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President Trump's campaign to dismantle the federal bureaucracy is facing strong pushback in the courts. Now some of the judges who've ruled against the Trump administration are facing online threats and calls for their impeachment. NPR justice correspondent Carrie Johnson reports.
CARRIE JOHNSON, BYLINE: At a recent hearing on Capitol Hill, Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin highlighted just a few of the critical comments coming from Trump adviser Elon Musk.
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JAMIE RASKIN: And Elon Musk has repeatedly undermined the judiciary on social media saying things like activist judges should be removed from the bench. Not to be outdone, President Trump posted, he who saves his country violates no law.
JOHNSON: Already this year, House Republicans have proposed impeachment against multiple judges who ruled against the Trump administration.
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ZOE LOFGREN: Since 1804, only 15 federal judges have been impeached. And as you know, the constitutional standard for impeaching a federal judge is high.
JOHNSON: That's Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren, a Democrat from California. She pointed out judges have been impeached for taking bribes, committing perjury or engaging in corruption. High crimes and misdemeanors, she says, not differences of opinion about a particular ruling. Steve Vladek teaches law at Georgetown University.
STEVE VLADECK: So the more that people like Elon Musk are putting on the wall the idea that it's appropriate to attack these judges for nothing more than ruling against the federal government, the more that we're normalizing what really are, in the main, very serious threats to judicial independence.
JOHNSON: There's something else that stands out to Vladeck about the current moment. These attacks on judges are coming at a very early stage in the legal process, often before the Supreme Court weighs in as the final decider.
VLADECK: But one of the reasons why we don't tend to impeach judges for their rulings is because bad rulings have remedies, and the remedies are appeals.
JOHNSON: Legal experts say the odds of a successful judicial impeachment are pretty low, and to remove a judge from the bench would require a two-thirds vote from the Senate. But Paul Grimm, who spent 26 years as a federal judge, says even the threat of impeachment can amount to intimidation.
PAUL GRIMM: And if you try to intimidate judges, if that's your goal, so they do not do their constitutional duty, then you jeopardize the rule of law. And without the rule of law, every liberty and every right that we cherish as Americans is vulnerable.
JOHNSON: Grimm now works at Duke University studying the role of judges and the rule of law. He worries a lot about online posts that display the home and work addresses of judges and their adult children.
GRIMM: Information about where they live and where their families live, when they're subjected to hate comments on social media platforms, that crosses the line.
JOHNSON: Nearly five years ago, an angry litigant shot and killed the son of Judge Esther Salas in New Jersey. And in 2023, a state court judge in Maryland was gunned down in his driveway. The U.S. Marshals say threats against federal judges have doubled in recent years, according to the most recent data, and those threats have been directed at both Democrat and Republican judges. The Marshals protect judges, but they also report to the U.S. attorney general, not to the courts themselves, and that's got some members of Congress on alert. Eric Swalwell is a Democrat from California.
ERIC SWALWELL: The judge's security is dependent, in many ways, on the Marshal Service, who the president appoints to protect the judges. And if a president doesn't like a decision that's coming from a judge, theoretically, they could pull their security.
JOHNSON: The administration has already yanked protection this year from military and national security officials who disagreed with Trump in his first term. So Swalwell says Congress should consider giving judges their own security force, one that's independent from the White House.
Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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