The Trump administration’s brash moves to crack down on illegal immigration entered a fraught new phase Friday, with the FBI arrest of a local Wisconsin judge who was charged with allegedly obstructing the arrest of an immigrant.
This is, needless to say, a significant escalation of the administration’s efforts. Any time you’re arresting judges, you enter yet more constitutionally dicey territory, with the administration already flouting and resisting judges’ orders. And the backdrop looms large here: The administration has in recent weeks ramped up its attacks on what it labels the radical activist judges who have ruled against many of its immigration actions. (In actuality, several of the judges have been Republican and even Trump appointees.)
Some Democrats responded by offering cautious statements that allowed for the idea that the judge might have actually done something very bad. But many others pitched this as an obvious effort to intimidate a judiciary that has stood up to Trump. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-New York) labeled it “an attack on the separation of powers, and we will fight this with everything we have.”
There is much we have to learn about this situation (you can see all the major known details here).
But in some of its first comments about the situation, the Trump administration didn’t downplay the idea that this was connected to its broader crusade against the judiciary.
Attorney General Pam Bondi actually seemed to lean into the idea that this was part of the larger pattern of judicial wrongs that the administration now seeks to right. Her commentary is unlikely to temper fears that the administration is trying to send a message to other judges who would stand in its way.
Appearing on Fox News, Bondi discussed both the Wisconsin case and another in which a local New Mexico judge resigned after a man the government has alleged is member of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was arrested at his home.
But rather than just focus on those two cases, Bondi repeatedly talked as if they were part of a broader problem with the judiciary.
“What has happened to our judiciary is beyond me,” Bondi said.
She suggested these specific judges were “deranged,” but then again connected it to a supposedly larger trend in the judiciary.
“I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law,” Bondi said. “And they are not.”
Crucially, that kind of rhetoric echoes what the administration has said about other judges who it alleges are usurping the president’s foreign policy powers. It has sometimes suggested the judges have virtually no place reviewing its deportation efforts. Top administration figures have called them things like “rogue” and “radical” judges. Bondi has called them “low-level leftist judges who are trying to dictate President Trump’s executive powers.” Elon Musk and Stephen Miller have gone so far as to label legal pushback against their policies a “judicial coup.”
When Fox host John Roberts asked about the perception created by arresting judges — “They’ll say this is a government that is expanding the powers of the Article One of the Constitution, now they’re arresting judges,” he said — Bondi didn’t dispute that.
“No one is above the law, John,” she said. “No one is above the law in this country.”
At another point, fellow host Sandra Smith asked, “So when you see these judges trying to obstruct your efforts to make this country safer, what is your message to them?”
Bondi responded: “We are going to prosecute you, and we are prosecuting you.”
The big question for our democracy and our separation of powers is just how broad is the administration’s definition of obstructing its efforts to make the country safer. Obstruction is a legal term, but also a political one.
At the very least, the administration appears to be content to send a signal to other members of the judiciary to look at what’s happening and think the administration is more than ready for an ugly power struggle.
