One appeals court judge compared the administration’s treatment of certain deported illegal immigrants to how the U.S. once treated Nazis. A district judge accused President Donald Trump of behaving like a “king” or “dictator,” while others have alleged racism and “animus” toward transgender individuals from Trump and his team.
These sharp rebukes come as the judiciary pushes back against Trump’s sweeping second-term agenda, the Washington Times noted in a Friday report summarizing how he’s being treated in federal court and questioning whether some jurists are suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”
Trump has responded in kind—calling for one judge’s impeachment, demanding another be removed from his cases, and filing an ethics complaint against a third, the report noted.
The president’s unusually hard treatment by some federal judges has caught the attention of legal expert.
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, told the Times that it has become a destructive cycle in which Trump’s aggressive rhetoric prompts judges to react excessively.
“And in turn, when judges overreact, Trump amps up his rhetoric,” said Blackman, who added that, as members of the Judicial Branch who are supposed to be apolitical, they needed to do better. “Judges should resist the temptation and stay in their lane. Lecturing Trump is not an effective use of the judicial power,” he said.
Uruguayan-born U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee, has emerged as one of the more vocal critics of the president and his legal team. During one hearing, she pointedly questioned whether Jesus would have supported Trump’s proposed restrictions on transgender individuals serving in the military, The Times reported.
“What do you think Jesus would say to telling a group of people that they are so worthless, so worthless that we’re not going to allow them into homeless shelters? Do you think Jesus would be, ‘Sounds right to me’? Or do you think Jesus would say, ‘WTF? Of course, let them in?’” she told a government lawyer.
During the hearing, Reyes also engaged in a series of hypotheticals, at one point instructing the lawyer—who graduated from the University of Virginia—to sit down, claiming UVA graduates were “liars.” Her apparent aim was to illustrate the dangers of broad, discriminatory stereotypes.
In response, the Justice Department filed a formal complaint accusing Reyes of courtroom “misconduct.”
The department also requested that U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell, an Obama appointee, recuse herself from a separate case, citing her alleged “hostility” toward Trump.
In a ruling that blocked Trump from removing a member of the National Labor Relations Board, Howell accused him of viewing himself as a “dictator” or “king”—a criticism she has echoed since before his second term began.
Meanwhile, U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett, another Obama appointee presiding over a case involving Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang suspects to El Salvador, remarked that “Nazis got better treatment” during World War II.
Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, commented that some judges appear to see themselves as part of a “judicial resistance,” believing the administration’s actions go too far and must be stopped.
Judges, The Times noted, say they are facing an unprecedented wave of public hostility, which many attribute to President Trump’s repeated attacks on the judiciary and his frequent references to “crooked judges.”
He singled out Chief Judge James Boasberg—who is also presiding over a case involving the Alien Enemies Act—calling him a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator who was sadly appointed by Barack Hussein Obama.”
Trump’s rhetoric has been widely echoed by his supporters on social media, and courts warn that some individuals are taking that anger even further, The Times added.