Federal Judges Complain (Anonymously) About the Supreme Court

NBC News has a splashy story out today about federal judges who are unhappy with the Supreme Court.

Federal judges are frustrated with the Supreme Court for increasingly overturning lower court rulings involving the Trump administration with little or no explanation, with some worried the practice is undermining the judiciary at a sensitive time.

Some judges believe the Supreme Court, and in particular Chief Justice John Roberts, could be doing more to defend the integrity of their work as President Donald Trump and his allies harshly criticize those who rule against him and as violent threats against judges are on the rise.

In rare interviews with NBC News, a dozen federal judges — appointed by Democratic and Republican presidents, including Trump, and serving around the country — pointed to a pattern they say has recently emerged:

It seems a bit unlikely (to me anyway) that judges spread out around the country would just happen to reach out to one reporter at NBC News and agree to anonymously attack the Supreme Court. What seems more likely is that this story was packaged by someone. It could be a network of judges who communicate behind the scenes and decided to take their story to the press. Or it could be that someone else pulled this group together, maybe the reporter himself. I don't know what happened here but it doesn't feel organic.

As you can see, NBC makes a point of saying some of these judges were appointed by Republican presidents including Trump, but I'd be willing to bet only one of the 12 judges was appointed by Trump. The general tone of these complaints is progressive whining about the Supreme Court supporting Trump too much. My own guess is that the author is giving us a hint how many of the 12 judges were appointed by Democrats without directly saying so.

Ten of the 12 judges who spoke to NBC News said the Supreme Court should better explain those rulings, noting that the terse decisions leave lower court judges with little guidance for how to proceed. But they also have a new and concerning effect, the judges said, validating the Trump administration’s criticisms. A short rebuttal from the Supreme Court, they argue, makes it seem like they did shoddy work and are biased against Trump.

“It is inexcusable,” a judge said of the Supreme Court justices. “They don’t have our backs.”...

If major efforts are not made to address the situation, the judge said, “somebody is going to die.”

There is one surprising take in the story. An Obama appointed judge says TDS, among his fellow judges, is real.

“Certainly, there is a strong sense in the judiciary among the judges ruling on these cases that the court is leaving them out to dry,” he said. “They are partially right to feel the way they feel.”

But, the judge added, “the whole ‘Trump derangement syndrome’ is a real issue. As a result, judges are mad at what Trump is doing or the manner he is going about things; they are sometimes forgetting to stay in their lane.”

What follows is a misleading analysis of the Supreme Court's "shadow docket," i.e. cases it takes on an emergency basis outside of the regular process for hearing cases. 

The shadow docket has exploded in recent years, with the first Trump administration turbo-charging the trend by rushing to the Supreme Court when lower court rulings blocked nationwide policies. An early example was Trump’s travel ban on people entering the United States from mostly Muslim-majority countries, which the Supreme Court allowed to partly go into effect in June 2017.

NBC notes that since January Trump's administration has appealed to SCOTUS 23 times and won 17 times. Compare that to 19 similar applications to SCOTUS during Biden's entire term of which he won in 10 cases. Those numbers are accurate so far as I know, but they leave out the most important point, which is that Democrats have weaponized the courts to oppose Trump with national injunctions and TROs far more than any other president. Here's what the Congressional Research Service had to say about this.

In April 2024, the Harvard Law Review published an article with counts of nationwide injunctions through 2023. With respect to the four most recent presidential Administrations, the article identified 6 nationwide injunctions issued under the George W. Bush Administration, 12 under the Obama Administration, 64 under the first Trump Administration, and 14 from the first three years of the Biden Administration. A March 2025 CRS report identified 86 nationwide injunction cases from the first Trump Administration and 28 from the Biden Administration.

And in the first three months of Trump's 2nd term there were another 25 nationwide injunctions. To put it another way, Trump had nearly as many nationwide injunctions in his first 100 days as Biden had in four years. This is obviously relevant to any discussion of how many times the Trump administration has made emergency appeals to SCOTUS, but for some reason NBC doesn't mention it.

The last portion of the story is devoted to criticism of Chief Justice Roberts. Here the anonymous judges are more divided. Only four of the 12 judges seemed eager to criticize him, saying he should speak out more to defend the lower courts. Other judges, including the Obama appointee mentioned above, said they sympathized with Roberts being in a difficult position.

This story feels put together for the purpose of making a splashy attack on SCOTUS and echoing some of the progressive complaints about the court backing the Trump administration. I'm guessing the majority of the judges coming forward were Democratic appointees which is why it sounds so much like Democratic talking points. 

I understand that it was necessary to grant anonymity to get the individual judges to talk, but I don't see why the author of the piece can't just state plainly how many were appointed by Democrats vs. Republicans. Why leave that information, which doesn't identify anyone, out of the story, unless it's to portray progressive complaints as more mainstream than they really are?

• Editor's Note: Radical leftist judges are doing everything they can to hamstring President Trump's agenda.

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