Politics
Judges Worry Trump Could Tell U.S. Marshals to Stop Protecting Them
On March 11, about 50 judges gathered in Washington for the biannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the administration of the federal courts. It was the first time the conference met since President Trump retook the White House.
In the midst of discussions of staffing levels and long-range planning, the judges’ conversations were focused, to an unusual degree, on rising threats against judges and their security, said several people who attended the gathering.
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?
The U.S. Marshals Service, which by law oversees security for the judiciary, is part of the Justice Department, which Mr. Trump is directly controlling in a way that no president has since the Watergate scandal.
Judge Sullivan noted that Mr. Trump had stripped security protections from Mike Pompeo, his former secretary of state, and John Bolton, his former national security adviser. Could the federal judiciary, also a recent target of Mr. Trump’s ire, be next?
Judge Sullivan, who was nominated by President George W. Bush and then elevated to an appellate judgeship by Mr. Trump, referred questions about his closed-door remarks to the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which stated its “complete confidence in those responsible for judicial security.”
There is no evidence that Mr. Trump has contemplated revoking security from judges. But Judge Sullivan’s remarks were an extraordinary sign of the extent of judges’ anxiety over the threats facing the federal bench. And they highlight a growing discomfort from judges that their security is handled by an agency that, through the attorney general, ultimately answers to the president, and whose funding, in their view, has not kept pace with rising threats.
“Cutting all the security from one judge or one courthouse — stuff like that hasn’t happened, and I don’t expect it to,” said Jeremy Fogel, a retired federal judge who directs the Berkeley Judicial Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, and is in frequent contact with current judges. “But, you never know. Because it’s fair to say that limits are being tested everywhere. Judges worry that it could happen.”
The Marshals Service said in a statement that it acted “at the direction of the federal courts” and “effectuate all lawful orders of the federal court.” The integrity of the judicial process, the statement read, depends on “protecting judges, jurors and witnesses.”
Harrison Fields, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Trump’s decision to strip security from Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Bolton, two former officials, had no bearing on his approach to sitting judges. He called worries that the president would deprive judges of their security “speculation” that was “dangerous and irresponsible.”
Founded in 1789, the U.S. Marshals Service has a wide range of law-enforcement duties, in addition to its central function of supporting the judiciary. There are now 94 presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed U.S. marshal positions, one for each judicial district. The agency’s director reports to the deputy attorney general.
The concerns about who oversees the marshals come as threats against judges have been on the rise, expanding the burdens on the service.
Statistics released by the agency show that the number of judges targeted by threats more than doubled from 2019 to 2024, before Mr. Trump returned to office. In those years, he disputed the result of the 2020 election in court, and the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the ruling that made access to abortion a constitutional right. In June 2022, after the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe leaked, an armed man made an attempt to assassinate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh at his home.
In his end-of-year report for 2024, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted “a significant uptick in identified threats at all levels of the judiciary.”
Since Mr. Trump took office in January, he and his supporters have insulted individual judges on social media and called for their impeachment in response to rulings they don’t like. In a message posted on Easter, Mr. Trump referred to “WEAK and INEFFECTIVE Judges” who are allowing a “sinister attack on our Nation to continue” in regard to immigration.
Judges and their family members have in recent weeks reported false threats of bombs in their mailboxes. As of mid-April, dozens of pizzas have been anonymously sent to judges and their family members at their homes, a means of signaling that your enemy knows where you live.
According to Ronald Zayas, the chief executive of Ironwall, a company that contracts with district courts, state courts and some individual judges to provide data protection and security services for judges and other public officials, the number of judges using his services for emergency protection is more than four times the average number for last year. He said 40 judges also used their own money to bolster their security with Ironwall, twice as many as on Jan. 1.
In a letter to Congress dated April 10, Judge Robert J. Conrad Jr., who directs the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, complained that funding for court security remained frozen at 2023 levels through the 2025 fiscal year “at a time when threats against federal judges and courthouses are escalating.” Judges have issued similar warnings for years.
The total amount spent has remained nearly flat, rising to $1.34 billion in 2024 from $1.26 billion in 2022, according to statistics from the administrative office and the marshals, despite inflation and staff pay increases.
At the same time, burdens on the service have grown.
In recent years, the U.S. Marshals said in a statement, they have started helping to protect the homes of the Supreme Court justices, whose security is primarily handled by the separate Supreme Court Marshal’s Office. Last summer, a U.S. marshal stationed outside Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s home in Washington shot and wounded an armed man in an attempted carjacking.
In January, the Trump administration gave the marshals, along with other law enforcement agencies, the new power to enforce immigration laws. That move prompted Judge Edmond E. Chang, who chairs the Judicial Conference’s criminal law committee, to write a memo to all district-court and magistrate judges warning about the potential impact on the marshals’ ability to protect them. (Judge Chang declined to comment; his memo was reported earlier by Reuters.)
In addition to protecting judges’ lives, U.S. law states the marshals’ “primary role and mission” is “to obey, execute, and enforce all orders” from the federal courts. Enforcing court orders can entail imposing fines and imprisonment for anyone judges find to be in contempt of court, including, in theory, executive branch officials.
The Trump administration’s posture in some cases raises the possibility that the already-stretched marshals could emerge as a crucial referee between the branches. In the courtroom, Justice Department lawyers have come close to openly flouting court orders stemming from the unlawful deportation to a prison in El Salvador of a group of nearly 140 Venezuelans and Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, whose removal officials admitted was an “administrative error.” Two judges have responded by opening inquiries that could lead to administration officials being held in contempt of court.
“What happens if the marshals are ordered to deliver a contempt citation to an agency head that has defied a court order?” asked Paul W. Grimm, a retired federal judge who leads the Bolch Judicial Institute at Duke University. “Are they going to do that? The question of who the Marshals Service owes their allegiance to will be put to the test in the not-too-distant future, I suspect.”
Concern over the oversight of the Marshals Service is not new. A 1982 report by the Government Accountability Office called the marshals’ oversight arrangement “an unworkable management condition.” As a possible solution, it proposed legislation to move control of the marshals to the judiciary.
Some members of Congress have begun proposing a similar solution.
“Do you think you could better protect judges if your security was more independent?” Representative Eric Swalwell, Democrat of California, asked a federal judge testifying on behalf of the Judicial Conference at a hearing in February, a few days before Judge Sullivan’s remarks.
Representative Darrell Issa, Republican of California, responded that he considered the question of independent oversight legitimate. The judge answered that the conference would consider the matter.
In an interview, Mr. Swalwell said he was drafting legislation that would put the judiciary in charge of its own security.
Last month, Ronald Davis, who led the agency under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., issued a stark warning on LinkedIn of “a constitutional crisis if a president refuses to enforce or comply with a federal court order.” He too proposed measures to insulate the marshals from potential interference by the executive branch.
In the meantime, the administration’s immediate goal for the Marshals Service may be to shrink it.
On April 15, Mark P. Pittella, the agency’s acting director, sent a letter to more than 5,000 employees of the service as part of the staff-cutting measures associated with Elon Musk’s project, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, offering them the opportunity to resign and be eligible for more than four months of administrative leave with full pay. In the letter, obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Pittella wrote that agency leadership would review applications to ensure they did not “adversely impact U.S.M.S. mission-critical requirements.”
But a spokesman for the service said the offer was open to employees in all areas of responsibility, including marshals tasked with protecting judges.
Politics
Biden judge rejects Trump’s sanctuary cities lawsuit, says even a win wouldn’t solve DOJ’s problem
Authorities investigate ICE ramming incident in New Jersey
Criminal defense attorney Josh Ritter and former NYPD Lt. Darrin Porcher react to the New Jersey incident where an illegal alien allegedly rammed an ICE agent. They emphasize the staggering 3300% increase in vehicle attacks against law enforcement officers.
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A federal judge has tossed the Trump administration’s lawsuit against four New Jersey sanctuary cities, ruling the Justice Department targeted local policies that largely mirror a statewide immigration directive — meaning a court victory wouldn’t eliminate restrictions on ICE cooperation.
U.S. District Judge Evelyn Padin of the District of New Jersey, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, on Wednesday dismissed the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Newark, Hoboken, Jersey City and Paterson, ruling the federal government lacked standing because striking down the cities’ policies would not remedy its alleged injuries.
“The Federal Government’s case has a fundamental flaw — it treats the Challenged Policies as though they operate in isolation. They do not,” Padin wrote. “New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive is a statewide directive that, like the Challenged Policies, limits voluntary cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement beyond what the law requires.”
The lawsuit was part of President Donald Trump’s renewed immigration crackdown following his return to office. Since declaring a national emergency at the southern border on Jan. 20, 2025, the administration has aggressively targeted so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, arguing that local policies limiting cooperation with ICE obstruct federal immigration enforcement and violate the Constitution.
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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents stand outside Delaney Hall detention center in Newark, New Jersey. 5/28/26. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital.)
The Justice Department filed the lawsuit in May 2025, arguing the four cities’ sanctuary policies violate the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by interfering with federal immigration enforcement, including limiting voluntary cooperation with ICE, restricting information sharing, declining to honor certain immigration detainers and barring participation in civil immigration enforcement beyond what federal law requires.
Newark, Hoboken and Jersey City each adopted executive orders declaring themselves “fair and welcoming” or “sanctuary” cities, while Paterson implemented police procedures designed to comply with New Jersey’s immigrant protections. The cities have argued the policies preserve community trust and allow local police to focus on state and local crime rather than federal civil immigration enforcement.
But Padin did not address the question of whether the sanctuary policies are constitutional. Instead, she ruled the federal government lacked standing because New Jersey’s Immigrant Trust Directive independently imposes many of the same restrictions on law enforcement agencies across the state.
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New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill said ICE is denying her access to Newark’s Delaney Hall detention center. (Rashid Umar Abbasi for Fox News Digital; Daniel Heuer/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The directive, first issued under former Gov. Phil Murphy in 2018 and codified into state law by Gov. Mikie Sherrill earlier this year, limits when state and local police can cooperate with federal immigration authorities on civil immigration enforcement.
Because the statewide directive wasn’t challenged in this case, Padin concluded that even if she struck down the cities’ policies, many of the same restrictions would remain in place.
“Even if the Court enjoined the Challenged Policies,” she wrote, “its injuries would persist.”
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That directive has already survived multiple legal challenges. The Third Circuit upheld it after New Jersey counties argued it conflicted with federal immigration law, and the Justice Department later sued New Jersey directly over the policy, lost and did not appeal.
“No judgment here could invalidate the ITD or relieve municipal law enforcement officers of their independent obligation to follow it,” Padin wrote.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are seen at Terminal 1 of JFK Airport in New York City. An ICE agent saved the life of a 1-year-old boy at JFK after performing the Heimlich maneuver, the Department of Homeland Security said. (Getty Images)
The opinion also faulted the government for failing to identify concrete injuries caused solely by the cities’ policies. While the Justice Department cited several instances in which ICE detainers allegedly were ignored, every example involved the Essex County Correctional Facility, a county-operated jail that is not a defendant in the lawsuit and is governed by the statewide directive.
“The Federal Government must plead facts that substantiate its feared harm,” Padin wrote.
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Padin dismissed the lawsuit without prejudice, meaning the administration isn’t barred from bringing the case again if it can overcome the standing issue.
The Justice Department declined to comment.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration may end the Temporary Protected Status granted to more than 350,000 Haitians and Syrians whose home countries remain unsafe.
In a 6-3 decision, the court’s conservative majority said Congress gave the administration, not judges, the power to cancel or renew this temporary protection for non-citizens who are living and working here.
In a second win Thursday for the Trump administration, the court also upheld the administration’s policy of blocking asylum seekers at the southern border.
By the same 6-3 vote, the court said migrants do not have a right to apply for asylum if they are not already in the United States.
The decision on Temporary Protected Status could affect up to 1.3 million non-citizens who are in the country.
In 1990, Congress authorized this emergency humanitarian relief for non-citizens whose home countries were wracked by armed conflict, natural disasters or other extraordinary disruptions.
Under the law, the Department of Homeland Security may grant this protection for 6, 12 or 18 months and either renew or extend it for a similar period.
But this legal authority has been under dispute since Trump returned to the White House last year and targeted the 1.3 million people with TPS from 17 countries who were living in the United States.
Trump’s lawyers said the law made clear there was “no judicial review” of the government’s decision to cancel the grant of temporary protection.
However, immigrant rights lawyers argued the government failed in its duty to consult the State Department and assess whether it was safe for migrants to return home.
Repeatedly, U.S. district judges agreed with the challengers and ruled the administration’s decisions were “arbitrary” and unreasonable. But in nearly every case, the Supreme Court granted emergency appeals from the administration and set aside those orders.
Since TPS was created, the government has ended the protected designation for citizens of 18 countries.
DHS under then-Secretary Kristi Noem ended TPS for Honduras, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and Venezuela. A spokesperson for the agency previously said the Haiti designation became “a de facto amnesty program” and that allowing Syrians to remain is contrary to national interest.
Advocates for the immigrants argue that the administration failed to conduct the required process to properly evaluate each country’s conditions and instead acted on political grounds driven by racial animus.
State Department travel advisories for both countries warn people against traveling to either because of the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and widespread violence. But Federal Register notices announcing the terminations said country conditions had improved enough.
Recently released internal documents show that DHS decided to terminate protections for Haitians without any input from the State Department.
Citing the documents, which were obtained by the National TPS Alliance in a separate lawsuit, lawyers for the Haitians asked the Supreme Court to dismiss the case and send it back to lower courts. They argued that the justices should first consider the communications before issuing a decision.
Internal emails show that homeland security officials sought a recommendation from the State Department in May 2025, ahead of Noem’s early June deadline on whether to extend protections for Haiti. But by the time Noem signed what appears to be a final decision memo, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had not received input from the State Department, the emails show.
“State recommendation for Haiti TPS has not come in despite of many outreach,” a homeland security deputy assistant secretary wrote in a June 2, 2025, email. A recommendation “would be helpful to have,” the person added.
Eleven days later, a USCIS project manager wrote in an email that Noem “recently elected to terminate Haiti without country conditions from DOS.”
USCIS initially recommended automatically extending protections before Homeland Security decided to terminate them, earlier versions of the memo indicate.
The June decision was blocked by a federal judge. In November, DHS issued another notice terminating TPS protections for Haitians.
That time, according a previously publicized email, a homeland security senior counselor asked a State Department official for the agency’s views on the country conditions in Haiti. The official, Spencer Chretien, didn’t address the country conditions but responded that “there would be no foreign policy concerns.”
Lawyers for the Haitians argued that response didn’t meet the legal standard for a sufficient consultation, though the Trump administration disagreed.
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An explosive meeting in the Senate turned into a win for President Donald Trump and his administration as key Republicans flipped on another bid to handcuff the administration’s authorities in Iran.
In its final act before leaving Washington, D.C., for an over two-week break, the Senate rejected Democrats’ attempt to rein in Trump’s war powers in Iran as talks continue between Iran and the U.S. to hammer out a long-term peace deal.
It was the same war powers resolution from Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., that passed over a month ago and stunned Republicans in the upper chamber.
‘HE NAMED NAMES’: TRUMP’S SENATE MEETING EXPLODES INTO SHOUTING MATCH OVER IRAN
Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and Senate GOP leaders are pushing forward with budget reconciliation to fund the final piece of government that had been shut down by Senate Democrats’ opposition to President Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement actions. (Nathan Posner/Anadolu)
What seemed like a predetermined outcome just hours after Trump and Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., sparred over the Iran war, and the administration’s lack of forthcomingness with lawmakers, during a closed-door meeting to discuss the president’s marquee voter ID and citizenship verification legislation turned into a surprise late night win.
Trump argued to the GOP that the previous war powers resolution, which passed on Tuesday thanks in part to a pair of Republicans being absent, hurt the administration’s negotiating position with the Iranians.
Meetings with key holdouts at the White House helped change the minds of Cassidy and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has routinely voted with Democrats on every war powers resolution brought forward, and provided the administration with a win as they work toward a deal beyond the 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran.
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“I want to thank Vice President [JD] Vance and Special Envoy [Steve] Witkoff for the thorough briefing this afternoon on Iran,” Cassidy said on X. “I appreciate the quick invitation to the White House to address many of my concerns.”
And Paul, who voted present, noted that his “opinion on the debate over war and executive power has not changed and I have voted that way several times.”
“But since hostilities seem to be over and the President asked me to give consideration to his negotiating position, I will do so,” Paul said on X. “My vote of present is a way to give the President more space and leverage to negotiate a lasting peace.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., who has been at the forefront among Democrats in pushing war powers resolutions in the upper chamber, acknowledged that “this is a different moment,” but cautioned that the ceasefire appeared to be “precarious right now.”
When asked if he believed Trump’s case to Republicans that the successful war powers vote just a day before was hurting the administration’s leverage, Murphy said, “The Iranians don’t — you know, all they have to do is read a poll and find out that people in this country don’t support the war. They didn’t support the war.”
TRUMP HEADS TO CAPITOL HILL FOR PIVOTAL MEETING AS SENATE GOP DIVISIONS DEEPEN
President Donald Trump boards Air Force One as he departs Reading Regional Airport in Reading, Pa., on Tuesday, June 23, 2026. (Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters)
Still, it marked a key win for Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and the Senate GOP’s whip operation, led by Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo., to flip the skeptics into backers of the administration’s long game in Iran after several contentious weeks in the Senate spurred by Trump’s last-minute decisions that either derailed or torpedoed several of his key agenda items.
Thune and Barrasso, accompanied by Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, huddled in the GOP leader’s office as the vote wound down late Wednesday to call Trump, and share the news of the vote.
“Wow! The Senate just changed its vote on Iran from 50-48 against, to 50-47 for,” Trump said on Truth Social. “Rand Paul and Bill Cassidy changed. Thank you to Leader John Thune, Lindsey Graham, Bernie Moreno, and all. This vote puts Iran on notice!”
It also comes at a time when speculation has swirled over the nature of Thune and Trump’s relationship as the president, accompanied by chatter online, have ramped up the pressure to pass the Safeguarding American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act.
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Moreno made the case that the questions over their relationship, and Thune’s position as leader, was just noise, and that “there’s not a single solitary Senator running for office that says leader Thune should be replaced, not one, even non-incumbents.”
“What today showed is that President Trump has a kind of relationship with John Thune where he says, ‘Hey, let me talk to the guys,’ understand the situation,” Moreno said. “As much as Cassidy and Trump got into it, it was because they’re both passionate, they’re both smart people.”
“And now, we’ve most importantly sent the Iranians a message that President Trump has the full backing of the Congress, and that was an incredibly important day,” he continued. “That’s a huge victory for us.”
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