. I also will not act as though he actually has the right, let alone any real authority or a substantial reason, to command the impeachment of a federal judge just because she won’t bow to him.
So, yes, I tried my best to ignore Gov. Landry’s baseless attack against Judge Morgan, because what I really wanted to say was not a polite. But I will this: His words were not threatening or ominous. They were stupid and childish. They made him look puerile – like an immature fifth grader starting a schoolyard fight. That we have to suffer through four years of this sort of irrational, impetuous behavior infuriates me most. I know attention-grabbing smoke blowing when I see it. Short of calling it out as the incredulous rant that it was, not only was it not too serious to be ignored, it begged to be ignored.
So this is me putting forth my very best effort to ignore Gov. Landry’s impeachment talk. I am pretty sure Landry’s attempt to bully or castigate Judge Susie Morgan had the same impact on her. She probably shook her head. I personally prefer to imagine her slowly and intently rolling her eyes . . . and then she turned her attention to something that actually mattered – like the NOPD consent decree.
And another thing: Gov. Landry has not been in office 100 days yet, and he has taken food out of the mouths of poor school children. He has dumped Louisiana in the dark ages with his regressive criminal justice policies. He has removed safeguards that help protect communities from unchecked corporate greed. He is preparing to obliterate public education to the detriment of Louisiana’s most disenfranchised and marginalized public school students. He is dead set on taking over the City of New Orleans — from the Sewerage & Water Board to the policing of its citizens.
In short, he is up to a whole lot of antics that we need to keep and eye on and call out every chance we get. I will not blame him for trying. But if he thought he was going raise my blood pressure with his utterly empty threat to have Judge Morgan impeached — no doubt his feeble attempt at subterfuge, hoping we all might ignore or forget all of the deleterious things he actually has done, is doing and will do — he was wrong.