Trump’s Minions Are Trying to Terrorize Judges Into Submission
Policy
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October 6, 2025
Faced with the reprimands of the courts, Stephen Miller and Elon Musk threaten the independence of the judiciary.
The deputy chief of staff of the White House, Stephen Miller, attended a Make America Healthy Again (Maha) commission event in the east house of the White House, Thursday, May 22, 2025.
(Jacquelyn Martin / AP)
Donald Trump’s second term was marked by attacks on the constitution that is so extreme that even the judges that Trump appointed during his first mandate are dismayed. On Saturday, American district judge Karin Immergut, appointed by Trump in 2019, blocked the deployment of the president of 200 troops of the National Guard in Portland, Oregon. Trump said Portland was “torn by the war” and “under siege” by “antifa and other domestic terrorists”. Judge Immergut won Trump’s justification as “not attached to the facts” and confirmed: “It is a nation of constitutional law, no martial law”.
Responding to the decision on Sunday, Trump justified the accusation that he was “not attached to the facts” by the judge of the immersal suspense. “I was not well served by the people who choose the judges,” Trump complained to journalists on Sunday. “If he made this decision, Portland burns on the ground…. This judge should be ashamed of himself. ”
More alarming were attacks against the judicial power carried out by two of Trump’s most important political partners, the deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and the technological billionaire Elon Musk.
Saturday, Miller posted on X (a social media site belonging to Musk):
Legal insurgency. The president is the commander -in -chief of the armed forces, not an Oregon judge. Portland and the Oregon police, towards local leaders, refused to help ice agents faced with incessant terrorist assaults and threats to life…. It is a terrorist attack organized against the federal government and its officers, and the deployment of troops is an absolute necessity to defend our staff, our laws, our government, public order and the Republic itself.
An official of the White House describing a legal decision as an “insurrection” is not a small matter. But Musk pushed things further by calling Trump to imitate Nayib Bukele, the authoritarian president of El Salvador who destroyed the independent judicial system of his country. The right -wing expert Eric Daugherty then quoted Bukele’s attack on the judiciary and insisted: “We must bukele our judicial system. Look at what speed this country is fixed. ” Musk stimulated his daughter’s tweet and wrote: “Essential”. He responded to another critical tweet towards the immerged judge by simply saying “betrayal”.
Obama’s former adviser Tommy Vietor provided an essential context for Musk’s tweet, noting that “Bukele forced independent judges, packed the courts with loyalists, then declared a state of emergency which allowed him to stop and hold people without any regular processes. When we say that these guys plead for fasci ideas because they are literally. ”
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These incendiary attacks against the judiciary do not only reflect anger at the Immergue judge, or the many other federal judges who declared against Trump’s policies on immigration and other questions. They also prepare the way for the series of imminent battles to which Trump faces the Supreme Court.
While federal levels of lower level have been a major control over Trump’s policies, the Supreme Court is a different ball game. He granted Trump an extraordinary power (although supposedly temporary) in a series of emergency decisions that have almost always favored the president. The Washington PostCiting the research of the legal scholarship holder of Georgetown Irving L. Gronnstein, notes: “The Trump administration succeeded in these provisional cases, prevailing in 18, losing two and receiving mixed decisions in two others.” But the newspaper also stresses that in the new mandate from Monday, the court and Trump are both faced with a “calculation” because these provisional decisions will have to give way to “final verdicts”.
The pro-Trump inclination of the Court seems to make the tactics of normal intimidation of the president useless. But why take risks? Miller and Musk could try to keep the court completely online by clearly clarifying Maga’s anger if judgments are made against the wishes of Trump.
This threat could even be literal. New York Times Chronicler David French, a Curator Never Trump, argues that Miller’s rhetoric is “incredibly dangerous” and could encourage violence against the immerged judge or any other judge who causes Trump’s anger. This assertion is plausible given the history of Maga violence, including the attack on January 7, 2021, against the Capitol. (Saturday, the house of Diane Goodstein, judge of the state of South Carolina, was burned on the ground. Although it was too early to say if Goodstein had been deliberately targeted or what was the motivation of a potential suspect, Goodstein would have received death threats after having made a decision against the Trump administration in September.)
The most optimistic reading of Miller’s words is that they come from a place of fear. Miller knows that his window to establish lasting authoritarianism in America is small, and he must act frantically now. This interpretation of events receives credibility by an improbable source, the far-right thinker Curtis Yarvin, a writer very admired by the Lord of Technology Peter Thiel and the vice-president JD Vance. In a substitution position charged with hysteria, Yarvin feared that Trump’s revolution “fails” and be on the verge of producing a fierce political reaction:
Because revenge has been infiltrated after its failure eclipses revenge after 2020 – because the successes of the second revolution are much more than the first – I think I should personally start to think realistically about how to flee the country. Everyone in a similar position should also have a 2029 plan. And it is not even clear that it will wait until 2029: losing the congress will instantly put the administration on the defensive.
Yarvin must be read with care. It is not moored of reality and especially not a useful guide to events. But he has an audience on the far right because he is a precise gauge of their mood. In addition, there are many reasons for Yarvin’s pessimism. Surveys show that immigration, formerly a strong problem for Trump, is now that where the majority of the population disapproves of their policies. The New York Times Reports that 51% of Americans believe that Trump went “too far” with the application of immigration. In cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, the repression of immigration was encountered by ferocious local demonstrations. Coupled with the decline of federal judges and pending mid-term, there are many reasons to think that Miller’s war against immigrants lacks time.
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The change of public opinion on immigration came despite the cowardice of the Democratic Party. Believing that the party is stronger on economic issues such as health care, Congress Democrats have avoided challenging Trump on immigration. In addition, referring to the inflammatory tweet of Miller, the senator from Hawaii, Brian Shatz, stressed that there was often a tendency to minimize the dangerous rhetoric of the White House. SChatz said he recognized “the need not to react excessively and I understand that no one in the media wants it to be a chicken little time” while recognizing that Miller’s words seem “climbing and also rather emotional”.
But with Miller and Musk’s comments, this ostrich strategy no longer makes sense. Miller and Musk offered Democrats a gift: a way to link immigrant rights with a broader defense of constitutional standards. With Trump’s white house on the defensive, it would be stupid for the Democrats to avoid attacking.
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