The Trump campaign ad showing Kamala Harris expressing unequivocal support for taxpayer-funded sex change surgery for prison inmates, including illegal aliens, was undoubtedly the most impactful of the 2024 race. It was surely the most significant campaign ad since Willie Horton did in Michael Dukakis in 1988.
So, you might have thought that when Audie Cornish had a federal judge who issued a ruling mandating such taxpayer-funded surgeries as a guest on the CNN This Morning show she hosts, Cornish just might have brought it up. But no. That might have distracted from the segment's theme: Orange Man Bad, and the proverbial threat to American democracy.
On Tuesday's CNN This Morning, Cornish's guest was Mark Wolf, who recently retired as a federal District Court judge for the explicit purpose of being free to criticize President Trump. He wrote up a protest article for The Atlantic, which deeply loathes Trump.
Wolf claimed:
"I think the judiciary is striving, particularly the lower court judges, to perform our fundamental role of holding elected officials to the limits of the power given to them in the Constitution."
Yo, Your Honor! What's sauce for elected officials is sauce for the judiciary.
Can Wolf conceivably believe that the Constitution gives federal judges the power to order taxpayer-funded sex-change operations for convicted murderers? And yet . .
Per Grok
In Kosilek v. Spencer (2012), Wolf ruled that the Massachusetts Department of Corrections must provide taxpayer-funded sex-reassignment surgery for Michelle Kosilek, a transgender inmate convicted of murdering his wife in 1990. He found that denying the surgery violated the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, as it was medically necessary for treating gender dysphoria.
If Cornish had done her homework, or been interested in a fair and balanced segment, she would have called Wolf out on that decision, which was later overturned by a higher court. But not a peep about it from Audie. She let Wolf merrily continue, claiming that "Judges operate independently and impartially. The fact that they're called crooks and biased, doesn't make them crooks and biased."
And inevitably, Wolf ended his self-righteous sermon by claiming that President Trump represents an "existential threat" to the rule of law and democracy.
There was another controversial decision of current relevance that Cornish failed to mention. In Parker v. Hurley, Wolf ruled that public school parents had no constitutional right to exempt their elementary children from books promoting homosexuality and same-sex marriage, finding no evidence of coercive indoctrination.
Note: Wolf was appointed to the bench by President Reagan. Nothing the left loves more than a convert to the cause!
Here's the transcript.
CNN This Morning
11/12/25
6:49 am ETPRESIDENT TRUMP: We cannot allow a handful of Communist, radical-left judges to obstruct the enforcement of our laws and assume the duties that belong solely to the President of the United States. These people are just looking to destroy our country.
AUDIE CORNISH: As Donald Trump's campaign of legal retribution continues against his self-proclaimed political enemies, he's also lashed out at judges that he's accused of disloyalty to the country.
In posts throughout the year, he's called judges who rule against the administration monsters. He's called for those judges to be impeached. His deputy chief of staff has called rulings judicial tyranny.
Our next guest says those verbal attacks have led to real threats against the judiciary. And he's actually now resigning as a federal judge so that he can speak out. In an article in The Atlantic, Judge Mark Wolf says, "The White House's assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence for me is now intolerable."
. . .
MARK WOLF: I think the judiciary is striving, particularly the lower court judges, to perform our fundamental role of holding elected officials to the limits of the power given to them in the Constitution.
But they're not being strengthened in the current environment because the attacks on judges who make impartial, principled decisions and then are called by the president crooked and called to be impeached erodes public confidence in the judiciary, which is essential to the effectiveness of the courts and the rule of law.
CORNISH: One of the things I want to put to you is that every time a federal prosecutor, or now someone like you, comes out and says, look, I'm really frustrated, this is wrong, that's wrong, the administration can say, look, that is revealing the bias. That is showing what's really going on on the bench. What is your response to that?
WOLF: I don't know why advocating for the nonpartisan administration of justice, which I learned was fundamental to our democracy when I was an assistant to the Attorney General of the United States after Watergate, is a lack of partiality [sic].
And judges operate independently and impartially. The fact that they're called crooks and biased doesn't make them crooks and biased, but it does severely
threaten public confidence, which is essential to the enforcement of court orders and essential to the rule of law.And that's why I resigned, so I would no longer be subject to the proper restraints on what federal judges can say outside of court, because I wanted to join many others in advocating for the rule of law and democracy, which I think is now facing an existential threat.
