John Washington III Calls for Guaranteed, Independent Funding for All Three Branches of Government

Presidential candidate John Washington III is arguing that the independence of the courts cannot survive a budget controlled by another branch. When Congress controls the courts' funding, he wrote, the justice system can suffer — pointing to 2025, when the federal courts had to scale back paid operations because of a funding lapse. "That's not balance," John Washington III wrote. "That's dependence."

He framed the risk in constitutional terms. If one branch can squeeze another financially, he wrote, then checks and balances start to crack. Judges, he argued, must be free to protect constitutional rights, not worry about politics or budgets while they decide cases.

John Washington III also put the issue in the position of an ordinary person in court. Picture yourself in court without a $10,000 lawyer, he wrote: you do not know all the rules, but prosecutors do. In that setting, he argued, the judge's independence is the protection the person without money or counsel is counting on.

His proposal is specific. John Washington III is calling for guaranteed, independent funding for all three branches of government, with full public accountability, but no political retaliation. "This isn't unlimited money," he wrote. "It's about protecting the people's rights and restoring real independence among the branches."