It seems that we continue to struggle with a chief executive who goes on social media to personally attack judges who have ruled against his laws or policies. No, it is not Donald Trump. This week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) went on Twitter/X to denounce U.S. Judge Roger T. Benitez as “an extremist, right-wing zealot with no regard to [sic] human life.” Four years ago, I wrote how Democrats were becoming more Trump-like in their attacks on judges and hyperbolic rhetoric. There is no better example than Gavin Newsom.

Many of us criticized Trump for his attacks on judges, including Judge Gonzalo Curiel over his hispanic heritage. Trump would often savage judges for being Democrats or liberals when there were good-faith legal disagreements over his policies.

Newsom seems increasingly to be morphing into the man that he once denounced for such “toxic” rhetoric.

Benitez earned the ire of Newsom by ruling yesterday that California’s limit on high-capacity magazines violates the Second Amendment. He previously ruled against the ban in a partial stay in 2019.

[Republican rhetoric is the problem. ~ Beege]