The Wall Street Journal reports:

Amid rising tensions between the Trump administration and the judiciary, some federal judges are beginning to discuss the idea of managing their own armed security force.

The notion came up in a series of closed-door meetings in early March, when a group of roughly 50 judges met in Washington for a semiannual meeting of the Judicial Conference, a policymaking body for the federal judiciary. There, members of a security committee spoke about threats emerging as President Trump stepped up criticism of those who rule against his policies.

Dozens of judges and their relatives have received anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes—which they perceived as a “we know where you live” message. In March, five days after the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s ruling that the administration must pay USAID contractors, Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s sister was targeted with a bomb threat, according to police records. Another judge had a SWAT team called on him after he overturned an executive order restricting birthright citizenship.

The Supreme Court has its own dedicated police force, but other federal judges are protected by the U.S. Marshals Service, which reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi. Security committee members worried that Trump could order the marshals to stand down in retaliation for a decision that didn’t go his way. They weighed one potential, provocative solution—what if they commanded their own security force?

Their concerns even reached Chief Justice John Roberts, who fielded anxieties from judges over a breakfast in a meeting room in the Supreme Court that their current protection may be insufficient.

On Thursday, Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced legislation that would allow the Chief Justice and Judicial Conference to appoint the head of the Marshals, placing the courts in charge of their own security. In a statement, Booker said the legislation was necessary because Trump “has made it abundantly clear through his words and actions that he does not respect the law, court orders, the safety of our judges, or our institutions.”

The Marshals’ “dual accountability to the executive branch and the judicial branch paves the way toward a constitutional crisis,” Booker said.

Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington, who had the SWAT team called on him, called the proposal to move the Marshals under judiciary a “wonderful idea.”

“There’s never been any reason in the 43 years that I’ve been on the bench to worry that the Marshals Service would do whatever was appropriate—until recent years,” Coughenour said. [Continue reading…]