Government Attacks on Federal Judges Now Come With a Target List

James Percival, general counsel of the Department of Homeland Security, spent the closing stretch of July publishing an installment series on X under the title "Worst of the Worst, District Judge Edition." Bloomberg Law dated the series to Thursday, July 23. The label was not invented for the occasion. DHS has used "worst of the worst" as the branding on its public lists of criminal aliens targeted for removal. Percival lifted that phrase intact and fastened it to four sitting federal judges.

Everything at issue follows from that borrowing. Attacking a ruling is ordinary and healthy. Ranking federal judges by name inside a rhetorical container the government built for violent offenders is a different act. It is a designation, published by the lawyer who supervises the government's litigators appearing in front of those same courts, in a year when the United States Marshals Service recorded 564 threats against federal judges, an 11 percent rise from 509 the year before.

Four names, four immigration dockets

Percival's targets, according to reporting by Bloomberg Law, Above the Law and HuffPost, were Matthew Kennelly of the Northern District of Illinois, a Clinton appointee; Allison Burroughs of the District of Massachusetts, an Obama appointee; Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland, an Obama appointee; and Hernan Vera of the Central District of California, a Biden appointee.

Kennelly ordered a nationwide pause on the termination of temporary protected status for Burmese nationals. Burroughs issued comparable relief covering Somali nationals. Xinis presides over litigation arising from removals to El Salvador, including the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case. Vera has handled claims over the department's use of force during immigration enforcement protests in Los Angeles. Percival called Kennelly's order "judicial sabotage," accused Vera of "micromanaging DHS's use of force policy," faulted a judge for what he described as "deliberately sluggish" scheduling, and charged the group with "open defiance" of the Supreme Court and "naked political activism."

Office that makes this different

Percival is not a campaign surrogate or a press aide. He took the post in December 2025 after Senate confirmation. He came to it from Florida, where he served as deputy attorney general for legal policy and chief deputy solicitor general, and as chief of staff to Attorney General Ashley Moody. Earlier he worked at the Justice Department as counsel to Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand and senior counsel to Acting Associate Attorney General Jesse Panuccio. He clerked for Judge Emmett Ripley Cox of the Eleventh Circuit. At his confirmation hearing he told senators, "I view the role of the General Counsel as limited," and pledged legal advice "free from political bias."

Those credentials sharpen the problem rather than soften it. The general counsel supervises the filings his department submits to Kennelly, Burroughs, Xinis and Vera. When that officer publishes a ranked list of the federal judges hearing his agency's cases, the transmission to the bench is not commentary. It is a statement about consequences, delivered by a repeat party with business before every judge named.

Numbers the judiciary carried to Congress

Nine days before the series began, on July 14, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan appeared before a House appropriations subcommittee, the first time a sitting justice had answered House questions since 2019. Barrett told members that judges keep working "without fear or favor, but the threat level is really high." Kagan said the Supreme Court Police expect threats to rise 38 percent this year, after a 25 percent rise the year before. Barrett recounted a swatting incident about six weeks before the hearing, when her teenage son opened the door and saw police cars in the street responding to a false report of gunshots.

The Court asked Congress for $228.4 million in fiscal 2027, up from $207.8 million, an increase of nearly 10 percent driven largely by security. District courts carry similar arithmetic. HuffPost, citing Marshals Service data, reported 534 federal investigations into 383 threats against 286 judges since October. Percival published his list into that environment, not into a vacuum, and nine days after two justices sat in a hearing room describing it.

Salas standard

Judge Esther Salas of New Jersey answered the posts in the only terms available to her. "This is so dangerous," she told HuffPost. "I'm living proof of the danger. My son isn't here because someone disagreed with the way I was handling a case in court."

On July 19, 2020, a gunman posing as a delivery driver came to the Salas family home and killed her 20 year old son, Daniel Anderl, and wounded her husband, Mark Anderl. The shooter, Roy Den Hollander, a self-described anti-feminist lawyer angry over her handling of his case, had compiled a dossier that included her home address. Congress responded with the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, which restricts disclosure of the personal information of federal judges and their families. That statute exists because a legislature accepted a premise these DHS posts reject: public identification of a judge, combined with grievance, is a physical risk and not merely a rhetorical one.

Defense on offer, and its gap

Percival called the criticism "absolute absurdity" and argued that "legitimate fact based critiques of judges and their rulings is fair game in a free society," adding that the press raises no objection when the judge under attack is conservative. DHS defended the series to Above the Law as "nothing more than a factual review of judicial decisions and their real-world consequences."

The gap in that defense is the frame, not the facts. Nothing stopped Percival from writing that Kennelly's nationwide order exceeded his authority, that the Seventh Circuit had already reversed him, and that the department would seek further relief. He did that available work and then filed it under a heading his department reserves for people it calls dangerous criminals. Paul Kiesel, founder of the judicial independence group Speak Up for Justice, told HuffPost the posts are "directed not to the legal community, but are directed to the public," and that they are "essentially saying these judges are 'wanted, dead or alive.'" Fair comment does not require that container, and selecting it is itself the message.

There is also a remedy problem, and Percival's own example supplies it. The Seventh Circuit reversed Kennelly. That is the constitutional answer to a district judge who gets it wrong, and it worked without anyone posting a list. Chief Justice John Roberts said as much on March 18, 2025, rebuking calls to impeach Judge James Boasberg: "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose." Appeal is slower than a post. It is also the only method that does not run through making federal judges afraid.

Bar moves before the bench does

Judges cannot answer in kind, so others answered for them. On July 29 the American Board of Trial Advocates released a statement from its 2026 national president, William D. Shapiro, declaring, "Plainly stated, we condemn the description and publication of such a list by Mr. Percival and admonish his conduct." Judge Beth Bloom, who chairs the Federal Judges Association committee on judicial independence, framed what is new: "For the first time, we have a senior U.S. government official, a general counsel for the DHS, a member of the Florida Bar that has published a public 'target list' of the 'worst of the worst' judges." She added that she hoped people would recognize the posts as an intimidation tactic.

Philip Pro, a retired federal judge in Nevada, called the series irresponsible and terribly disappointing coming from a senior government lawyer. "It erodes the public confidence in the judiciary, it weakens public faith in the law, and it's amplified many times over when it's done through social media," Pro said. Sean Lewis, a spokesperson for the Northern District of Illinois, said the Code of Conduct requires judges to decide each matter independently, "based on the law and the facts," and not on "political pressure, public reaction, partisan interests or fear of criticism," adding that the appropriate way to challenge a ruling is the appellate process.

Dates that will settle this

Three markers are worth watching. The federal fiscal year closes September 30, producing the Marshals Service tally that will either confirm or break the trend line that ran from 509 to 564. Congress will act on the judiciary's fiscal 2027 security request, including the Supreme Court's $228.4 million ask, and the size of that appropriation is a measurable verdict on how seriously the threat data is taken. Bloom's reference to the Florida Bar points at the one forum with jurisdiction over Percival personally, because bar discipline, unlike an appeal, reaches the lawyer rather than the ruling.

None of this requires agreeing with Kennelly, Burroughs, Xinis or Vera. Their orders may be wrong, and an appeals court has already said one of them was. The claim is narrower and harder to dodge: a government that has decided which federal judges are the worst of the worst has stopped arguing with the judiciary and started rating it, and every brief the department files after that carries an implication no brief will ever say out loud.