On July 23, 2026, James Percival, DHS general counsel, posted a series from his official government account that named four sitting federal judges, noted their appointing presidents, and labeled them “Worst of the Worst.” The phrase comes from DHS’s own language for undocumented criminal immigrants being deported. Percival applied it to sitting members of the federal judiciary.
The posts landed into a security environment already badly deteriorating. The U.S. Marshals Service logged 564 threats to federal judges last fiscal year, up from 509 the year prior. By mid-2026, the Marshals Service had already recorded 241 threats against judges.
What Percival Actually Posted
Percival titled his series “Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition.” Over four posts on X, he named Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois and Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, both identified for temporarily preserving deportation protections for Burmese and Somali immigrants while litigation played out. Paula Xinis of Maryland drew a mention for the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. Hernán Vera of the Central District of California was named for handling litigation over how DHS responded to immigration protests.
“Judge Matthew Kennelly, of the Northern District of Illinois, appointed by Bill Clinton,” Percival wrote in one post, criticizing Kennelly’s ruling in a case involving immigrants from Burma who have Temporary Protected Status. “This is judicial sabotage.”
Percival told Fox News Digital the series was a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences, and described the judges as a handful of repeat offenders acting in “open defiance” of the Supreme Court or reaching outside their Article III authority.
The American Board of Trial Advocates stated that Percival’s publication “served no legitimate administrative purpose” and instead “functioned purely as an attempt to diminish public trust in our courts and bully independent jurists.” When the executive branch uses its platform to target individual judges, “it weakens the checks and balances that protect our democracy,” the organization added.
The Safety Dimension
The U.S. Marshals Service logged 564 threats to federal judges last fiscal year, up from 509 the year prior. Former USMS Director Ronald Davis testified in February 2024 that the number of verified threats against federal judges had doubled in the last three years.
Federal judges have reported receiving unsolicited pizza deliveries, a signal the sender knows the judge’s personal address. Some of those deliveries have been sent in the name of Daniel Anderl, the son of a New Jersey federal judge who was murdered by a disgruntled attorney posing as a delivery driver.
Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of Rhode Island, who blocked Trump’s budget cuts, received a voicemail calling for his assassination. Judge Robert Lasnik, after criticizing judicial harassment in an interview, had pizzas sent not only to his home but to the homes of his adult children in separate cities. “The message to me was, ‘We know where you live. We know where your kids live,'” Lasnik said.
In 2020, the son of Judge Esther Salas of U.S. District Court in New Jersey was shot and killed at the entrance of her home. The gunman, posing as a delivery driver, also shot Salas’s husband three times. Salas was in the basement during the attack and was not injured.
“This is so dangerous,” Salas said. “I’m living proof of the danger. My son isn’t here because someone disagreed with the way I was handling a case in court.”
She drew a direct comparison between that attack and what Percival’s posts could set in motion. “There was no difference with what Roy Den Hollander did,” Salas said. “It was, ‘I’m a judge, on a case he was in, and he disagreed with the way I was handling it.’ So he chose to take matters into his own hands and come to my house on a Sunday afternoon at 5 o’clock, ring the doorbell, and take my only child and almost take the life of my partner.”
A Pattern, Not a One-Off
Percival’s posts are the latest installment in a sustained campaign by Trump administration officials to delegitimize federal judges who have ruled against the administration’s priorities.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a legal conference last year that there’s a “war” against the federal judiciary, complaining about the frequency with which Trump administration initiatives had been blocked by district court judges he labeled “rogue activist judges.” President Trump called for the impeachment of a specific district court judge. Attorney General Pam Bondi filed a misconduct complaint against the chief judge of the D.C. federal district court.
Trump described Washington-based District Judge James Boasberg as a “Radical Left Lunatic” and called for his impeachment on Truth Social over the judge’s decision to block deportation flights to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. In a rare rebuke, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a statement that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
The judges blocking White House initiatives are not a partisan bloc of Democratic appointees. Many are Republican appointees, including the judge who most directly called out the administration’s broader campaign against the courts.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen, an appointee of Donald Trump, wrote a scathing rebuke of the Trump administration, saying it is intentionally trying to discredit the justice system. “Over the past several months, principal officers of the Executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘[c]rooked,’ and worse,” Cullen wrote. “Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.”
Cullen also threw out an unusual lawsuit the Trump administration filed against every federal judge in Maryland over an order slowing down efforts to swiftly deport people it believes are in the country illegally. He called it “novel and potentially calamitous” and dismissed it on grounds that the judges held judicial immunity and the executive branch lacked standing to bring the claims at all.
The Institutional Response
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers in unprecedented ways, questioning whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold legal norms. The concern centers on what’s called “the presumption of regularity,” which means judges must presume that the government did its job according to the rules and in good faith.
That presumption is eroding. Government lawyers have been scolded for making misrepresentations in court, advancing legally flawed arguments, and sidestepping standard procedures.
Judges who traditionally express their views only through written opinions have started speaking in public forums. The U.S. Judicial Conference, the governing body that oversees the federal judiciary, issued an advisory opinion making clear that judges can speak publicly about issues related to judicial security.
The U.S. Marshals Service has been pushed hard to keep up. Federal judges have said they have to keep the agency’s staffing in mind when scheduling court hearings to ensure marshals are available to guard courtrooms. Some judges have described having to cancel or reschedule hearings because of the shortage. The agency asked Congress for an extra $34 million to hire 78 additional positions, including 75 deputy U.S. marshals within its judicial security division.
Chief Justice John Roberts has also condemned elected officials who try to intimidate judges and defy court rulings, writing in his 2024 year-end summary that “attempts to intimidate judges for their rulings in cases are inappropriate and should be vigorously opposed” and warning that “intemperance in their statements when it comes to judges may prompt dangerous reactions by others.”
When the Government Account Becomes the Threat
Percival did something different from Trump officials who have called judges “rogue,” “activist,” or “lunatics.” Those words come from elected officials and political advisers who have always been free to criticize the courts. Percival used the official government account of the DHS general counsel, borrowed the department’s own official language for dangerous criminal aliens, and applied it to sitting members of the federal judiciary.
Judges are bound by ethical codes that prevent them from firing back, and who are already living under the weight of real security threats.
The pizza deliveries sent in the name of a murdered 20-year-old to the homes of sitting judges, including to the homes of their adult children in other cities, are not spontaneous. They are the downstream consequence of a sustained campaign to tell a certain kind of person that specific judges are enemies of the country.
Judge Salas already knows exactly what comes next when someone angry enough decides that a judge who ruled the wrong way is fair game. “Daniel’s death showed tragically that threats against federal judges are real, and they have dire consequences.” She said that in 2021. She is still saying it now.