MAGA campaign to 'intimidate' judges putting is their safety and families at 'high risk'

17 May

Pam Bondi during her Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing on January 15, 2025 (Maxim Elramsisy/ Shutterstock.com)

President Donald Trump has issued countless executive orders since returning to the White House almost four months ago, and some of them are being blocked — at least temporarily — by judges in the lower federal courts.

Trump and many of his appointees, including Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, are claiming that the judges are failing to honor the powers of the U.S. governor's executive branch. And Trump's critics are countering that the judges are exercising the checks-and-balances powers they enjoy under the U.S. Constitution.

In an article published on May 17, The Guardian's Peter Stone describes the threats of violence and intimidation tactics that federal judges are facing when they challenge Trump's executive orders.

"The Trump Administration's escalating fight with the courts has come as more than 200 lawsuits have challenged executive orders and policies on multiple issues, including immigrant deportations, penalizing law firms with links to political foes, agency spending and workforce cuts, and other matters," Stone explains. "The wave of litigation has resulted in more than 100 executive orders by Trump and other initiatives being halted temporarily or paused by court rulings from judges appointed by both Democrats and Republicans, including some by Trump. Increasingly, ex-judges and legal experts warn the verbal attacks by Trump, his attorney general, Pam Bondi, and MAGA allies, are creating a hostile climate that endangers the safety of judges and their families."

John Jones, president of Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, believes that the demonization of federal judges by MAGA Republicans is making them unsafe.

Jones told The Guardian, "The constant mischaracterization by Trump and his allies of judicial rulings as political in nature, together with their false, vituperative and ad hominem attacks on individual judges who make them, skews the public’s perception of the work of the federal judiciary. These attacks foment a climate where the safety of judges and their families is at high risk."

Judges who challenge Trump are not only facing threats of violence — they are facing criminal prosecutions. In Milwaukee on May 13, Judge Hannah C. Dugan was arrested for allegedly helping an undocumented immigrant avoid arrest.

Nancy Gertner, a law professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, told The Guardian, "The circumstances of the arrest of the Milwaukee judge — her arrest, the perp walk, the picture of her handcuffs, the comments of the FBI director and the attorney general — was so far out of line with accepted practice and rules. It clearly was intended to intimidate other judges; there was no justification for it whatsoever."

Read The Guardian's full article at this link.

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