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“This Is Not What the Founders Envisioned”

Joyce Vance Oct 19

As his lawyers prepared to return to court this morning in the legal battle over the East Potomac links, Donald Trump was up early, posting on Truth Social about U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes. He called her a “crazed lunatic” and suggested she “may be insane.” In other words, more of the behavior we’ve come to expect from this president on days that end in “Y.” That’s not to minimize what he does, because it’s dangerous, and it’s serious. But he’s also predictable—predictably unpresidential, whether he’s currying favor with Putin or pretend-campaigning for Republicans who wish he wasn’t on the stage with him just weeks away from the midterm elections.

This is how the president—who told the Judge in the BBC case, a case he himself brought, and that we discussed in The Week Ahead, that he’s too busy to be deposed in that case—is spending his time. Not happy to let his lawyers represent him in court, the president took to social media to attack a federal judge.

It’s easy to lose sight of how commonplace that has become. And how devastating it is. It used to be that threats against federal judges came from unhappy litigants, as with three of the four federal judges who have been murdered in the last 50 years. The fourth, Judge John Roll, was killed in the shooting involving Congresswoman Gabby Giffords. In 2020, Judge Esther Salas faced an attack in her own home that led to the murder of her son, by a lawyer in a case in front of her who was a self-described “anti-feminist” and “men's rights” lawyer. But those events didn’t come from inside of the house.

PBS reported that “Hundreds of federal judges have received threats against themselves and their families this year [2026], according to the U.S. Marshals Service. It comes amid a litany of verbal and written attacks by President Trump and his administration on judges who have ruled against them.” There is no reason for the president of the United States to put federal judges, public servants, in harm’s way. And yet, that was where his attention was focused as the lawyers returned to court in the East Potomac Park case today.

Overnight, Judge Reyes denied the government’s motion to disqualify her from the case. In their motion, they portrayed her as overly emotional and argued she demonstrated bias against the government. What they left out was that the Judge only became angry with the government after it misled her and betrayed her trust. If you’ve been reading along here, you know that’s the case, as we parsed through the Judge’s early willingness to trust the government to follow court orders and not do what it ended up doing, cutting down hundreds of trees despite the existence of an injunction that prohibited them from doing that. “It is easy to weaponize selective quotations to bring a baseless recusal motion,” she wrote in the order refusing to recuse herself. “But it is much harder to meet the demanding legal standard against a full record.”

That meant the government’s lawyers were back in front of her this morning.

The Judge did not rule from the bench on whether she would grant a preliminary injunction. Likely that will come in the next few days. And she did not punish the government’s lawyers in court. But during the hearing, while talking about the government’s shifting positions, Judge Reyes said she was not playing whack-a-mole game and that somebody “is going to take responsibility for what happens in this courtroom.” We’ll wait to see what her decision is and what she says in the opinion when it comes down.

Last Tuesday, as it became apparent the government was trying to lay //word check?// the Judge, I wrote to you: “Trump supporters characterized Judge Reyes as angry, unprofessional, and worse in the hearing on Monday. It’s easy to play the woman judge as overly emotional. But here’s a different interpretation: she was righteously angry. She understands the stakes. And she knows she can’t blink, as others have before her. Because if she does, this administration keeps taking it further, until there’s nothing left of the rule of law.” Today’s hearing offers hope that this is the correct interpretation of where the Judge stands.

But today’s hearing seemed to end where the day started, with the president posting on social media. At the end of the hearing, Judge Reyes said that her family was seeing media reports that she was receiving death threats and they were “freaking out.” “Over a golf course,” she emphasized. This is how she ended the hearing: “I really don’t think that’s what the founders envisioned.”

Nothing that Donald Trump is doing is what the Founders envisioned. Tonight, with serious issues facing us, he posted this on Truth Social: “The Dumocrat Agenda is a plan to extinguish Western Civilization.”

We need federal judges who are willing to speak truth to power. Now more than ever.

One of the worst things that could happen right now is to become accustomed to things that should shock us. Like a president attacking a judge or a judge’s family fearing for her safety. Or government lawyers who act like the rules don’t apply to them. None of this is normal, and we can’t afford to start treating it like it is. So I’m grateful to belong to this community of people who pay attention and ask hard questions. If you’re a regular Civil Discourse reader but you haven’t become a paid subscriber yet, I hope you’ll decide to join in today. Your subscription supports the newsletter. It also helps keep the facts from getting lost in a flooded zone and keeps abuses of power under scrutiny. Most importantly, it means that none of us has to figure out what comes next alone.

We’re in this together,

Joyce