By Manny Marotta, FTC law clerk

All 10 Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee signed on to a letter to U.S. Marshals Service Acting Director Mark Pittella Friday seeking an immediate briefing on the agency’s response to threats against federal judges.

The letter notes that last year’s USMS annual report showed an increase in both the number and intensity of threats to judges’ safety.

Two months ago, Fix the Court’s Gabe Roth noted in a Bloomberg op-ed that the trend has continued into this year, with the volume of anti-judge rhetoric spiking as lawsuits against the Trump administration make their way through federal courts.

“The threats against [judges] must be taken seriously, and the officials charged with their protection must be given the resources they need to do their jobs,” Roth wrote at the time.

The senators echoed this sentiment in their letter, writing, “We would like to ensure that USMS has allocated its resources to fulfill these missions […]. Please let us know if additional USMS resources are necessary to guarantee the protection of our federal judges and their families.”

The senators conclude their letter by asking several questions aimed at evaluating USMS’s preparedness to investigate and react to threats, including what steps has agency has taken “to ensure the safety of judges’ family members as part of [an elevated] threat environment” and whether “recent executive branch personnel or funding decisions [have] affected USMS’s capacity to investigate or respond to threats against judges and their family members.”

Fix the Court applauds the letter and the senators’ work to safeguard our independent judiciary, and we hope to see the USMS fully equipped to respond to all threats that may endanger the third branch.