In the run-up to Election Day 2024, Donald Trump invested a fair amount of time in condemning those who criticize judges — as if his own rhetorical record didn’t exist. Such criticisms, the Republican said in August, are “probably illegal.” Two weeks later, he went a little further, adding that judicial criticisms should be “illegal.”

If that wasn’t quite enough, Trump — who’d spent years publicly chastising judges — went so far as to declare, “These people should be put in jail the way they talk about our judges.”

A lot has changed since then.

In an all-caps Memorial Day screed posted to his social media platform, for example, the incumbent president condemned “USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous for our country.” The Republican went on to refer to unnamed judges as “monsters who want our country to go to hell.”

The inflammatory rhetoric was not a one-off; presidential comments like these have become quite common of late. In March, for example, Trump also wrote, “Radical Left Judges could very well lead to the destruction of our Country! These people are Lunatics, who do not care, even a little bit, about the repercussions from their very dangerous and incorrect Decisions and Rulings. … The danger is unparalleled!”

Radical condemnations like these are creating a dangerous environment in which judges, and even their family members, are increasingly concerned about their personal safety. Reuters reported in March that U.S. marshals warned that federal judges are facing “unusually high threat levels as tech billionaire Elon Musk and other Trump administration allies ramp up efforts to discredit judges who stand in the way of White House efforts.”

The good news is that federal judges already enjoy the protection of the U.S. Marshals Service. The bad news is that the U.S. Marshals Service reports to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department — which currently answers to the same president who’s accused federal judges of being “monsters” and “lunatics” who are creating existential risks for the nation.

In April, The New York Times reported on a recent meeting of the Judicial Conference, which oversees the administration of the federal courts. The article noted, “Behind closed doors at one session, Judge Richard J. Sullivan, the chairman of the conference’s Committee on Judicial Security, raised a scenario that weeks before would have sounded like dystopian fiction, according to three officials familiar with the remarks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations: What if the White House were to withdraw the protections it provides to judges?”

Over the weekend, The Wall Street Journal published a related report:

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.

The reporting, which has not been independently verified by MSNBC or NBC News, echoed the Times’ article, noted that some federal judges “worried that Trump could order the marshals to stand down in retaliation for a decision that didn’t go his way.”

To that end, some jurists are reportedly weighing the possibility of the judiciary creating its own security force, while Democratic Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey is pushing new legislation that would shift control of the U.S. Marshals Service to the courts from the DOJ.

A Justice Department spokesperson described these concerns as “absurd.” That said, this is the same Justice Department led by a Trump loyalist who’s also used highly provocative rhetoric related to the courts, including a recent interview in which the attorney general said judges who rule against Trump’s agenda are “deranged.” As part of the same conservative media appearance, Bondi even raised the prospect of arresting more judges.

Given the circumstances, can you blame members of the judiciary for eyeing some systemic concerns?

Judge John Coughenour of the Western District of Washington, who’s had a SWAT team called on him, told the Journal that the proposal to move the Marshals under judiciary was 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.