Maddow Blog-Judges reportedly eye new security measures as Trump's rhetorical attacks get worse

[LetMyPeopleVote]

As the president condemns unnamed judges as “monsters who want our country to go to hell,” there’s growing talk of systemic security reforms.

Judges reportedly eye new security measures as Trump’s rhetorical attacks get worse
As Donald Trump condemns unnamed judges as “monsters who want our country to go to hell,” there's growing talk of systemic security reforms for the courts.
www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddo...

— Rose Spitznogle (@rosespitznogle.bsky.social) 2025-05-27T21:49:39.272Z

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/judges-reportedly-eye-new-security-measures-trumps-rhetorical-attacks-rcna209252

The inflammatory rhetoric was not a one-off; presidential comments like these have become quite common of late. In March, for example, Trump also wrote, “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!”

Radical condemnations like these are creating a dangerous environment in which judges, and even their family members, are increasingly concerned about their personal safety. Reuters reported in March that U.S. marshals 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.”....

In April, The New York Times reported on a recent meeting of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the administration of the federal courts. The article noted, “Behind closed doors at one session, Judge Richard J. Sullivan, the chairman of the conference’s Committee on Judicial Security, raised a scenario that weeks before would have sounded like dystopian fiction, according to three officials familiar with the remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations: What if the White House were to withdraw the protections it provides to judges?”

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a related report:

Amid rising tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary, some federal judges are beginning to discuss the idea of managing their own armed security force. The notion came up in a series of closed-door meetings in early March, when a group of roughly 50 judges met in Washington for a semiannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, a policymaking body for the federal judiciary. There, members of a security committee spoke about threats emerging as President Trump stepped up criticism of those who rule against his policies.

The reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, echoed the Times’ article, noted that some federal judges “worried that Trump could order the marshals to stand down in retaliation for a decision that didn’t go his way.”

To that end, some jurists are reportedly weighing the possibility of the judiciary creating its own security force, while Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is pushing new legislation that would shift control of the U.S. Marshals Service to the courts from the DOJ.

A Justice Department spokesperson described these concerns as “absurd.” That said, this is the same Justice Department led by a Trump loyalist who’s also used highly provocative rhetoric related to the courts, including a recent interview in which the attorney general said judges who rule against Trump’s agenda are “deranged.” As part of the same conservative media appearance, Bondi even raised the prospect of arresting more judges.

Given the circumstances, can you blame members of the judiciary for eyeing some systemic concerns?

[Cha]

1. Mump Projecting. They "want Our Country to Go To HELL"

and The Rule of Law Judges are Fighting It with Legal Judgements.

Fuck Off MF U2 bondi *****

No Kings Hands Off! 💙🌈

[LetMyPeopleVote]

2. Vance's statements are designed to make it more dangerous of judges to disagree with trump

It is not the job of the courts to defer to a branch of government based on election results. The vice president apparently finds this confusing.

https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/jd-vance-accuses-courts-trying-literally-overturn-will-american-voters-rcna209442

The more Donald Trump and his administration push the legal envelope, the more they lose in court. In fact, Adam Bonica, a political science professor at Stanford, found that the president has faced a variety of legal fights this month, and he’s lost 96% of the time. Even when Trump’s cases have landed before Republican-appointed judges, he’s still lost 72% of the time.......

D Vance hasn’t used comparable rhetoric, but when the vice president sat down last week with The New York Times’ Ross Douthat, he did voice concern about “a real conflict between two important principles in the United States.” From the transcript of the interview:

Principle 1, of course, is that courts interpret the law. Principle 2 is that the American people decide how they’re governed. That’s the fundamental small-d democratic principle that’s at the heart of the American project. I think that you are seeing, and I know this is inflammatory, but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.

This argument comes up from time to time, despite its ridiculousness. Indeed, about a month after Trump’s second inaugural, Elon Musk appeared on Fox News and argued, “If the will of the president is not implemented and the president is representative of the people, that means the will of the people is not being implemented, and that means we don’t live in a democracy.”

The argument reflects a certain child-like logic: Trump won a democratic election, so to deny the president’s will is to defy democracy. Of course, if the U.S. were an autocracy; if the rule of law didn’t exist; and if the powers of the presidency were indistinguishable from that of a king, then Musk’s pitch might make sense. But since that isn’t the case, Musk’s argument is both absurd and at odds with how our Madisonian political system is designed to work.

The trouble, of course, is that Vance’s pitch was similar — and similarly wrong......

It falls on the judiciary to evaluate legal disputes on their merits. It is not the job of the courts to defer to another branch of government based on election results. In our system, there is no such rule that suggests, “If people vote for a candidate, the candidate’s platform instantly becomes legal.”

New York magazine’s Ed Kilgore summarized, “Repeated again and again, the idea that judges should bend the law to suit Trump because he, unlike his predecessors, uniquely embodies the Popular Will (even though an actual majority of voters did not vote for him last year) is pernicious and, worse yet, validates the already-powerful authoritarian tendencies of the president, his advisers, and his fans in conservative media and on MAGA social media.”

It’s a point worth keeping in mind the next time one of Trump’s allies peddles this absurdity.