Somebody claiming to be a neighbor called the Fairfax County non-emergency line just after 9 p.m. Wednesday to report gunshots at a home belonging to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Officers coordinated with the Supreme Court Police already stationed at the residence, figured out within minutes that the report was fake, and — per the department’s own statement — didn’t even have to send extra units. It’s being characterized as a swatting attempt, the practice of tricking armed cops into storming someone’s house where something can go catastrophically wrong.
Threats against Supreme Court justices garner more attention, but incidents of violent intimidation directed at federal judges are up across the country without much fanfare. Balls and Strikes tallied 241 threats against 202 judges in 2026 alone, and that story came out in March. Supreme Court justices have access to heightened security — like the officers already stationed at Justice Barrett’s house — but lower court judges aren’t as fortunate. That’s not to downplay the seriousness of this specific incident, but it should frame how we talk about it.
In January, conservative judges were mocking the rise in threats and harassment against fellow judges. Judge James Ho blasted the Federal Judges Association for having “politicized” security for judges. “Today, they’re fearful when a judge receives an unsolicited pizza delivery at home,” he said, glibly ignoring that these orders communicate we know where you live and are being made in the name of Judge Esther Salas’s murdered son. And the intimidation tactics go beyond the macabre pizza deliveries. Judge Ana Reyes described being called a “foreign-born lesbian” who should “eat a bullet” after an immigration ruling. At an event last fall, Judge Paul Grimm quoted a threat made against a different federal judge “We are going to rape your daughter in front of you, cut her head off so the blood splatters on you, then rape you, and kill you.” As Judge Grimm explained, these threats are flooding in whether judges were appointed by Democrats or Republicans.
Though, between the lines, it seemed that the quality connecting that bipartisan collection of judges was ruling against Donald Trump.
It’s hard to deal with political violence — from any ideology — when one side treats it as a joke. Judge Ho’s mockery fits a broader pattern. Paul Pelosi was nearly beaten to death with a hammer in his own home, and the response from right-wing social media was to turn his skull fracture into a punchline and a conspiracy theory. When a gunman impersonating a police officer assassinated Minnesota House Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband and shot State Senator John Hoffman and his wife, Senator and former Supreme Court clerk Mike Lee’s contribution — before the suspect was even in custody — was to post the shooter’s photo captioned “This is what happens When Marxists don’t get their way” and “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” because he’s too lazy to even correctly spell Tim Walz’s last name. The suspect turned out to be a Trump-rally-attending registered Republican, but Lee didn’t seem interested in correcting the record. He just deleted the posts and moved on.
An attempted swatting is horrific, but if the same people snickering about Pelosi and the murders in Minnesota cast a threat against a justice with round-the-clock security as somehow more grave, it speaks to a more fundamental breakdown that prevents any serious response to the core problem.
For the record, I suspect at least one conservative voice will find a way to turn this incident into a reason to build a White House ballroom.
The media plays a role in enabling this cynicism. The NBC report on this story is 13 paragraphs long. The unprecedented wave of threats facing lower court judges over the past couple years is relegated to paragraph 12. Obviously, mainstream reporters feel compelled to clear their whos, whats, wheres, and whens first. But with more people getting their news from social media blurbs and circulating headlines without ever bothering to read the underlying story, a penultimate paragraph mention may as well not even exist.
If this story becomes “crazy leftists target conservative justice” as opposed to “judges face increasing threats across America and deserve more security,” then nothing changes. Indeed, elevating this story to suggest the Supreme Court is uniquely under siege gets the threat profile exactly backwards.
While the Supreme Court enjoys deservedly heightened security, the majority has put targets on the lower courts. The Roberts Court has spent the last year using the shadow docket to vacate district court orders without explanation, reprimand trial judges for failing to read the supermajority’s mind, and broadcast to the administration and its online auxiliaries that the judges enforcing the law are the real problem. Dozens of federal judges told the New York Times the emergency docket was eroding public trust in their work, and most agreed that it had caused real harm. When the highest court in the country keeps signaling — without bothering to write an opinion — that the trial bench is an illegitimate obstacle to the president, it’s not a surprise that the same people who stormed the Capitol would start issuing violent threats.
Roberts says personally directed hostility toward judges is “dangerous” and “has got to stop.” That’s true, but his proposed solution is “stop questioning us” as opposed to pumping the breaks on churning out rulings baselessly suggesting that lower court judges are arbitrarily undermining Trump.
Part of recognizing political violence as a problem beyond ideology is being honest about the partisan disconnect in the response to it. When conservatives keep reacting to violence by laughing at the murder of Democrats and constructing flimsy conspiracies to sell books blaming liberals and downplaying right-wing violence, it not only engenders more right-wing violence, but opens the door to previously more rare left-inspired violence as they internalize the insane idea that it’s a tactic that the other side gets to use without repercussions.
You know, like when people storm the Capitol and try to kill the police and get pardons. That’s the sort of thing that normalizes all political violence.
Hopefully, this event results in real change. But it probably won’t. We’ll be treated to a bunch of takes about how this is all a liberal’s fault and then if it comes out that this was one of the legions of disgruntled MAGA-heads who think Justice Barrett is a RINO for ruling against Trump’s tariffs — or an embarrassment to her family as Trump himself said — it will be quietly shunted aside as inconvenient.
Earlier: Judge With Overinflated View Of His Intelligence Blasts Judges For ‘Overinflated View Of Their Intelligence’
Legalweek’s Annual Judicial Panel: A Clear And Present Danger To Our Judges — And The Rule Of Law
‘I’ll Put A Bullet In Your Head’: The Disturbing Reality Of Being A Judge In America
Jonathan Turley’s Swatting Theory Fizzled So He Launched His Own Phony Assault
Joe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter or Bluesky if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.
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