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The Supreme Court made a fair amount of news last week, but I wanted to use today’s post to reflect upon a story that got swallowed up in the SNAP-related developments—comments made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche at the Federalist Society’s National Lawyers Convention on Friday, November 7. Specifically, Blanche attributed the Trump administration’s myriad losses in the lower federal courts to “rogue activist judges,” claiming that these “liberals” are “more political or certainly as political as the most liberal governor or D.A.” As Blanche continued (with my emphasis), “There’s a group of judges that are repeat players, and that’s obviously not by happenstance, that’s intentional, and it’s a war, man.” (There’s video here.) Exhorting young lawyers and law students in the audience to come work for the Department of Justice, Blanche continued, “We need you, because it is a war, and it’s something we will not win unless we keep on fighting. It’s hard to get the media, it’s hard to get the American people to focus on what a travesty it is when you have an individual judge be able to stop an entire operation or an entire administrative policy that’s constitutional and allowed just because he or she chooses to do so. So, it’s a war.”
These remarks, of course, did not come entirely off the cuff (you don’t refer to something as a “war” three times by accident), nor did they take place in isolation. The Attorney General herself has filed a (frivolous) misconduct complaint against Chief Judge Boasberg on the D.C. district court; Stephen Miller keeps decrying each adverse ruling against the Trump administration as just part of a broader “judicial insurrection”; and, although the hearing has been postponed for now, the Senate Judiciary Committee had been set to convene tomorrow to hold a hearing on incredibly dubious claims of misconduct by two district judges (never mind that the impeachment power belongs to the House of Representatives).
It’s certainly not a coincidence that we’re seeing all of these spurious attacks on lower courts at the exact same time as they have continued to be the single most effective—and important—check on the lawless behavior of the current administration. But that’s exactly why these attacks are so worrisome. It’s not just that they are remarkably light on substance (and indifferent to the data of where these adverse rulings are coming from, about which more below); it’s not just that they are shamelessly hypocritical given both the behavior of right-wing lawyers during the Biden administration and the attacks directed against those who were themselves critical of that behavior; it’s that, unlike anything that happened between 2021 and 2025, here it’s the number-one and number-two officials in the Department of Justice publicly leading the charge.
Not only is this rhetoric and conduct unbecoming of anyone in the employ of the Department of Justice, let alone its top two officials, but it will surely lead to an increase in both (1) the very real threats that these lower-court judges are already facing; and (2) eroding public faith, at least among those who take Bondi and Blanche seriously, in the lower federal courts. It would be one thing if there were any substance to their charges, but there isn’t. And yet, you’d be hard-pressed to find any conservative groups, right-of-center law professors, or other right-wing commentators publicly criticizing these remarks or the broader attacks on lower federal courts emanating from this administration. I don’t say this lightly, but that is to their profound (and growing) discredit.
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