Sharp spike in threats to judges prompts calls for more security
Updated: A spike in threats against federal judges after President Donald Trump took office is prompting calls for new funding and security measures, with current and former jurists, lawmakers, and law enforcement officials saying existing protections are not enough.
The U.S. Marshals Service investigated threats against 197 judges between March 2 and late May of this year, according to data shared with The Washington Post by U.S. District Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey. That was more than double the 80 judges threatened in the previous five months, from Oct. 1 through March 1.
The increase came as Trump and his allies railed against the federal court system, blaming judges for blocking the president’s agenda. Dozens of judges appointed by presidents of both parties have temporarily paused many of Trump’s efforts to slash government spending, remake agencies, speed deportations and change immigration policy while legal challenges to those efforts are pending.
Trump, some of his top advisers and some Republican lawmakers have called for impeaching or removing those judges, prompting warnings from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and others about the importance of respecting the judicial process and the independence of the federal court system.
The data from the Marshals Service, which the agency has not released publicly, shows 162 judges were threatened between March 2 and April 14. That period included high-profile standoffs between the Trump administration and judges who ruled against the president’s deportation orders and attempts to reshape the federal bureaucracy. From April 15 to May 27, another 35 judges were threatened, according to the data.
From the start of the fiscal year, which began Oct. 1, the monthly average of threats investigated is only modestly higher than the monthly total from fiscal 2024, according to the data provided by Salas. She said the Marshals Service investigated 373 threats to judges during the first eight months of this fiscal year, compared with 509 probes in fiscal 2024.
Threats to judges have come from both sides of the political spectrum, prompting round-the-clock security at the homes of Supreme Court justices starting about the time that the conservative majority overturned the constitutional right to abortion in 2022. There was also enhanced protection last year for judges handling Trump’s now-dismissed criminal cases.
The Marshals Service is monitoring a widening landscape of hostile communications online through its Open Source Intelligence Unit, which was created in 2021. About 50 people were charged with making threats against judges between 2019 and 2024, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said in December.
The agency is also reviewing more than 100 anonymous, unsolicited pizza deliveries to judges and their families in at least seven states and the District of Columbia in recent months—incidents that the judges and investigators see as ominous messages to the recipients that the sender knows who they are and where they live.
Some of the deliveries went to judges handling lawsuits against the Trump administration, The Post has reported. At least 20 deliveries have been made in the name of Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, who was fatally shot at the family’s home in 2020 by a disgruntled lawyer posing as a delivery person. Salas has since become an outspoken advocate on judicial safety, coordinating with both the Marshals Service and her colleagues on the latest threat numbers and trends.
She and others said even more measures are needed as federal court dockets fill with cases involving the Trump administration and judges face escalating vitriol from the president and his supporters.
“Judicial independence is essential to constitutional democracy, and judicial independence is in danger if the judges aren’t safe,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. “Judges themselves are warning us that this crisis is dire, and that chronic underfunding has deprived judges and courts of the resources needed to ensure their protection.”
Experts offer a range of proposals for bolstering safety around the judiciary, including increasing the number of marshals assigned to protect judges, boosting funding for courthouse security, and strengthening legislation that attempts to shield judges’ home addresses from public view.
A simpler solution, several former judges said, would be for Trump administration officials to cool their rhetoric, which they believe fuels threats from extremists and fanatical supporters. While the White House has denounced violence against judges, Trump and some of his most powerful allies have continued to use inflammatory language to lambaste those who rule against administration policies.
In social media posts Wednesday and Thursday, top Trump adviser Stephen Miller called a federal trade court’s ruling against the president’s tariffs a “judicial coup” and reposted photos of the three-judge panel, saying, “we are living under a judicial tyranny.”
The broadsides have stirred worry throughout the judiciary. More than 30 retired judges have formed a group known as Keep Our Republic’s Article III Coalition to defend the independence of the court system and advocate for sitting judges.
“I strongly suspect that if anything, the dangerous climate will get even worse,” said John Jones, a retired federal chief judge in Pennsylvania and member of the group.
“It’s stomach-churning because there’s no panacea, there’s no magic way that this gets fixed,” said Jones, an appointee of President George W. Bush. “What I’m astonished by is that we don’t have somebody that is in an elected or appointed high office in Washington stand up and simply say, ‘Regardless of our disagreement with individual judges’ decisions, it’s unconscionable and intolerable to make any kind of threats against judges.’”
A White House spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said in an emailed statement that violence and intimidation against judges and their families is “never acceptable.” He said he supported strengthening protections for federal judges “while also calling out instances of judicial overreach and unconstitutional abuse of power.”
As threats have escalated in recent years, the Marshals Service, whose core mission is safeguarding judges and courthouses, has assigned protective details to judges and their families at levels not seen in decades. The agency declined to discuss this year’s threat data, which has not been released publicly. The data were first reported by the New York Times.
In 2022, marshals arrested a man with a gun outside the home of Brett M. Kavanaugh who admitted in court that he wanted to assassinate the Supreme Court justice over the court’s repeal of abortion rights.
Last year, U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who presided over one of Trump’s criminal cases, was targeted with swatting, in which police are called to respond to a fake crime at a person’s home.
The operating budget for the 5,600-person Marshals Service has remained steady at about $1.7 billion under budget resolutions passed by Congress to avert recent government shutdowns, said Ronald Davis, who served as director from September 2021 until early this year.
He said the flat funding has had the impact of a budget cut because of inflation and cost-of-living raises. Multiple requests for budget increases and supplemental funding sputtered while he was in office, Davis said. He said a significant boost is necessary to hire more deputies, enforcement officers, and administrative staffers, and to help the agency respond more proactively to threats.
Otherwise, Davis expects trade-offs, such as pulling personnel from fugitive apprehensions, tracking sex offenders and other important missions so they can help keep judges safe. Davis said he made just such a trade-off as director last year, cutting in half the number of localities involved in a fugitive apprehension operation to free up more deputies to protect judges.
“Whoever is sitting in my former chair has now got to rob Peter to pay Paul,” Davis said. “Something else is not getting done.”
The Marshals Service said its Judicial Security Division “actively monitors the threat case workload across our 94 judicial districts and can redistribute investigative or protective resources when and where necessary.”
“The protection of the judiciary remains a top priority of the Marshals Service,” the agency said in a statement. “The agency continually and successfully manages and directs remaining resources to carry out a wide array of mission sets to the best of our ability.”
Not every threat against one of the 2,700 federal judges covered by the Marshals Service prompts the agency to assign a detail. Depending on the risk assessment, the marshals may increase surveillance around a judge, assign deputies to continuous shifts to guard a judge’s home or courthouse, or protect them while in transit, Davis said.
“Moving forward, the challenge for the agency is this threat environment seems to be increasing,” Davis said. “I think Congress has got to make a decision that protecting the judiciary, the third branch, is a priority and fund it accordingly.”
The federal judiciary is separately seeking to increase the budget for security at courthouses. U.S. Circuit Judge Amy St. Eve told House lawmakers this month that courts have delayed upgrading security cameras, magnetometers, and other outdated equipment to preserve funding for threat monitoring and private security guards.
Another priority is finding ways to better protect the personal identifying information of judges and their family members. A law Congress passed in 2022 in response to the killing of Salas’s son restricts the disclosure of such details. Most federal judges have enrolled in a judiciary program to remove information covered by the law from the internet, officials said. But the rash of anonymous pizza deliveries highlighted how some of those details remain on doxing websites and records databases.
Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-New Jersey) and the Federal Bar Association have urged Congress to provide $10 million to implement an untapped part of the Anderl law: helping state and local governments redact personal information on judges and their families from tax and motor vehicle records, and scrub it from other databases they manage.
Salas said more state laws that mirror the Anderl law would also help shield such information.
“Will they guarantee that no one is ever hurt? No,” she said. “But what it can do is make it harder for those who would do us harm to find us.”
As the Trump administration has clashed with the courts, Democratic lawmakers and some current and former judges have questioned whether the White House might retaliate by pulling protection from a judge who is under threat. Trump’s nominee to lead the Marshals Service, Gadyaces Serralta, told senators in written testimony that he did not expect that to occur, noting that the agency is required by statute to protect the judiciary.
Still, Raskin and other congressional Democrats introduced legislation last week that would move the Marshals Service out of the Justice Department, which is part of the executive branch, and into the court system. Under that scenario, judiciary officials, not the president, would pick the agency’s leaders.
The bill is unlikely to advance in the Republican-controlled Congress.
Updated on June 5.
