When you have leaders from the top down calling you monsters, calling you rogue, calling you corrupt, calling you deranged. “Deranged is all I can think of.” When our political leaders say that certain judges are engaging in legal insurrection against this country. “Rogue judges that are usurping the powers of the presidency and laying waste to our entire constitutional system. Last question.” Statements that seem to suggest that judges owe a loyalty to a political leader, not to all Americans. “I appointed the judge and he goes like that. So I wasn’t served well.” What these attacks do, whether they’re verbal attacks, whether they’re actual attacks, whether it’s murder, in my case — “Unfortunately for my family, the threat was real.” We begin to weaken the framework and the foundation of the justice system. “This is threatening to these judges. It has no place in the halls of Congress.” Without an independent judiciary, you don’t stand a chance if your adversary is stronger, more powerful, more rich than you. You don’t stand a chance in the courtroom. My name is Esther Salas. I’m a United States district judge for the District of New Jersey. We have always had people upset with our rulings. Like, 50 percent of the time, someone’s leaving unhappy. But what we are seeing, in terms of judicial security and threats, is unprecedented. We have at this point in time threats coming from the top of our government on down. “Because you have these radical left judges.” “The judges are acting erroneously.” “We have very bad judges.” “Rogue rulings.” “It’s not even imaginable how corrupt they were.” “A lunatic.” “These liberal district judges.” “Where do these people come from? Where do the judges come from?” We have seen members of Congress calling for the impeachment of judges for doing their jobs. “President says the judge in that case should be impeached.” “Those types of words are meant to demonize, villainize judges. When we do that, we begin to allow people to think that they can take matters into their own hands. There have been hundreds of calls threatening to come to chambers and kill us. Bomb threats to judges’ homes. There have been swatting incidences, doxxing of judges’ personal information. As of this year, 2025, we saw a spike in what’s called pizza doxxing. Pizzas had been either delivered or attempted to be delivered to judges’ homes at odd hours of the night. Judges didn’t order these pizzas. “Anonymous pizzas being delivered to the homes of federal judges.” “Alarming rise in the delivery of pizzas.” “Anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes.” The people sending those pizzas want those judges to know, “We know where you live.” We’ve also had accounts of judges’ children — they’re also getting pizzas. They want the judge to know they know where their children live. And as of this year, pizzas started being delivered to my colleagues across the country in my murdered son’s name. The name that they used on the pizza was Daniel Anderl. My baby boy. My son, my only child, was taken from me when a lawyer who was unhappy with the way I was handling his case decided to come and exact revenge on me. “The man approached Salas’s home and then shot Salas’s 20-year-old son in the heart after he opened the door, killing him.” “And he was looking for you.” “Yeah, he wanted me.” And that, of course, sends the message: Do you want to end up like Judge Salas? Do you want to end up like Judge Salas’s son, Daniel? I am probably the most concerned I’ve ever been since my only child was murdered in our home on July 19, 2020. When we continue to attack the judiciary, there are consequences we haven’t even started thinking about. Our good, great judges with experience, are they going to stay on the bench? Candidates who would otherwise be great judges and who probably at one point aspired to be a judge, are they going to say, “No, it’s not worth it. I don’t want to put my family in danger”? Are we ultimately going to see judges, when faced with a close call — and one, perhaps, is a safer choice for their family because they know what will follow, which will be death threats, bomb threats? When a judge has to think about a safer choice, is that justice? Is that justice?