Threats to judges mount, challenging independence, norms, and rule of law
On a dark, early morning in June 2022, Nicholas Roske climbed out of a cab with a pistol and a plan.
He was going to break into a suburban Maryland home and kill U.S. Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But as he approached the house, something spooked him: the justice’s 24-hour security detail. He was quickly arrested and will stand trial this summer.
Calling for the impeachment of judges who rule against the president – as President Donald Trump’s adviser Elon Musk and several Republican lawmakers have recently – may seem a far cry from attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court justice. But judges and legal experts say the behavior is part and parcel of a growing hostility toward the judicial branch.
Why We Wrote This
Chief Justice John Roberts made rising threats against and violence toward judges a focus of his 2024 year-end report. The rule of law now feels vulnerable to intimidation, which could destabilize the U.S. government’s balance of powers.
To be sure, judicial rulings and even individual judges have been subject to criticism throughout U.S. history. In recent years, however, the number of explicit threats of violence toward judicial branch members has doubled.
“My life has been threatened several times resulting in two arrests, one conviction, and the purchase of my new gun,” one judge wrote in a recent survey by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Adding to the recent tensions are suggestions – backed by some evidence – that the Trump administration will not follow court rulings it doesn’t like. Calls for impeachment by Trump supporters like Mr. Musk, the face of his U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, have elevated the conflict. Impeachment articles have now been filed against three federal judges.
Whether successful or not, these impeachment efforts represent a significant departure from constitutional norms. When someone disagrees with a judge’s decision, the remedy provided by the U.S. legal system is to appeal to a higher court. Trying to circumvent that process by removing or intimidating a judge – with violence or with impeachment – could endanger both judges and their families, and American democracy, experts and legal scholars say.
Historical objections
It’s been standard practice to criticize courts without seeking to remove individual judges violently or otherwise. The frequent overturned rulings of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit have long been a punching bag for conservatives. The same has become true for liberals and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
The courts, just like the other branches of government, can be criticized. But the judiciary’s independence sets it apart. Judges are, by design, accountable more to other judges than to the public. While the presidency and Congress are inherently subject to the ebb and flow of public opinion, the courts are built to ensure the laws of the land are upheld impartially.
Recent years have seen that independence attacked – sometimes literally, and tragically.
Threats to federal judges doubled between 2021 and 2024, the Marshals Service reported. Some of the most high-profile attacks were in response to specific court decisions.
When the Supreme Court overturned the right to abortion in 2022, for example, death threats against justices followed (including the Justice Kavanaugh incident). When President Trump faced multiple criminal prosecutions after his 2020 election defeat, judges in those cases – and their families – became the target of threats.
In 2020, a man attacked the home of Esther Salas, a federal judge in New Jersey, killing her son and wounding her husband. (The assailant had argued, and partially won, a case before Judge Salas a year prior.) Two years later, a state court judge in Wisconsin was killed in a “targeted” attack, as was a Maryland state court judge the next year, in 2023. Last year, a man assaulted a Nevada state court judge in her courtroom moments after she had sentenced him to prison.
Some efforts have been made to increase protection for judges. After the attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh, Congress passed a law providing permanent 24-hour protection for Supreme Court justices and their families. That same year, federal lawmakers also passed the Daniel Anderl Act, named for Judge Salas’ son, which requires that the personal information of active or retired judges be scrubbed from the internet.
In the meantime, judges are learning to identify suspicious packages sent to their homes, to ensure they take different cars and routes to work each day, and to avoid (when possible) bumper-to-bumper traffic, according to John Allen, an administrative law judge in Illinois.
“Basic stuff like that actually makes a difference,” says Mr. Allen, who also co-chairs the American Bar Association’s judicial security committee.
The Marshals Service has “done a good job educating judges,” he adds. But “More and more judges at our meetings [have] war stories.”
New threats, new challenges
With calls for impeachment, intimidation of judges has taken a new turn in 2025.
Since returning to office, Mr. Trump has claimed sweeping presidential authority to fire government employees and dismantle federal agencies. Some judges have slowed the president’s efforts with temporary pauses. As those rulings are appealed, Mr. Trump’s supporters have accused the judges of being biased and overstepping their constitutional authority.
After the Supreme Court issued its first major ruling in these cases – a narrow decision upholding a lower court order that the administration must repay foreign aid groups for contract work already completed – conservatives targeted Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, with a flood of acrimony. “She’s a big problem,” wrote a user on the social media platform X last week.
Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia has said he is preparing articles of impeachment against John McConnell, a Rhode Island district court judge, over his order temporarily preventing Trump officials from pausing federal grants and loans. Representative Clyde also launched the Judicial Activism Accountability Task Force last week.
“I’m deeply disturbed by his blatant and dangerous judicial activism,” he said of Judge McConnell in a statement.
“If any judge can weaponize their power to usurp the President’s legitimate [constitutional] authority and defy the will of the American people, then we no longer have a constitutional Republic,” he added.
These comments echo statements last month from Mr. Musk. In almost daily social media posts last month, the tech billionaire described judges who ruled against the Trump administration as “evil” and “corrupt.” It was time, he added, for a “wave of judicial impeachments.”
Three Republican lawmakers have recently filed impeachment articles against federal judges. Two such articles have been filed against Paul Engelmayer, a federal judge in New York.
Why Judge Engelmayer? He temporarily blocked Trump officials – including, it seems, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent – from accessing sensitive Treasury Department records in a late-night Feb. 8 order. Rep. Derrick Van Orden is saying that the order amounts to “clear bias” and “judicial misconduct.” Rep. Eli Crane is accusing the judge of using his position “to advance personal interests and political gain.”
Tennessee Rep. Andy Ogles, meanwhile, is accusing Judge John Bates of engaging in conduct “incompatible with the trust and confidence placed in him as a Federal judge.” The federal judge in Washington is facing impeachment after ordering the government to restore data to public health webpages. That data had been removed because it supposedly promoted “gender ideology extremism.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi, however, said last month that the administration is “going to follow the process.” These lower court orders, she added, “will be struck down, ultimately, by the Supreme Court ... if the appellate courts don’t follow the law.”
Long shots, but harmful ones
Only 15 federal judges have been impeached in U.S. history. With impeachment requiring a two-thirds vote from the Senate, these efforts appear unlikely to succeed.
These impeachment efforts could still cause damage, however. In accusing judges of high crimes and misdemeanors, public officials are not only portraying them as politically motivated, but also implying that the normal appeals process is broken.
“There’s a process in place to register disagreement with decisions of judges,” says Thomas Griffiths, a retired Washington federal appeals court judge.
Politicians “ought to be more responsible in their criticisms,” he adds. “They ought to be more knowledgeable about how the courts really work.”
In his year-end report last December, Chief Justice Roberts identified violence, intimidation, disinformation, and threats as mounting threats to judicial independence and the rule of law.
“Judicial review makes tensions between the branches unavoidable,” he wrote. But “Violence, intimidation, and defiance directed at judges because of their work undermine our Republic.”
Intimidation includes calling for impeachment and suggesting political bias motivates judges’ rulings, he added.
But it’s not just calls for impeachment coloring public discourse. Violent political rhetoric in the United States has been growing across the board. Lawmakers from both parties are facing more frequent threats of violence. Two assassination attempts were made on Mr. Trump during the 2024 presidential campaign. One Republican senator reportedly changed a vote after being warned of “credible death threats.”
A time for bravery
The needed response from public officials – including in the judiciary – is bravery, experts say. The alternative is that judges prioritize the safety of themselves and their families over saying, as the Supreme Court wrote in Marbury v. Madison, “what the law is.”
“The system starts to fall apart if the judges aren’t independent, if they feel coerced to make decisions they wouldn’t normally make,” says Mr. Allen, the administrative law judge.
“I believe as fast as we snapped into this current state, we can snap back,” he adds. It might be hard, “But, frankly, this country’s been founded on harder decisions.”
Staff writer Nate Iglehart contributed to this story.
