On April 25, Judge Hanah Dugan was arrested by the FBI and charged in federal court for allegedly helping an undocumented migrant avoid arrest. The arrest of Judge Dugan was an extreme escalation in the authoritarian crusade by Donald Trump and his far-right cronies to delegitimize the judiciary and show that they would not be stopped by “activist” and “woke” judges from carrying out their deportation efforts, legal or not. While the dispensation of Judge Dugan’s case is yet to be determined, this was an aggressive move against judicial independence and the separation of powers by the Trump administration. In response to this act of intimidation, 150 judges wrote U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi saying that, “This attempt to intimidate the judiciary will fail.”
Trump and his acolytes have been persistently attacking judges across the nation who have ruled against his executive orders, regardless of their constitutionality. Trump set the stage for these attacks during his civil and criminal trials, when he would repeatedly attack the presiding judges, often leading to violent threats against the judges from his supporters. He’s now taking this strategy into his second term in office in an attack on judges ruling against his policies, along with JD Vance, Elon Musk, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, who all have extensive records of targeting judges who stand in the way of their political agendas. Representative Andy Ogles (R-TN) formally introduced articles to impeach U.S. District Judge John Bates on February 24 after he issued a temporary order for the CDC and FDA to reinstate webpages that contained gender-inclusive language and were deleted at Trump’s order. Authors and supporters of Project 2025, a 920-page blueprint for authoritarianism in the United States that Trump is now carrying out after having said he knew nothing of it during the campaign, have also been railing against the judiciary in an attempt to undermine the rule of law.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump refers to Judge Thomas Boasberg as a “radical left lunatic” who “should be IMPEACHED!!!” (Source: Truth Social).
In a post on Twitter, Vice President JD Vance labels judges ruling against Trump’s policies as “lawless” and guilty of “substitut[ing] his or her policy preferences for the will of the People” (Source: Twitter)
Recent investigations by the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) revealed how these malicious and highly irresponsible statements from Trump administration members and allies coincide with escalating violent posts on social media. Far-right extremist users not only echoed, but amplified, anti-democratic rhetoric and calls for violence against the judiciary. This alarming content is spreading on mainstream social media platforms such as TikTok and Truth Social, along with fringe sites, such as 4chan, Gab, and Rumble. GPAHE documented a 54 percent increase in calls for impeachment and violent threats against judges across social media platforms from January to February 2025, the first full month of Trump’s administration. These numbers have risen since then.
New GPAHE research spanning from May 1, 2024 until April 30, 2025 has expanded the understanding of the extent of anti-judicial rhetoric online. Across the platforms, some known for violent rhetoric and for being the favored outlets of those committing mass violence, instances of violent threats and calls for impeachment against judges have risen by an alarming 327 percent between May 2024 and March 2025.
GPAHE findings suggest that a rise in anti-democratic language from prominent American figures on the far right likely influenced extremists on social media to also attack the judiciary, leading to large increases in violent language and calls for impeachment targeting judges on several platforms. March 2025 served as a flashpoint for this rhetoric, as people and organizations associated with Trump and Project 2025 made several attempts to portray the American judiciary as “gavel-weilding dictators” bent towards “lunacy” and “lawlessness.” Trump also upped his attacks against judges that month, calling for Judge Boasberg’s impeachment, describing him as a far-left “troublemaker and agitator.”
On TikTok, GPAHE recorded a 90 percent increase in violent language and impeachment calls between January 1 and February 28, 2025. However, this increase pales in comparison to the overall trends over the past year. In May 2024, there were 35 instances of violent language and impeachment calls on TikTok, but that number rose 537 percent to 223 instances in March 2025.
TikTok saw a 537 percent increase of violent language and calls for impeachment against judges between May 2024 and March 2025 (Data collected from OpenMeasures).
On Truth Social, a platform owned by Trump Media & Technology Group, GPAHE recorded a 94 percent increase between January and February 2025. Truth Social was a hotbed for judicial attacks before Trump took office, likely related to the criminal and civil court actions against Trump and his extreme displeasure with the judges in those cases. There were 2,232 recorded posts in May 2024 with impeachment or violent language directed at judges. These instances have skyrocketed over the last year, consisting of 9,462 posts in March 2025, a 324 percent increase.
May 2024’s onslaught of comments coincided with Trump’s May 30 conviction in the hush money trial. Comments from Truth Social users included wanting to “kill all the dirty judges,” and find judges “guilty of treason,” “election interference,” and “election fraud.” Since January, and especially in March, users on Truth Social claimed that judges were organizing a “judicial coup,” and called for “activist judges” (a term used by Trump) to be fired and “hang[ed].”
In a post replying to Trump, one Truth Social user calls for Attorney General Pam Bondi to “arrest every [Executive Order] blocking judge for treason” (Source: Truth Social).
On Truth Social, there was a 324 percent increase in violent rhetoric and calls for impeachment against judges between May 2024 and March 2025 (Data collected from OpenMeasures).
On Gab, a platform similar to Twitter, GPAHE recorded a 15 percent increase in instances of violent language and calls for impeachment against the judiciary from January to February 2025. GPAHE found there were 273 instances recorded in May 2024. Like the other platforms, and inline with Trump and Project 2025’s anti-judicial campaign in March, instances peaked in March 2025 at 3,210, representing an astronomical 1,076 percent increase. A recent post targeted U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, who ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in the Eastern District of California cannot stop illegal immigrants without reasonable suspicion. The user said Judge Thurston is “guilty of treason, sedition and insurrection” and called to “lock up that bitch and send her to gitmo” (Gitmo is short for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba).
A post made on April 30 targets U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Thurston, who ruled that Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents in the Eastern District of California cannot stop illegal immigrants without reasonable suspicion (Source: Gab).
Gab saw threats and calls for impeachment against judges rise ten-fold between May 2024 and March 2025 (Data collected from OpenMeasures).
In the comment sections of Rumble, a video-hosting platform that J.D. Vance invested in in 2021, the same year that Trump Media Group announced a technology-sharing agreement with the platform to provide logistical support to Truth Social, GPAHE recorded a 175 percent increase in instances of violent rhetoric and calls for impeachment between January and February 2025. Upon expanding the research time frame, GPAHE found such posts rose from 483 in May 2024 to 920 in March 2025, representing a 90 percent increase.
The heightened number of instances recorded in May 2024, similarly to Truth Social, are likely related to Trump’s hush money trial verdict. Many users on May 30 and 31 accused the presiding judge and jurors involved of “election interference,” for which their charge would be “treason” and the punishment either “hang[ing],” or being “crucified.” Since Trump took office in January, Rumble users embraced extreme measures to be taken against judges, calling for their social media accounts and bank records to be seized, and for the judges themselves to be deported. Others called for judges to be granted “no forgiveness,” “no amnesty,” and “no quarter,” the latter phrase representing an order to take no prisoners during an armed conflict, instead executing every enemy combatant, which is a war crime.
Violent rhetoric and calls for impeachment against judges on Rumble almost doubled between May 2024 and March 2025 (Data collected from OpenMeasures).
On 4chan, GPAHE recorded a six percent increase in instances of violent rhetoric and calls for impeachment against judges between January and February 2025.
In a subsequent investigation, GPAHE found that instances rose from 325 in May 2024 to 485 in March 2025, representing a 49 percent increase over the year. Several users on 4chan claimed that judges ruling against Trump were “tyrannical,” echoing language used by Trump allies like Elon Musk, who labeled decisions against the administration as “judicial tyranny.” These users proposed “solutions” to this supposed “tyranny,” such as executing them by “throw[ing] him out of a helicopter,” “hang the judge and anyone who has a problem with it,” and “hang[ing] the judge for treason.”
4chan saw a 49 percent increase in violent rhetoric and calls for impeachment against judges between May 2024 and March 2025. While recorded instances decreased in April, it could be explained by a ten-day outage resulting from a hack (Data collected from OpenMeasures).
This rhetoric is dangerous. On May 1st, Supreme Court Justice Kentanji Brown Jackson condemned attacks against the judiciary, saying “The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law.” Since February, Reuters identified 600 posts on social media targeting family members of judges ruling against the Trump administration, with 70 explicitly calling for violence, arrest, or retaliation against judges’ family members. Following the pattern of online threats leading to offline violence, judges received direct threats through phone calls and emails targeting their homes and their relatives. U.S. District Judge John Coughenour was subjected to a bomb threat in January after ruling against Trump’s effort to curtail birthright citizenship. Judge James Boasberg, who found probable cause for contempt against the Trump administration after their refusal to turn around deportation flights on March 15, was subjected to attacks on his family (Trump also previously called for Judge Boasberg’s impeachment, sparking a rebuttal from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts). His brother Thomas Boasberg, a former school superintendent, who far-right influencer Laura Loomer claimed without evidence was part of a family that “has a history of protecting illegal aliens,” was assigned a security detail in March after receiving several threats. Several judges have also received pizza deliveries attached with notes saying “I know where you live,” which were among a number of suspicious deliveries concerning enough for the U.S. Marshals Service, which provides security for federal judges and courthouses, to investigate. These threats triggered a request by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel to identify the number of anonymous deliveries made to judges and their families during the second Trump administration.
An excerpt from an email sent to a federal judge who ruled against the Trump administration (Source: Reuters).
These tactics are part and parcel of authoritarian attempts to dismantle the system of checks and balances, particularly the judiciary, in the United States. This pattern has been evident in multiple countries. In Poland, the far-right PiS government systematically targeted the courts. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán forced nearly 300 independent judges into immediate retirement because they could not be relied upon to rule in favor of his party. In Bolivia, the government stripped judges of their tenure in a covert attack on judicial independence, creating an environment where judges were incentivized to rule in favor of the ruling party to secure their positions.
Now, along with the U.S., a transnational movement against the rule of law is growing. After Marine Le Pen, leader of the French far-right party Rassemblement National, was convicted of embezzlement on March 31, the American and European far right unified to accuse the European judiciary of being politically motivated, and therefore illegitimate. More recently, the Premier of Ontario, Canada, Doug Ford, has faced criticism for similarly suggesting that judicial independence is a “joke” and that judges ruling against him are “overruling the government” based on “ideology.”
As this campaign against the judiciary from the Trump administration, its allies, and online supporters grows, we’re already seeing the potentially devastating consequences of this incitement to hatred. Our democracy, along with the lives of those tasked to preserve it, are hanging in the balance amidst this unprecedented, and ever-growing, attack to weaken the checks and balances of our government branches and move us towards greater authoritarianism.
