Trump administration escalates feud with federal judges

By Tierney Sneed, Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN

(CNN) — The Justice Department filed a judicial misconduct complaint against nearly all the federal district judges in Minnesota, Attorney General Todd Blanche announced on Wednesday, escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the judicial branch.

The administration’s demand that the judges be disqualified from immigration-related cases was prompted by a recent New York Times article in which the judges described the Justice Department’s failure to comply with court orders during an immigration-enforcement surge as a grave threat to the rule of law.

In their comments, the judges focused on how DOJ staffing shortages appeared to inhibit the administration in its ability to comply with their orders — similar to comments they have previously made in legal settings. But Blanche on Wednesday said the comments were “overtly political” in violation of judicial rules and that they reflected an “an obvious bias” against the Department of Homeland Security.

While the ethics complaint is pending at the federal appeals court that oversees Minnesota’s federal bench, Blanche is calling on the district court judges to recuse from DHS-related cases.

The demand, however, may not have much impact, as previous efforts and public complaints have gone nowhere — and the bar for disqualification of judges is high.

A spokesperson for Minnesota’s US district court said that the interviews the judges gave were within the bounds of judicial ethics, including guidance issued to judges in February that emphasized their ability to speak and write “on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence.”

“Our judges acted within this capacity,” Rebeccah Parks said.

The Trump administration has tried various tactics to strike back at judges they see as hostile to President Donald Trump’s agenda. That has included an unsuccessful DOJ lawsuit — filed against the entire federal bench in Maryland — challenging an order covering that court that limited the ability of the administration to quickly remove migrants who are fighting their deportations.

Top Trump officials have also been willing to use exceptionally sharp language to publicly call out judges by name for rulings they disagree with.

As courts across the country have faced aggressive public pushback from the president and his allies for rulings that blocked Trump policy initiatives, judges have sounded alarms about how the heated rhetoric has raised the specter of threats and intimidation.

“These judges talked to the media, or at least to the New York Times, about cases, some of which are ongoing, in a matter that the department views as a clear violation of their ethical duties,” Blanche said.

Rules for judges for speaking to the press

The latest Justice Department campaign against Minnesota’s federal court taps into a debate in the legal world over whether it’s appropriate for judges to criticize the administration’s actions in commentary outside the confines of a legal proceeding.

The extraordinary legal disputes that arose from unprecedented actions taken by Trump and his deputies at the beginning of his second term led to notable examples of judges speaking out — both in on-the-record contexts, and in anonymous interviews with press outlets — about their concerns of an assault on democratic norms. Their comments at times took aim not just at the Trump administration, but also at the Supreme Court for how it has frequently reversed lower court rulings against the administration with little explanation why.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the Republican chairs of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, called on Chief Judge John Roberts to put a kibosh on judges talking to the press — particularly when done in an anonymous fashion — in a letter last November highlighting the criticism against the Supreme Court.

The Committee on Codes of Conduct for the Judicial Conference — a policy-making entity for federal judges that Roberts oversees — ultimately offered more nuanced guidance.

An ethics advisory issued for judges in February said there was room in “some circumstances” for them to offer “measured defense of judicial colleagues from illegitimate forms of criticism and attacks that risk undermining judicial independence or the rule of law.”

The advisory said that violence, intimidation, disinformation and threats to defy court orders were all examples of “illegitimate” activity judges could speak out about. But it also instructed judges to consider the “tone, context, and form” of what they’re saying — including in situations where a judge is speaking anonymously to the press.

The handful of judges quoted in the New York Times report were speaking on the record, not anonymously, though the report said the outlet spoke to seven judges in total. One of them, an appointee of Trump’s during his first term, seemed to refer to the recent ethics guidance.

“We are allowed to speak out about judicial independence,” Judge Nancy E. Brasel told the New York Times. “And so we should, in order to keep it.”

Blanche on Wednesday, however, argued that the comments were political in nature and that they touched on cases that were still pending, in violation of judicial rules. The Justice Department’s complaint targeted the six active judges who participated in the story — a seventh active judge on the court did not talk to the Times.

Gabe Roth, executive director for the judicial ethics organization Fix the Court, noted that Blanche has departed from DOJ norms by attending partisan rallies while leading the department.

(Blanche, when asked Wednesday about his attendance at political events, insisted that he did not violate DOJ policies.)

“If DOJ doesn’t want judges to speak to the New York Times about the agency’s aberrant practices in federal court, it should spend more time fixing those practices and less time filing frivolous misconduct complaints,” Roth said.

DC judges weigh ‘grim’ DOJ claim that courts can’t probe its defiance of their orders

Separately this week, a powerful appeals court in DC was weighing judges’ powers to address government defiance of their orders in court.

The DOJ has asked the DC US Circuit Court of Appeals to shut down the effort by Judge Jeb Boasberg to obtain information from the administration about its decision to move forward with removals of certain Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvadoran prison in March 2025, after the judge issued an order seeking to halt the deportations.

How the appeals court resolves the DOJ’s appeal could shape what other judges can do when they believe that the government is willfully not following their orders.

At a hearing in the appeal Tuesday, Circuit Judge Nina Pillard said hat the administration’s arguments would seem to put the federal courts at the “mercy of the executive” branch.

“If the executive branch can determine, ‘We do not want to be stopped by a court. If we are, we will ignore it and do our best to, you know, keep our noses clean,’” Pillard said, laying out her “grim” interpretation of the Trump administration’s stance in the case. “’But if the court thinks there’s a problem, we in the end will be in charge of whether that problem is tracked down.”

The administration claims it did not violate Boasberg’s orders, which it argues were unclear. The Justice Department says that any efforts by him to further investigate the matter would be an unconstitutional usurpation of the executive branch’s prosecutorial powers.

In a back and forth with ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, who was defending Boasberg’s handling the case, Circuit Judge Greg Katsas, a Trump appointee, acknowledged what had been unsaid, but obvious: If Boasberg was allowed to make a final referral for a criminal contempt prosecution, it is assumed that the Trump Justice Department would not act on it.

He and two other DC circuit judges, all Trump appointees, have already agreed in earlier stages of the appeal with the administration’s stance. However, the full circuit court, which leans left, is now considering the dispute. Several Democratic appointees on the court expressed their concerns Tuesday with administration’s approach.

Two judges referenced comments allegedly made by Emil Bove, a former Trump personal attorney who was then the No. 3 official at the Justice Department. Bove was accused by a whistleblower of telling other administration officials as they plotted the deportations that DOJ might need to tell courts “f**k you” if they sought to halt the removals.

(The administration denied the allegations, and Bove was later confirmed to a position on a federal appeals court based in Philadelphia.)

Separation of powers “runs two ways,” said DC Circuit Judge Patricia Millett at the Tuesday hearing. “It’s not a one-way street in favor of the executive branch.”

This story has been updated with additional information.

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