US judges reveal panic buttons, private security in chilling new reports about threats

Sudhin Thanawala, The Associated Press

Federal judges have varied their commutes, hired private security and fortified their homes, including with panic buttons, amid a barrage of threats and harassment in recent months that has left many of them anxious about their safety, according to two new studies.

In an astonishing admission, one judge acknowledged considering an alternative ruling to avoid vitriol that could endanger the judge’s family. The federal judge, like some of the others interviewed for the studies, spoke to the authors on condition of anonymity.

The reports follow a spike in threats against federal judges. “Security incidents of significant concern” increased 57% in the year that ended in September 2025 and were on pace to rise again this year, according to a March report by the agency that administers the U.S. court system.

While some U.S. judges have spoken publicly about threats, the new studies by legal scholars at New York University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the Brennan Center for Justice are based on detailed testimony from dozens of judges. Together, they present a chilling portrait of a judicial branch under extreme stress.

“We are in a different era,” said Amrit Singh, director of the Rule of Law Lab at New York University and lead author of one of the studies. “The volume, intensity, character and modalities of the threats that we are witnessing today are new.”

Judges told Singh they felt overwhelmed, had trouble sleeping and had installed security cameras and panic buttons. Many were worried about their families.

Singh declined to reveal more information about the judge who considered an alternative ruling, but the judge recalled feeling gripped by fear and agonizing for nearly an hour before sticking with the decision the law required.

In the second study, one judge reported having home floor plans leaked and building a safe room. The judge, who asked to remain anonymous, received more than 700 threatening phone calls after hearing a Trump administration immigration case.

“Long term, there really is a danger to the rule of law from these threats,” said Gowri Ramachandran, director of elections and security at the Brennan Center and co-author of the second report on judicial threats.

The NYU-Berkeley report is based on interviews with 32 active U.S. district and appellate judges — half nominated by Democrats and the other half by Republicans — as well as two active magistrate judges. The Brennan Center interviewed 35 sitting and retired federal judges, eight of whom were nominated by Republican presidents.

The reports recommend adequate funding for judicial security and additional efforts to protect judges’ personal information. The NYU-Berkeley report also calls for more prosecutions of people making threats, noting that there have been few cases.

U.S. District Judge Esther Salas participated in interviews for both studies. She told The Associated Press Tuesday that repeated attacks on judges by President Donald Trump and his administration have made her more worried about judicial safety today than she was immediately after her son, Daniel Anderl, was shot and killed by a litigant posing as a deliveryman in 2020. The attack at her home also left her husband, Mark, wounded.

Since then, scores of judges have been threatened by unsolicited pizzas delivered to their homes, sometimes in Anderl’s name.

Trump has called a district judge who ruled against one of his immigration moves “crooked” and suggested without evidence that U.S. Supreme Court justices who struck down his tariffs were motivated by foreign interests.

Salas fears people will become desensitized to harmful rhetoric against the judicial branch, which she said was “under assault.”

“What Mark has been through and what our family has endured, I can’t describe with mere words,” she said in a phone interview. “But what I can say is this: We know what is at stake.”

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