A week after calling for a “civic uprising,” New York Times columnist and PBS nominal conservative David Brooks found his first heroine in arrested Wisconsin Judge Hannah Dugan, who is alleged to have used her courtroom to help an illegal immigrant, who was in front of her for domestic abuse, escape arrest by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On Friday’s PBS News Hour, Brooks argued if the charges are true, then while Dugan’s actions were “illegal,” they were also a “heroic” form of “civil disobedience.”
Host Amna Nawaz did not mention the domestic abuse charges when she asked Brooks, “But what does this say to you now in terms of what the administration is willing to do and how this was carried out?”
Brooks began, “Well, obviously, they're trying to send a note of intimidation, not only to her, but to all judges and maybe to all Americans.”
After claiming he didn’t want to comment on the specific case—certainly an odd choice given the specifics of the case would justify the unusual move—Brooks assumed, for the purposes of discussion, that the allegations were true, “But especially on the issue of immigration, there are a lot of people who are appalled by what the administration is doing. And there will be times for civil disobedience. And, to me, if she — let's say she did escort this guy out the door. If federal enforcement agencies come to your courtroom and you help a guy escape, that is two things.”
Those two things were, “One, it strikes me as maybe something illegal, but it also strikes me as something heroic. And in times of trouble, then people are sometimes called to do civil disobedience. And in my view, when people do civil disobedience, they have to pay the price. That's part of the heroism of it, frankly.”
Dugan is a government official allegedly abusing her office to help an alleged violent abuser escape. She isn’t exactly Rosa Parks protesting against segregation by refusing to give up her seat on the bus. Nevertheless, Brooks continued to try to wax poetic, “And so you can both think that she shouldn't have legally done this and that morally protecting somebody against, maybe not even in this case, but in other cases, frankly, a predatory enforcement agency, sometimes, civil disobedience is necessary.”
Brooks then urged more such acts:
And I don't know if we will get to this point, but we could get to this point in weeks or months where acts of civil disobedience on a lot of fronts may be necessary. And the Trump administration will probably welcome that kind of fight, but their opponents should welcome that kind of fight. And that's one of the ways you can shift public opinion, because one of the ways authoritarians lose control is when their opponents protest in a nonviolent way, and the authoritarians crack down violently. That's the way you delegitimize an authoritarian regime.”
It fell to Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart, of all people, to inform viewers of the accusations against the suspect. However, he still claimed Dugan is “ taking a moral stand” and is looking forward to her defense because she must “stand up against what's now happened to her, which is a ratcheting up of the intimidation against the judiciary, then no other judge is going to take that same stand.”
If judges are going to help violent illegal immigrants escape ICE, then maybe they should be afraid to take the stand.
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Here is a transcript for the April 25 show:
PBS News Hour
4/25/2025
7:40 PM ET
AMNA NAWAZ: But what does this say to you now in terms of what the administration is willing to do and how this was carried out?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, obviously, they're trying to send a note of intimidation, not only to her, but to all judges and maybe to all Americans.
But I don't yet know the specific details of this case, whether she escorted the guy out the jury door or whether she led him. So that's all murky. I don't want to comment on this specific case.
But especially on the issue of immigration, there are a lot of people who are appalled by what the administration is doing. And there will be times for civil disobedience. And, to me, if she — let's say she did escort this guy out the door. If federal enforcement agencies come to your courtroom and you help a guy escape, that is two things.
One, it strikes me as maybe something illegal, but it also strikes me as something heroic. And in times of trouble, then people are sometimes called to do civil disobedience. And in my view, when people do civil disobedience, they have to pay the price. That's part of the heroism of it, frankly.
And so you can both think that she shouldn't have legally done this and that morally protecting somebody against, maybe not even in this case, but in other cases, frankly, a predatory enforcement agency, sometimes, civil disobedience is necessary.
And I don't know if we will get to this point, but we could get to this point in weeks or months where acts of civil disobedience on a lot of fronts may be necessary. And the Trump administration will probably welcome that kind of fight, but their opponents should welcome that kind of fight.
And that's one of the ways you can shift public opinion, because one of the ways authoritarians lose control is when their opponents protest in a nonviolent way, and the authoritarians crack down violently. That's the way you delegitimize an authoritarian regime.
And so that — it may come to that.
