By Mary Ellen Klas / Bloomberg Opinion
The destruction of South Carolina Circuit Court Judge Diane Goodstein’s home in a fiery inferno over the weekend immediately led to speculation that it was an act of political violence. South Carolina officials are still investigating, and they said on Monday that “there is no evidence to indicate” that the cause of the explosion “was intentionally set.” But it says something about this moment that a judge being violently targeted was so easy to imagine.
According to annual data compiled by the U.S. Marshals Service, there has been an increase in threats against federal judges since Trump retook office. Judges have also reported receiving unsolicited pizzas delivered to their personal residences, including some in the name of the murdered son of a New Jersey federal judge. A judge close to Goodstein told FITSNews after the fire that she has “had multiple death threats over the years.”
Goodstein is just one of many judges who have been lambasted by Trump administration officials for issuing rulings the White House doesn’t like. Last month, she imposed a temporary restraining order blocking the state from turning over its voter list to the Department of Justice. The ruling drew an immediate rebuke from Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for Civil Rights at the Department of Justice.
“This@TheJusticeDept’s @CivilRights will not stand for a state court judge’s hasty nullification of our federal voting laws,” Dhillon wrote on X. “I will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clean voter rolls.”
Goodstein’s ruling was overturned by a unanimous Supreme Court, but if Dhillon believed in her argument and did not intend for harm or violence to befall those with whom she disagrees, then her post was reckless. She should know that in these violent times, such hyperbolic criticism can stir emotions and escalate into personal risk for judges.
Over the weekend, the president’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, used even more extreme language when he suggested that the ruling of an Oregon judge who stopped the deployment of troops to the state was part of “an organized terrorist attack.”
Miller is a central character here, not only because of his proximity to the president, but because he has accelerated his attacks on judges whose decisions go against the president’s political agenda. After District Court Judge Karin Immergut temporarily halted the deployment of National Guard troops to Portland, Miller wrote this chilling post on X: “The issue before us now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
There are simply no facts to support these claims. In fact, research on political extremism led by University of Dayton Professors Art Jipson and Paul Becker has found that “most domestic terrorists in the U.S. are politically on the right, and right-wing attacks account for the vast majority of fatalities from domestic terrorism.”
Immergut is a conservative judge who was appointed by Trump. She called out his false claims that Portland was beset by violence and concluded: “The President’s determination was simply untethered to the facts.”
But Miller and President Trump have mastered the art of false equivalencies and half-truths, so that if they say something enough on social media, people will start to believe it. Following Miller’s lead, Trump lashed out against Immergut on Sunday.
It’s fair game to criticize a judge’s reasoning or logic. But if a conservative judge appointed by this president can be attacked as a “shield” for “leftwing terrorism,” the U.S. judicial branch is in a precarious place. That precarity should worry everyone; especially any elected official who swore an oath to the Constitution.
Politicians from both parties say they abide by the rule of law, but essential to the rule of law is the independence of the judiciary. Courts are supposed to be neutral arbiters in any dispute. They are a check on power, including the overreach of the executive branch. Any of us may sit before a judge someday, and a fair and impartial court is our best hope that our constitutional rights and liberties will be protected.
Yet Republicans have not pushed back on the White House’s anti-judiciary rhetoric. South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, a Trump ally, was silent when Dhillon suggested “nothing will stand in the way” of Goodstein’s ruling. When state investigators said that arson was not a factor at the judge’s home, he could have urged respect for the judiciary and decried the threats she’d previously received. Instead, he simply urged the public “to exercise good judgment and avoid sharing unverified information.”
Republicans should loudly call out dehumanizing rhetoric against all judges; not only those they agree with. Alexander Hamilton explained why in Federalist 78 when he warned: “No man can be sure that he may not be tomorrow the victim of a spirit of injustice by which he may be a gainer today.”
Hamilton wrote that the independent judiciary would be “an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society.” But a judiciary cowed by the dangerous rhetoric of a president and his top deputy is no longer independent. It is also not much of a safeguard.
Mary Ellen Klas is a politics and policy columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former capital bureau chief for the Miami Herald, she has covered politics and government for more than three decades.
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