The reports about threats against judges have become unnervingly familiar. My MSNBC colleague Clarissa-Jan Lim noted the other day that jurists are facing increased threats of violence, and there’s ample evidence in support of the thesis.
NPR reported last week, for example, that federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration “are confronting a wave of threats, potentially compromising their personal safety and the independence of the judiciary.” Reuters added that U.S. marshals have warned that federal judges are facing “unusually high threat levels as tech billionaire Elon Musk and other Trump administration allies ramp up efforts to discredit judges who stand in the way of White House efforts.”
The New York Times reported, “At a moment when the judiciary is weighing pivotal decisions on the legality of Trump administration policies, the potential for violence against judges seems to be rising.” The article quoted one federal judge, “whose 20-year-old son was shot and killed at her home in 2020 by a self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer,” who said: “This is not hyperbole. I am begging our leaders to realize that there are lives at stake.”
Donald Trump does not appear to be listening to those pleas. On the contrary, the president published an item to his social media platform late last week that read in part:
Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings. … The danger is unparalleled!
The Republican went on to write, “It is our goal to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, and such a high aspiration can never be done if Radical and Highly Partisan Judges are allowed to stand in the way of JUSTICE. STOP NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS NOW, BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.”
In case this reckless rhetoric weren’t quite enough, Trump also used his platform to amplify an item over the weekend from a right-wing blog that read in part, “When judges exceed their constitutional authority by obstructing or overturning executive actions without legitimate constitutional grounds, they not only overstep their role but may also commit acts tantamount to treason and sedition.”
Others on the president’s team are predictably adding to the pile-on. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt targeted a specific federal judge from behind the podium last week, just days after Trump called for the jurist’s impeachment. Around the same time, Attorney General Pam Bondi, during one of her many Fox News appearances, called out three specific district court judges — by name.
Even Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is joining the dangerous parade. After U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes ruled against the administration’s ban on transgender Americans serving in the military, the former Fox News host wrote via social media, “Since ‘Judge’ Reyes is now a top military planner, she/they can report to Fort Benning at 0600 to instruct our Army Rangers on how to execute High Value Target Raids … after that, Commander Reyes can dispatch to Fort Bragg to train our Green Berets on counterinsurgency warfare.”
Note that Hegseth put Reyes’ title in scare quotes, as if she weren’t an actual Senate-confirmed federal judge, before assigning a “she/they” pronoun to her. Just as notably, of course, the Pentagon chief suggested that Reyes, by honoring the law, is necessarily interfering with military duties, despite the fact that transgender Americans have already been serving in the military for years without incident.
Taken together, the bigger picture is, to put it mildly, unsettling: As more judges face threats of violence, Trump and his team are publicly condemning judges in highly inflammatory and demonstrably false ways.
The Washington Post reported last week that the White House was pushing forward “with delegitimizing the independent federal judiciary by attacking judges who rule against the administration.” That, in and of itself, was an extraordinary sentence, generally unseen in healthy and stable democracies. But the observation is made worse by the fact that Team Trump is executing this campaign in irresponsible ways that appear quite dangerous.
