May 28, 2025

Reporting from the Wall Street Journal over the Memorial Day weekend that a security committee at the federal Judicial Conference in March discussed a proposal to create an armed security force responsible for the safety of the judiciary, separate from the U.S. Marshal’s Service, reflects a sad reality: judges who have ruled against President Donald Trump have faced death threats and vicious personal attacks, amid other hostile acts designed to intimidate them. It should be clear to all that the safety of federal judges is pivotal to the preservation of an independent judiciary and the rule of law, even more critical than the Article III structural guarantees of judicial independence: judges shall serve during good behavior, they may not be removed from the bench unless they commit impeachable offenses—treason, bribery, and high crimes and misdemeanors—and their salaries may not be diminished during their tenure. The structural constitutional protections afforded the judiciary would be rendered irrelevant if judges feared for their lives in rendering decisions based on facts and the law.

The growing recognition among judges that their health, safety and lives—and those of their families—are on the line when they issue, for example, temporary injunctions against President Trump, to halt his usurpations of power and the violation of individuals’ civil rights and civil liberties, has been heightened by his public statements, including those on Truth Social, that judges who have ruled against him—“USA hating judges” and “radical Left lunatics”—in both his first and second terms in office, are “scum” and “Monsters who want our country to go to Hell.”  Trump and his associates have called for the impeachment of “opposition” judges and have attacked them by name. Some have been swatted. In recent months, dozens of pizzas have been delivered to the homes of judges, an action designed to intimidate them by demonstrating that their home addresses are known and that they can be reached.

What the Trump regime refuses to acknowledge is that many of the judicial decisions that have frozen his actions have been Republican-appointed judges, including those nominated by Trump himself. Trump’s parade of losses in the federal courts has been followed by a steady stream of attacks, the goal of which has been to denigrate judges, demean the principle of judicial independence, and deny, altogether, the authority of the judiciary to review presidential acts. Such court bashing invites threats to judges.

As of May 23, the New York Times reports, at least 177 rulings, including decisions of Trump-nominated judges, “have at least temporarily paused some of the administration’s initiatives.” The Trump Administration’s insistence that judges who halt Trump’s aggrandizement of power are backing criminals fans the flames of MAGA loyalists. The concerns among judges at the March conference, in addition to those expressed by eminent, retired judges, include the fear that Attorney General Pam Bondi, who has been hyper-critical of those who have halted Trump’s acts, might withdraw the protection of the U.S. Marshals. J. Michael Luttig, a retired federal judge, revered by conservative legal scholars, pointedly stated that the federal judiciary cannot “trust this president and his attorney general to ensure their protection. How could anyone?”

Trump’s intemperate and dangerous attacks on those judges who have ruled against him represent a departure from both the measured criticisms of court rulings by previous presidents, as does the occasion that he used to deliver them. His fusillade of indecorous Memorial Day assaults on judicial independence, essential to the maintenance of the republic, pales in comparison to the messages of presidents past, who have marked with eloquent and patriotic language the sobering day when our nation honors the fallen who have sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom. On May 31, 1982, President Ronald Reagan expressed the awe that we Americans feel for those who “give their lives so that others might live.” On May 25, 1998, President Bill Clinton urged the citizenry “to commit ourselves to a future worthy of their sacrifice.”  On May 27, 2002, President Barack Obama stated, “Our nation owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we can never fully repay, but we can honor their sacrifice, and we must.”  To honor their ultimate sacrifice requires of the president, at a minimum, to defend democracy, the Constitution, and judicial independence, for which our fallen heroes have given their lives.

-David Adler