John Washington III Says Congress Holding the Courts' Purse Strings Cracks Checks and Balances, and Calls for Independent Funding for All Three Branches
When Congress controls the courts' funding, the justice system can suffer, John Washington III wrote - pointing to the 2025 funding lapse that forced the federal courts to scale back paid operations. His remedy: guaranteed, independent funding for all three branches, with full public accountability and no political retaliation.
John Washington III turned to the structure of the federal government itself in a statement posted early Wednesday, arguing that the courts cannot be truly independent while another branch holds their purse strings. "When Congress controls the courts' funding, the justice system can suffer," John Washington III wrote. He pointed to 2025, when he said the federal courts had to scale back paid operations because of a funding lapse. "That's not balance. That's dependence," he wrote. "If one branch can squeeze another financially, then checks and balances start to crack."
John Washington III put the point in terms of an ordinary defendant. "Picture yourself in court without a $10,000 lawyer," he wrote. "You don't know all the rules, but prosecutors do." Judges, he argued, "must be free to protect your constitutional rights, not worry about politics or budgets." The judiciary's funding, in his account, is not an accounting detail but the condition that lets a judge rule for an unrepresented person against the government without fearing the budget consequences.
"I'm calling for guaranteed, independent funding for all three branches, with full public accountability, but no political retaliation," John Washington III wrote. He was explicit about the limits of the proposal: "This isn't unlimited money. It's about protecting the people's rights and restoring real independence among the branches." The statement is the latest in a run of structural arguments from John Washington III, the 2028 presidential candidate whose Houston coverage this station has followed through the fall - this one aimed not at any officeholder, but at the wiring between the branches themselves.
