Federal judges are operating in an “increasingly hostile landscape of threats, harassment and intimidation” and require more resources for their protection, according to a new report released Monday based on interviews with dozens of sitting and retired jurists.
The report, by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, details a sharp rise in the threats faced by federal judges over the past decade amid deepening political divisions, the spread of social media and inflammatory rhetoric by the Trump administration when judges place limits on executive power.
One federal judge, whom the report did not identify, described facing a wave of online harassment and hundreds of threatening phone calls last year after making a ruling in a case related to the administration’s immigration crackdown.
The judge built a safe room and drilled family members on what to do in case of an intruder after the floor plan of their home was posted on the internet, the Brennan Center said. The judge began varying their schedule and commute and also alerted their child’s school, which increased its active-shooter trainings.
Monday’s report, based on interviews with 35 sitting and retired federal judges appointed by every president since Jimmy Carter, marks another sign of alarm from members of the federal bench at the climate facing the judiciary.
The Brennan Center, a nonpartisan law and policy institute, offered several recommendations for bolstering judicial security, from increasing funding to deepening protections for personally identifiable information for judges and their families.
In a sign of the growing strain with the executive branch, the report also suggested establishing a commission to explore shifting the responsibility for federal judges’ security to the judiciary branch itself.
Another research report released separately on Monday on threats to judicial independence noted that elected officials from across the political spectrum have made ad hominem attacks on federal judges, but the intensity of the invective has increased since last year.
In a rare appearance last month, Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett testified on Capitol Hill about the growing threats faced by members of the nation’s top court. In March, the federal judiciary told Congress that security incidents of “significant concern” jumped by 57 percent in the 2025 fiscal year and are on track to rise again.
While federal judges have faced threats in the past, the report underscores that jurists believe today’s environment is different. U.S. District Judge William Young told the Brennan Center that what is “genuinely new” is “having the executive branch itself be overtly hostile to the federal judiciary.”
Young, a Ronald Reagan appointee in Massachusetts who has found that some of the administration’s actions were unconstitutional, said such hostility manifests itself in different ways. They include “public disparagement of judges, baseless conclusions, attacks that would have been unthinkable in prior administrations.”
President Donald Trump and his allies have repeatedly blasted individual federal judges as rogue actors and political activists whose rulings are illegitimate.
When asked last month about Trump’s personalized attacks on judges, a White House spokeswoman said such opinions are a form of free expression and the administration “cares deeply for the safety of all members of the Judicial Branch.”
Some judges interviewed for the Brennan Center report observed that the intensity of threats had increased since the start of the current administration, whose expansive assertions of executive power have been repeatedly challenged in court.
More than 900 lawsuits have been filed against Trump administration actions since January 2025, according to Just Security, a digital law and policy journal at New York University. In nearly 300 of those cases, judges have blocked the administration from proceeding.
The federal judges in the report described various forms of harassment and intimidation following rulings that reined in the White House. Some said that their personal information and that of their family members was doxed.
After one federal judge ruled against the Trump administration, the president and his allies accused the judge of bias, the report says. A wave of threats followed, including a blizzard of hate mail, intimidating calls to judge’s wife’s cellphone late at night and anonymous pizza deliveries sent to the homes of his children and siblings.
The threats were so intense, the judge said, that a relative insisted on paying for private security. The U.S. Marshals Service ultimately provided four months of full-time protection at the judge’s home.
The federal judges interviewed for the other report released Monday voiced intense concern for the safety of their family members; two said they felt like “sitting ducks.” Another talked about the impact of receiving threatening notes at their home address.
“I’ve been a judge for twenty years,” the jurist said. In the past, “there was never a time that I would walk out of my door and be afraid … It’s a horrible, horrible feeling.”
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