The Judiciary Is Under Assault -- Digby

[erronis]

https://digbysblog.net/2025/05/02/the-judiciary-is-under-assault/

Reuters found 11 federal judges and their family members who have been threatened by Trump supporters.

When U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled in April that Trump administration officials could face criminal contempt charges for deporting migrants in defiance of a court order, the blowback was immediate.

The president’s supporters unleashed a wave of threats and menacing posts. And they didn’t just target the judge. Some attacked Boasberg’s brother. Others blasted his daughter. Some demanded the family’s arrest – or execution.

U.S. District Judge John McConnell’s family endured similar threats after he ruled that President Donald Trump overstepped his authority in freezing grants for education and other services. Far-right provocateur Laura Loomer tweeted a photo of the judge’s daughter, who had worked at the U.S. Education Department as a policy advisor, and accused McConnell of protecting her paycheck. Billionaire Elon Musk amplified the post to his 219 million X followers. Neither mentioned the daughter had left her job before Trump’s inauguration.

Loomer continued her attacks with nine more posts in the ensuing days – and more than 600 calls and emails flooded McConnell’s Rhode Island courthouse, including death threats and menacing messages taunting his family, according to a court clerk and another person familiar with the communications.

Boasberg and McConnell are among at least 11 federal judges whose families have faced threats of violence or harassment after they ruled against the new Trump administration, a Reuters investigation found.

. . .

Lovely folks, just following the lead of their Dear Leader and his henchmen.

And it’s not just the usual online MAGA weirdos:

In a little-noticed lawsuit filed last week, the America First Legal Foundation sued Chief Justice John Roberts and the head of the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.

The case ostensibly proceeds as a FOIA lawsuit, with the Trump-aligned group seeking access to judiciary records. But, in doing so, it asks the courts to cede massive power to the White House: the bodies that make court policy and manage the judiciary’s day-to-day operations should be considered independent agencies of the executive branch, the suit argues, giving the President, under the conservative legal movement’s theories, the power to appoint and dismiss people in key roles.

Multiple legal scholars and attorneys TPM spoke with reacted to the suit with a mixture of dismay, disdain and laughter. Though the core legal claim is invalid, they said, the suit seems to be a part of the fight that the administration launched and has continued to escalate against the courts over the past several months: ignoring a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a wrongly removed Salvadoran man, providing minimal notice to people subject to the Alien Enemies Act, flaunting an aggressive criminal case against a state court judge.

. . .

You know who’s behind all this? You guessed it:

Stephen Miller, the longtime Trump aide, founded the America First Legal Foundation in April 2021, describing it as the “long-awaited answer to the ACLU.” Over the next few years, the group succeeded in slowing down or blocking several Biden administration policies, often by filing in the Northern District of Texas’s Amarillo courthouse, which is presided over by a judge who is notably receptive to conservative arguments. Its priorities often match those of Trump’s second term… Miller himself has been a public driving force in the most aggressive and lawless elements of the second Trump administration’s effort to bulldoze through civil liberties in the name of increasing the tempo of deportations.

Miller has a bunch of plans to ram through his agenda, starting with the Alien Enemies act. This is another one. And in the end, he will simply persuade the addled old megalomaniac at the helm that he doesn’t need to pay any attention to judges at all. He’s ready to destroy the judiciary once and for all.