President Donald Trump’s second term has been marked by his administration’s attempts to bend or break the law and lashing out at judges who stand in the way. The administration’s remarks against judges led one of Trump’s own judicial appointees to speak out in a published opinion on Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen noted that in recent months, executive officials and their spokespeople “have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional,’ ‘[c]rooked,’ and worse.”
Cullen, whom Trump appointed to the federal bench in Virginia during his first term, acknowledged that there has always been “some tension” between the branches of government.
But he wrote that “this concerted effort by the Executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate.”
The rebuke came in a footnote to his opinion rejecting an unusual lawsuit from the administration, which it filed against federal judges in Maryland for issuing orders preventing immigration officials from immediately deporting people who file habeas corpus petitions challenging their confinement.
Cullen’s ruling comes amid the administration’s latest attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it illegally sent to El Salvador in March.
“Much as the Executive fights the characterization, a lawsuit by the executive branch of government against the judicial branch for the exercise of judicial power is not ordinary,” Cullen wrote in dismissing the case, adding: “Whatever the merits of its grievance with the judges of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the Executive must find a proper way to raise those concerns.”
Cullen’s ruling comes amid the administration’s latest attempt to deport Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it illegally sent to El Salvador in March and only returned him to the U.S. in June after resisting court orders to do so. His latest litigation is now playing out in Maryland. Notably, Cullen cited the Abrego case in his ruling Tuesday. Specifically, he cited an opinion from April by appellate Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, a Reagan appointee who has likewise called out the administration’s actions. Cullen and Wilkinson haven’t been the only GOP appointees to do so. It’s unlikely they’ll be the last. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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