Court Accountability Action's Lisa Graves joins Popok to discuss the illegitimacy of the incoming Trump Solicitor General John Sauer and the arguments he will be making, as demonstrated by the lawless brief he just filed on behalf of Trump in the pending TikTok forced sale case before the Court.
Appeals that reach the Supreme Court MAY NOT CONTINUE TO GO IN FAVOR OF TRUMP.
Jan 2, 2025 The Intersection with Popok
"Chief Justice Roberts is scared of what Trump may do in his second term and is sounding the alarm in his end-of-year annual report. Popok reports on the MAGA right of the Court having misgivings after creating the very monster they now fear."
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MY SELECTION, PAGES OF CHEIF JUSTICE ROBERT’S ANNUAL REPORT:
Unfortunately, not all actors engage in “in-
formed criticism” or anything remotely resem-
bling it. I feel compelled to address four areas
of illegitimate activity that, in my view, do
threaten the independence of judges on which
the rule of law depends: (1) violence, (2) in-
timidation, (3) disinformation, and (4) threats
to defy lawfully entered judgments.
There is of course no place for violence di-
rected at judges for doing their job. Yet, in re-
cent years, there has been a significant uptick
in identified threats at all levels of the judici-
ary. According to United States Marshals Ser-
vice statistics, the volume of hostile threats and
communications directed at judges has more
than tripled over the past decade. In the past
five years alone, the Marshals report that they
have investigated more than 1,000 serious
threats against federal judges. In several in-
stances, these threats have required the assign-
ment of full-time U.S. Marshals Service secu-
rity details for federal judges, and approxi-
mately fifty individuals have been criminally
charged. In extreme cases, judicial officers
have been issued bulletproof vests for public
events.
Fortunately for our Nation’s judges, the
vigilance of law enforcement officers and in-
vestigators has stopped many threats of vio-
lence before they could be carried out. Indeed,
from the founding of the Republic in 1789 un-
til 1979, only one federal judicial officer,
Chief Justice John Slough of the New Mexico
Territorial Supreme Court, was killed in office.
And the quarrel that led to Slough’s shooting
in the billiard room of a Santa Fe hotel in De-
cember 1867 did not stem from a judicial rul-
ing, but rather from the judge’s off-the-bench
criticism of a territorial legislator.
In more recent decades, however, disgrun-
tled litigants have perpetrated acts of violence
against several judges and members of their
families. Between 1979 and 1989, three fed-
eral judicial officers—two district judges and
a circuit judge—were killed for doing their
jobs. In 2005 and 2020, close relatives of fed-
eral judges were shot to death by assailants in-
tent on harming the judges who had handled
their cases. More recently, in 2022 and 2023,
state judges in Wisconsin and Maryland were
murdered, also at their homes. Each instance
constituted a targeted attack following an ad-
verse ruling issued by the judge exercising or-
dinary judicial duties.
These tragic events highlight the vulnera-
bility of judges who sign their names to the de-
cisions they render each day and return home
each night to communities, where they remain
involved as neighbors, volunteers, and con-
cerned citizens. Judges cannot hide, nor should
they. I am grateful to the many federal and
state legislators who have stepped forward to
sponsor bills shielding judges’ personal identi-
fying information from the public domain. I
also thank Congress for providing additional
funding to protect the physical security of
judges and justices. And I commend the Mar-
shals and other officers who work on the front
lines day and night to keep judicial officers
across the country as safe as possible. It is re-
grettable that law enforcement officers must
now dedicate significant additional resources
to protecting judges, tracking and investigat-
ing threats against them, and prosecuting those
who cross the line between lawful criticism
and unlawful threats or actions.
Of course, attempts to intimidate need not
physically harm judges to threaten judicial in-
dependence. In earlier times, these provoca-
tions usually were directed at judges’ homes.
Perhaps the most egregious example involved
U.S. District Judge Julius Waties Waring. As
a judge in South Carolina from 1942 to 1952,
Judge Waring issued numerous rulings opening
voting and educational opportunities for Black
Americans. Local residents outraged by these
decisions burned a cross in the judge’s lawn,
fired gunshots at his home, and hurled a large
lump of concrete through his front window.
Elected officials called for his impeachment.
But Judge Waring stood strong until taking sen-
ior status at age 71, secure in the knowledge that
an equal protection challenge to racial segrega-
tion had made its way to the Supreme Court. By
the time the landmark decision in Brown was
issued in May 1954, Waring had moved to New
York City, returning to South Carolina only in
1968 to be buried in Charleston, near the federal
courthouse that now bears his name.
2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary
Today, in the computer era, intimidation
can take different forms. Disappointed liti-
gants rage at judicial decisions on the Internet,
urging readers to send a message to the judge.
They falsely claim that the judge had it in for
them because of the judge’s race, gender, or
ethnicity—or the political party of the Presi-
dent who appointed the judge. Some of these
messages promote violence—for example, set-
ting fire to or blowing up the courthouse where
the target works.
Occasionally, court critics deploy “dox-
ing”—the practice of releasing otherwise pri-
vate information such as addresses and phone
numbers—which can lead to a flood of angry,
profane phone calls to the judge’s office or
home. Doxing also can prompt visits to the
judge’s home, whether by a group of protestors
or, worse, an unstable individual carrying a
cache of weapons. Both types of activity have
occurred in recent years in the vicinity of the
Nation’s capital. Activist groups intent on har-
assing judges have gone so far as to offer fi-
nancial incentives for posting the location of
certain judicial officers.
Public officials, too, regrettably have
engaged in recent attempts to intimidate
judges—for example, suggesting political bias
in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credi-
ble basis for such allegations. Within the past
year we also have seen the need for state and
federal bar associations to come to the defense
of a federal district judge whose decisions in a
high-profile case prompted an elected official
to call for her impeachment. Attempts to intim-
idate judges for their rulings in cases are inap-
propriate and should be vigorously opposed.
Public officials certainly have a right to criti-
cize the work of the judiciary, but they should
be mindful that intemperance in their state-
ments when it comes to judges may prompt
dangerous reactions by others.
Disinformation, even if disconnected from
any direct attempt to intimidate, also threatens
judicial independence. This can take several
forms. At its most basic level, distortion of the
factual or legal basis for a ruling can under-
mine confidence in the court system. Our
branch is peculiarly ill-suited to combat this
problem, because judges typically speak only
through their decisions. We do not call press
conferences or generally issue rebuttals.
To make matters worse, as I noted in my
2019 Year End Report, the modern disinfor-
mation problem is magnified by social media,
2024 Year End Report on the Federal Judiciary
which provides a ready channel to “instantly
spread rumor and false information.” At that
time, I endorsed a renewed emphasis on civic
education as the best antidote for combating
the epidemic of misinformation. I am happy to
report that the bench, bar, and academy have
embraced this essential project—writing and
speaking about the distinct role of courts in
American government and explaining what
they do and don’t do.
But much more is needed—and on a coor-
dinated, national scale—not only to counter
traditional disinformation, but also to confront
a new and growing concern from abroad. In re-
cent years, hostile foreign state actors have ac-
celerated their efforts to attack all branches of
our government, including the judiciary. In
some instances, these outside agents feed false
information into the marketplace of ideas. For
example, bots distort judicial decisions, using
fake or exaggerated narratives to foment dis-
cord within our democracy. In other cases,
hackers steal information—often confidential
and highly sensitive—for nefarious purposes,
sometimes for private benefit and other times
for the use of state actors themselves. Either
way, because these actors distort our judicial
system in ways that compromise the public’s
confidence in our processes and outcomes, we
must as a Nation publicize the risks and take
all appropriate measures to stop them.
The final threat to judicial independence is
defiance of judgments lawfully entered by
courts of competent jurisdiction. As noted
above, two of the major pillars of our Repub-
lic—separation of powers and judicial re-
view—create an inevitable tension between
the branches of our government. Hamilton fore-
saw, and Chief Justice Marshall confirmed, the
role of the judicial branch to say what the law
is. But judicial independence is undermined
unless the other branches are firm in their re-
sponsibility to enforce the court’s decrees.
After Brown v. Board of Education, for ex-
ample, multiple state governors sought to defy
court orders to desegregate schools in the
South. The courage of federal judges to uphold
the law in the face of massive local opposi-
tion—and the willingness of the Eisenhower
and Kennedy Administrations to stand behind
those judges— are strong testaments to the re-
lationship between judicial independence and
the rule of law in our Nation’s history.
It is not in the nature of judicial work to
make everyone happy. Most cases have a win-
ner and a loser. Every Administration suffers
defeats in the court system—sometimes in
cases with major ramifications for executive or
legislative power or other consequential top-
ics. Nevertheless, for the past several decades,
the decisions of the courts, popular or not, have
been followed, and the Nation has avoided the
standoffs that plagued the 1950s and 1960s.
Within the past few years, however, elected of-
ficials from across the political spectrum have
raised the specter of open disregard for federal
court rulings. These dangerous suggestions,
however sporadic, must be soundly rejected.
Judicial independence is worth preserving.
As my late colleague Justice Ruth Bader Gins-
burg wrote, an independent judiciary is “essen-
tial to the rule of law in any land,” yet it “is
vulnerable to assault; it can be shattered if the
society law exists to serve does not take care
to assure its preservation.”14 I urge all Ameri-
cans to appreciate this inheritance from our
founding generation and cherish its endurance.
I also echo the words of Chief Justice Charles
Evans Hughes, who remarked—in the after-
math of a significant prior threat to judicial
independence—that our three branches of
government “must work in successful cooper-
ation” to “make possible the effective func-
tioning of the department of government
which is designed to safeguard with judicial
impartiality and independence the interests of
liberty.”15
Our political system and economic
strength depend on the rule of law. The rule of
law depends, in turn, on Article III of the Con-
stitution and judges and justices appointed and
confirmed under it. Those men and women re-
main connected to the people they serve and
do their work in the public eye. Chief Justice
Taft is the only person to have served as head
of the judicial and a political branch. As he put
it, “Nothing tends more to render judges care-
ful in their decisions and anxiously solicitous
to do exact justice than the consciousness that
every act of theirs is to be subject to the intel-
ligent scrutiny of their fellow men, and to their
candid criticism.”16 But violence, intimidation,
and defiance directed at judges because of
their work undermine our Republic, and are
wholly unacceptable.
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