Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett and retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy listen as President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4.
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Federal judges who have ruled against the Trump administration this year are confronting a wave of threats, potentially compromising their personal safety and the independence of the judiciary.
The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett received a bomb threat earlier this month, and lower court judges who hit pause on some of President Trump’s efforts to dismantle federal agencies and programs have been singled out on social media.
Republican lawmakers close to the president even have proposed impeachment proceedings against a few of those judges, who serve for life.
Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency making cuts to federal agencies, himself has repeatedly posted on social media about impeaching judges who delay or block parts of Trump’s agenda.
Efforts to undermine the judiciary come at the same time the Trump administration has moved to fire lawyers inside the Justice Department and the Pentagon, penalize private law firms who represented clients Trump does not like, and to back away from participation in the activities of the American Bar Association.
Judge Richard Sullivan, of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, said in his lifetime four federal judges have been killed in retaliation for their work on the bench.
“This is not hypothetical,” Sullivan, who leads a Judicial Conference panel on security issues, told reporters in a news conference this week. The Judicial Conference is a representative body of federal judges that frames policies for courts. “It’s real. It’s happened before. We have to be certain that it doesn’t happen again,” he said.
The Federal Judges Association, a voluntary group of more than 1,000 judges across the nation, said judiciary plays a “critical role in preserving democracy and a law-abiding society.”
“Judges must be able to do their jobs without fear of violence or undue influence,” the group said in a written statement to NPR.
Early threats
One thing stands out to legal experts: these attacks on judges are coming at a very early stage in the legal process — often, before the Supreme Court weighs in as the final decider.
“We have a system of justice that allows for appeals,” Judge Jeffrey Sutton, chief judge of the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, told reporters this week. “That’s typically the way it works. Impeachment is not and shouldn’t be a short-circuiting of that process. And so it is concerning if impeachment is used in a way that is designed to do just that.”
Only 15 federal judges have faced impeachment, mostly for allegations of wrongdoing such as bribery, corruption, or perjury, in the past couple of centuries.
Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University, said the odds of a successful judicial impeachment are pretty low, and to remove a judge from the bench would require a two-thirds vote from the Senate.
“The more that people like Elon Musk are putting on the wall the idea that it’s appropriate to attack these judges for nothing more than ruling against the federal government, the more that we’re normalizing what really are in the main very serious threats to judicial independence,” Vladeck said.
“Jeopardize the Rule of Law”
But Paul Grimm, who spent 26 years as a federal judge, said even the threat of impeachment can amount to intimidation.
“And if you try to intimidate judges, if that’s your goal, so that they do not do their constitutional duty, then you jeopardize the rule of law,” said Grimm, who leads the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke Law School. “And without the rule of law, every liberty and every right that we cherish as Americans is vulnerable.”
Grimm said he worries a lot about online posts that display the home and work addresses of judges and their adult children, a step that he said “crosses the line.”
Nearly five years ago, an angry litigant shot and killed the son of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas in New Jersey.
And in 2023, a state court judge in Maryland was gunned down in his driveway.
Attacks over rulings
The U.S. Marshals say threats against federal judges have doubled in recent years, according to the most recent data. And those threats have been directed at both Democrat and Republican judges.
Justice Barrett came under withering criticism this month from some right-wing political commentators, after she voted alongside Chief Justice John Roberts and the liberals on the high court against Trump’s effort to freeze foreign aid.
Lower court judges have faced online attacks for their early rulings on Musk’s DOGE team, efforts to restore government web pages, and the freeze on foreign aid.
The Marshals protect judges, but they also report to the U.S. Attorney General, not to the courts themselves. That’s got some members of Congress on alert.
“A judge’s security is dependent in many ways on the Marshals Service who the president appoints to protect the judges, and if a president doesn’t like a decision that’s coming from a judge, theoretically they could pull their security,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, said at a congressional hearing this month.
The administration has already yanked protection this year from former military and national security officials who disagreed with Trump in his first term.
Swalwell said Congress should consider giving judges their own security force — one that’s independent from the White House.
