For extraordinary reporting revealing the conflicts of interest and self-enrichment that run rampant through the Trump administration, from President Trump outward, the staff of The New York Times won the 2026 Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting.

Trump World’s Self-Enrichment – The New York Timeshttps://www.nytimes.com/spotlight/trump-worlds-self-enrichment

April 28, 20266:32 PM ET

By 

Scott Neuman

Katia Riddle

The headquarters of the National Science Foundation in Alexandria, Va.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

The White House abruptly dismissed the entire board overseeing the National Science Foundation, informing each of its 22 seated members in a terse email on Friday that they had been “terminated, effective immediately.” The move follows a Trump administration push for deep cuts to the NSF and raises concerns in the scientific community that a tradition of independent decisions for allocating federal science grants could be jeopardized.

One of the fired board members, Willie May, who is vice president for research and economic development at Morgan State University, says he’s “deeply disappointed” but not surprised. “I have watched the systematic dismantling of the scientific advisory infrastructure of this government with growing alarm, and the National Science Board is simply the latest casualty,” says May, a chemist and former director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

The reference is to the Trump administration’s weakening or marginalizing of science advisory bodies across government, including the ousting of advisory boards at the Environmental Protection Agency and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., got rid of members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. At the Food and Drug Administration, the Trump administration also moved to eliminate a long-standing policy of having outside experts review new drug applications.

Weather

Scientists push back on Trump plan to break up a critical climate and weather center

The National Science Board was established by Congress in 1950 and signed into law by President Harry S. Truman. It’s a major funder of basic science, math and engineering research, especially at colleges and universities across the United States. Members are appointed by the president to staggered, six-year terms, and do not require Senate confirmation. The board — made up primarily of academics and industry leaders — is charged with identifying issues critical to the NSF’s future, submitting the NSF’s budget and approving its programs and awards.

In a written statement sent to NPR by email, the White House said the firing of the board was in line with a 2021 Supreme Court case, U.S. v. Arthrex, that “raised constitutional questions about whether non-Senate confirmed appointees can exercise the authorities that Congress gave the National Science Board.”

“We look forward to working with the Hill to update the statute and ensure the NSB can perform its duties as Congress intended. The National Science Foundation’s work continues uninterrupted,” according to the statement.

Legal scholars contacted by NPR were mostly confused when asked about the White House statement. Duke University law professor Jeff Powell, a leading expert on the appointments clause of the Constitution, says there is “a puzzling disconnect between firing the Board members and the [White House] statement.” He said that if Arthrex applies, “eliminating the [NSB] members leaves it unaddressed.”

The Trump administration’s firing of the NSF board is just the latest move aimed at the agency. In the White House’s preliminary budget request for 2026, it sought to cut $4.7 billion from the NSF budget — more than half of the agency’s $9 billion budget. The administration has also rescinded thousands of already-approved NSF grants.

Concerns over the creation of a partisan science board

Roger Beachy, a professor emeritus of biology at Washington University, was one of the board members fired on Friday, though his term was set to expire shortly. He is concerned the NSB could become partisan, “[taking] … orders from the administration rather than being independent” — though he emphasizes that it’s too early to know for sure.

Beachy is worried that basic research could take a back seat to short-term goals as defined by the White House. “If we target what we know to be a focus of the administration,” he says, then fields that interest the administration, such as nuclear energy and quantum machinery, may be all that gets funded.

Astronomer and physicist Keivan Stassun, who also served on the board until Friday, shares that concern. He told NPR that the National Science Board was created to safeguard “far-reaching, long-term investments that may not pay off for a generation.”

But when those investments do pay off, he says, society is stronger. The Board’s role is to ensure such decisions are made “wisely, soberly, patriotically,” and in the national interest, he says.

California Democratic Rep. Zoe Lofgren, the ranking member on the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee, which oversees the NSF, calls the administration’s move an “attack on science.”

She points out important advances and technologies, such as the internet, CRISPR gene-editing technology and Doppler radar, where NSF funding played an important role. “At one time, [NSF] grants were merit-based,” she told NPR. “Now they appear to have more political influence in addition to a falling off just in terms of the volume.”

Texas Republican Rep. Brian Babin, who chairs the House Science Committee, said in an email to NPR: “Every President expects advisors to serve in a manner consistent with executive and legislative priorities. I look forward to seeing whom President Trump selects to fill the NSB and refocus our science agencies on their core mission: pursuing science.”

To be sure, there are some scientists who are less alarmed. Gennady Samorodnitsky, a professor of operations research and information engineering at Cornell University, has received NSF funding in the past. “It is the task of the government to figure out what’s best for society,” he says. “The money comes from the government, so ultimately [the government] makes the decisions.”

Willie May, however, is concerned about what the cuts to science funding and the chaos at the NSF says to America’s rivals abroad.

“At a moment when the United States faces intensifying global competition in science and technology — when other nations are investing aggressively in the research and the STEM workforce that will underpin innovation for the next century — we are systematically undermining the institutions and the people dedicated to keeping our country at the leading edge,” he wrote to NPR.

“That is not good for our country; it is not in the interest of American workers, American industry, or the next generation of scientists who are watching what we do at this critical time,” he says.

Donald Trump has long been synonymous with wealth, luxury, and business.

But when he started his first term as President of the United States, The New Yorker (1) reported his finances were in a “tight spot.” At the start of his second term, that they were in an even tighter one.

Joanna Sinclair

Apr 28, 2026

Advertisement

According to The New York Times (2), Trump faced mounting financial pressure ahead of his second term. Trump Tower in Lower Manhattan couldn’t cover its mortgage, his golf courses didn’t have enough players to cover operating costs and a slew of legal judgments threatened to take more of his wealth.

Six months into his second term, however, The New Yorker published an investigation showing his finances had “vastly improved” to the tune of $3.4 billion, driven in part by foreign deals and cryptocurrency ventures.

Trump’s ongoing $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS could add even more. He sued the agency in January, alleging it leaked his tax information to news outlets (3) during his first term.

Donald Trump’s wealth “is now built on monetizing the family name in new ways and, intentionally or not, the office of the presidency,” The New York Times (2) wrote.

The Trump Organization, now run by his two eldest sons, Eric and Donald Jr., has seen a boon in profits from his time in the White House. If he has success in his case against the IRS, he stands to profit even further.

Where did the $3.4 billion come from?

Although the Trump Organization has a self-imposed rule against doing business directly with foreign governments (4), it has struck eight overseas deals so far in Trump’s second term.

For example, Eric and Donald Jr. are involved in a Qatar project for a Trump-branded golf club and villa, developed in part by a government-owned company. Similar projects in Vietnam (5) and Saudi Arabia have generated tens of millions in fees for the Trump Organization and could curry favor with U.S. officials.

Five of the eight overseas deals are in the Persian Gulf. Much of the money flowing to the Trump Organization, and Trump himself, wouldn’t be possible without his presidency, The New Yorker (1) reported.

Cryptocurrency has also been a huge driver of wealth. One Trump-linked venture, World Liberty Financial, has earned at least $1.2 billion (6) since its founding in 2024.

The Associated Press reported the Trump family sold nearly 50% of this crypto business for $500 million to a UAE government-linked company run by a member of the UAE royal family just before Trump’s inauguration (7). A UAE government fund then invested $2 billion in a stablecoin issued by World Liberty through an offshore crypto exchange, Binance, generating tens of millions of dollars in interest for the Trump-backed company.

Peter Baker, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, has said the Trumps “have done more to monetize the presidency than anyone who has ever occupied the White House.”

Opinion columnist Jamelle Bouie (8) wrote that “the president and his family have leveraged his office to the tune of nearly $4 billion,” adding that Trump’s business investors include large corporations and foreign nationals seeking to get on the good side of the U.S. government.

Whether or not conflicts of interest are at play, Trump and the Trump Organization are clearly seeking significant growth in their bottom line during his time in the White House.

By

Jennifer Hansler

Updated 20 hr ago

This rendering shows a US passport with President Donald Trump’s image on the inside. US State Department

The US will soon begin issuing passports featuring an image of President Donald Trump inside, a State Department official said Tuesday.

The official said that the passport “will be the default passport out of the Washington Passport Agency when available” for those who renew their passports in person at that location.

“Online options or other locations will maintain existing passport design,” the official said.

The presence of Trump’s likeness in the US passports is the latest – and most significant – instance of his image being used for an item said to be commemorating the 250th anniversary of US independence. Unlike a commemorative coin or national park pass, a US passport is an internationally recognized form of identification that is typically valid for 10 years.

According to a mockup of the passport, Trump’s face and his signature in gold will appear on the inside cover.

“As the United States celebrates America’s 250th anniversary in July, the State Department is preparing to release a limited number of specially designed U.S. Passports to commemorate this historic occasion,” State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott said Tuesday.

“These passports will feature customized artwork and enhanced imagery while maintaining the same security features that make the U.S. Passport the most secure documents in the world,” he said.

The news was first reported by The Bulwark, and Fox News first published a mockup of the new passport.

The State Department will begin to issue the passports this summer. It is unclear how many will be issued.

According to the mockup of the passport, the back cover will show an image from “The Declaration of Independence” painting by John Trumbull.

Currently, the inside front cover of the US passports show an image of Percy Moran’s painting of Francis Scott Key the morning after the bombardment of Fort McHenry – the battle that inspired Key to write what would become the US national anthem. Lines from the anthem are also printed inside the front cover.

The Department of the Interior, which oversees national parks, announced last year it was unveiling “commemorative new designs” for park passes, one of which features Trump’s face alongside George Washington.

“It is the department’s honor to showcase the America the Beautiful pass honoring America’s 250th anniversary and the generations who have protected our lands,” Secretary Doug Burgum said in a video posted on the department’s website.

And last month, Trump’s handpicked Commission of Fine Arts voted to approve a commemorative coin for the United States’ 250th birthday featuring the president’s likeness.

Last year, Trump’s name was also affixed to both the Kennedy Center and the US Institute of Peace.

Michael Tomasky/

April 4, 2025/10:22 a.m. ET

His reading of American history is shockingly stupid, even for him.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Trump’s “Liberation Day” event in the White House’s Rose Garden on April 2

https://blink.net/iframe.html

You remember the Brady Bunch movies of the 1990s, whose ingenious conceit was that television’s archetypal late-1960s sitcom family was transported to the ’90s but still lived in their oblivious 1969 bubble of bell bottoms and groovy chicks and Davy Jones fandom? That’s how I’ve been thinking of Donald Trump this week, except that he’s living in an 1890s bubble that no one around him is willing to puncture but that everyone else in the world, probably including those now-famous penguins on that one island, knows is utterly insane.

There’s a lot to say about these tariffs and how destructive they are, and most of it has been said. My colleague Timothy Noah wrote about the stupidity of tariffs as policy and how Trump has already cost him personally thousands of dollars. But I want to focus on something different here. I want to focus on Trump’s understanding of history. It’s so shockingly dumb—yes, even for him—that it’s hard to believe that we have a president of the United States who is this ignorant.

Here’s what Trump said the other day, and he has said versions of it a number of times: “In the 1880s, they established a commission to decide what they were going to do with the vast sums of money they were collecting. We were collecting so much money so fast, we didn’t know what to do with it. Isn’t that a nice problem to have?”

OK. First of all. Nobody can tell what commission he’s talking about. President Chester Arthur empaneled a commission that recommended reducing tariffs by 20 to 25 percent, going hard against the conventional wisdom of the day. But Congress defied him, lowering tariffs by just an average of around 1.5 percent (and yes, that’s another thing—Congress is supposed to set tariffs, not the president, making this move, among other things, an impeachment-worthy “abuse of power,” a phrase invoked by The Wall Street Journal editorial board Thursday).

But more importantly, there’s this. Allow me to put this as Trump himself might on Truth Social: THE MAN IS AN IDIOT!!!

It is true that tariffs were the chief source of federal government revenue for most of the country’s history until the twentieth century. Tariffs and excise taxes, which are taxes on specific goods—gasoline, cigarettes, alcohol, certain amusement activities. And for a spell, a modest income tax, which President Lincoln imposed during the Civil War and that lasted through 1872. But broadly speaking, tariffs were the ball game.

Even so, they were always a political hot potato because there were powerful interests that supported them (steel, iron, and wool) and other powerful interests that opposed them (wheat, cotton, tobacco). Tariffs were at the center of some of the most heated debates of the nineteenth century.

But here’s the thing you need to know that the president of the United States does not: Tariffs supported most of what the federal government did in the 1800s because the federal government didn’t do much of anything. The government did about four things. It recruited and paid an army. It delivered mail. It ran some courts of law. And it collected duties and tariffs. That was about it. There was no need for much federal revenue.

Today, liberals and conservatives argue over what might constitute an optimal number for federal spending as a percentage of gross domestic product. Generally speaking, liberals want that number to be up around 25 percent, which indicates a robust welfare state. Conservatives prefer that it be down closer to 15 or so.

Here are some numbers from the St. Louis Fed, which go back to the Great Depression. During the New Deal, as Roosevelt was just constructing the first iteration of the American welfare state, federal spending as a percentage of GDP got up to around 10 percent. During World War II, when the government took over a number of industries, it shot up to around 40 percent. In the postwar era, it has indeed hovered around 20, indicating the liberal-conservative tug of war over federal spending. Interestingly, it rose a little under Ronald Reagan (military spending), and it reached its highest postwar point, 30.7 percent, under … Donald Trump, during the pandemic.

So that is where federal spending as a percentage of GDP has been for nearly a century—17 percent, 22 percent, 30 percent in a crisis. Want to take a guess as to what it was in 1900? Maybe 11 percent? Nine percent? Seven? Try 2.7 percent.

In other words—tariffs could cover the cost of what the federal government did because the federal government didn’t do anything!

Now, there will of course be those who say, “Well, good! We need to go back to that!” OK. Let’s go back to no Social Security. Let’s go back to no Medicare. Let’s go back to senior citizens having to fend for themselves and move in with their kids (if you’ve never seen Make Way for Tomorrow, please watch it this weekend). Let’s go back to no environmental regulation, no food inspection. Let’s just have no airline safety regulations. Flying would be so much more interesting that way! And finally, I say to those conservatives who think they want a 1900-style government, let’s go back to an army of 25,000 personnel.

So in sum, Trump is fantasizing about some America that no one, literally not a single American, wants to return to. Poverty was through the roof. Health care was abysmal. People had seizures from toothaches. Most people didn’t even use toilet paper yet (it wasn’t “splinter-free” until the 1930s!).

One more idiotic Trump quote, if I may: “Then in 1913, for reasons unknown to mankind, they established the income tax so that citizens, rather than foreign countries, would start paying the money necessary to run our government.”

What?! Well, here, we encounter a very interesting history that maybe 1 percent of Americans know. As I noted, Lincoln imposed an income tax, which disappeared in 1872. There was no income tax for 20 years. Then there was a big depression in 1893, and Congress imposed a tax on high-income people for two years. Then it went away again.

Come the twentieth century and the Progressive era, and the demand for the government to do things like inspect meat and enforce child labor laws, and liberals began pushing for an income tax. Conservatives, of course, were opposed.

So in 1909, progressives attached an income tax plank to—guess what? A tariff bill. Conservatives counterproposed that an income tax be the subject of a constitutional amendment, confident that they’d fixed the progressives’ wagon because there was no way three-quarters of the states would approve such jackbooted madness. Then they sat and watched slack-jawed as state after state approved it! In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment took effect.

Is it Trump’s secret plan to do away with the income tax? Actually, it’s not secret at all. He has said it many times. He’s going to raise $6 trillion from tariffs and abolish the IRS.

OK. We’ll see. Even putting aside the downsides of tariffs (most obviously, higher prices), economists see nothing close to $6 trillion in revenue.

Trump is blowing more smoke out his you-know-what than a decade of California wildfires could produce. Read this, from CBS.com: “In a recent news conference, White House staff secretary Will Sharf estimated that Mr. Trump’s 25 percent tariff on vehicles and auto parts imported into the U.S. could raise ‘roughly $100 billion in new revenue.’ At the same news conference, Mr. Trump claimed moments later ‘anywhere from $600 billion to $1 trillion will be taken in over the relatively short-term period, meaning a year from now.’”

The aide says $100 billion. Trump casually ups it to a trillion. Billion, trillion; who knows. Well, even I know: A trillion is a thousand billions. That’s like the difference between 10 and 10,000. Pretty vast, in other words. But Trump knows that nobody really thinks about the difference between a billion and a trillion, so just say a trillion.

Finally, before I let you go: How much do tariffs bring in now? Around $80 billion. Sounds like a lot, and it is. But take a guess as to how much total revenue the federal government takes in, from (1) income taxes, which is half of all revenue, (2) payroll taxes, (3) excise taxes, and (4) corporate taxes.

It’s around $4.7 trillion. Know what percentage of $4.7 trillion $80 billion is? About 1.7 percent. That’s how much of our current federal revenue comes from tariffs.

Going from 1.7 percent to 100 percent sounds, um, like something that will cause vast, unknowable dislocations; and more to the point, like the fantasy of a stupid man who’s never read a book and has no effing idea what he’s talking about.

Or as Gary Cole’s Mike Brady might have put it: “Donald, when you’re trying to fool other people, you’re really only fooling yourself, and who’s the real fool then?”

This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. Sign up here.
Share This Story

Editor’s Picks

U.S. Treasury yields are climbing sharply as geopolitical tensions, a $1.9 trillion deficit, and waning foreign demand undermine their safe-haven status. China is selling Treasurys at rates unseen since 2008, while Japan’s yields hit multi-decade highs, signaling a structural shift in global capital flows. The resulting pressure threatens the dollar’s purchasing power, fuels inflation risks, and may force the Federal Reserve into controversial debt monetization.

Geopolitical shocks trigger bond market turmoil

The Iran conflict, which closed the Strait of Hormuz and ended the Carter Doctrine era, has disrupted oil supplies and driven inflation higher before U.S. consumers regained pre-pandemic purchasing power. This crisis coincides with the Treasury’s struggle to finance a $1.9 trillion deficit without its usual base of foreign buyers. The result is a surge in yields as investors sell off Treasurys, reversing decades of safe-haven behavior during global crises. The New Republic + 1

Foreign retreat marks structural shift

China is dumping U.S. Treasurys at a pace not seen since the 2008 financial crisis, while Japan’s yields have reached a 27-year high, reducing their appetite for U.S. debt. The erosion of the petrodollar paradigm and the weaponization of the SWIFT system have further alienated once-captive buyers. This shift suggests a longer-term weakening of the dollar’s role in global finance, with implications for U.S. borrowing costs and fiscal stability. The New Republic

Global inflation cycle compounds pressure

Rising yields in Japanese and German bonds, hitting multi-decade highs, reflect a broader global inflation cycle that predates the Iran war. Economist Lakshman Achuthan warns that this upturn is driven by structural forces like commodity price increases from industrial growth, not just oil shocks. Such persistent inflation pressures could limit central banks’ ability to ease monetary policy, further straining bond markets worldwide. Seeking Alpha + 1

Country	Bond Type	Recent High / Years Since Last Peak
Japan	Government Bonds	29-year high
Germany	Bunds	15-year high
China	Future Inflation Gauges	Turning up after deflation fears

Potential Fed responses carry high stakes

If private credit markets fracture, the Federal Reserve may become the buyer of last resort, creating money to purchase Treasurys and enable bank bailouts. While this would stabilize finance capital, it would erode wages, savings, and the dollar’s credibility, risking domestic austerity and international debt crises. The Fed’s current wait-and-see stance reflects uncertainty over whether inflation spikes are temporary or entrenched. Investopedia + 1

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/14/politics/trump-iran-hungary-orban-analysis

A Times examination reveals thousands of threats against state judges, in addition to assaults and fatal attacks. Judges say local law enforcement agencies often can’t offer adequate protection.

CreditCredit…Bethlehem Feleke, Josh Hansbrough and Caroline Kim

By Katie J.M. Baker

The reporter interviewed judges and law enforcement officials and requested data from all 50 states, analyzing court, police and legislative records to document rising threats.

In an animated video, a man in an American-flag-print face mask who called himself “the Patriot” tracked his target, Judge Jennifer Johnson, with a hatchet in his hand.

The man followed a cartoon version of the judge, who sits on a county court in rural Florida, down a sidewalk as he muttered insults about her appearance and shared personal details about her marriage and children. Then he announced that it was “takedown time.”

“Judge Johnson, let’s bury the hatchet,” the man said, striking his virtual target in the back until she fell to the ground. Then he swapped the hatchet for a gun and shot her in the head. As blood pooled around her corpse, the man celebrated her “execution.”

Judge Johnson knew exactly who had made the video, which was uploaded to YouTube and TikTok in September 2023. The man had been threatening her since soon after she heard his child dependency case in 2016, at one point calling her “target number one.” But local authorities had told her that his incessant social media posts and phone calls were too legally “gray” to act on, she said.

So she bought a gun, as the sheriff had already advised her to do, and enrolled in courses to learn how to shoot it. When the video was posted, she installed a home security system, altered her daily travel routes and stopped sitting with her back to the door in restaurants or in the same pew at church.

“I was treated like threats were part of the job,” Judge Johnson said. “But it should not be a part of the job description to deal with threats of violence against your person. I didn’t sign up for that.”

For judges across the country, threats and harassment have become an inescapable occupational hazard. The Department of Homeland Security issued a nationwide alert late last year to law enforcement agencies: Harassment of judges has surged, and the trend is likely to continue.

The New York Times has identified thousands of threats targeting state judges in the past three years alone, among more than 14,000 broader security incidents involving state courts and their employees across the country. These figures offer a look at a problem that has historically gone uncounted because of a lack of record-keeping; they almost certainly understate the true scale, given that many states fail to formally track the issue.

Some of the violence is high-profile: In January, Judge Steven Meyer and his wife survived a shooting at their home in Lafayette, Ind., an attack that the police said was orchestrated by a defendant in an upcoming domestic battery case. In 2023, a Maryland state judge was shot and killed in his driveway, and in 2022, a retired Wisconsin state judge was killed in another targeted home attack.

Editors’ Picks

The Five Weeknight Dishes in My Current RotationThe Click That Cost $11,000 and Other Travel PitfallsYou, Too, Can Walk Like a Model

But many more incidents never reach the public. Records show that state judges have been subjected to stalking, death threats, physical assaults and assassination plots. They have reported being struck in the head, shot and pelted with feces.

Threats are also on the rise against federal judges, of which there are around 2,700. Such threats have more than doubled in four years, from 224 cases in 2021 to 564 in 2025, according to the U.S. Marshals Service.

But there is no centralized security force that tracks threats against the estimated 30,000 state judges who are on the front lines of some of the most contentious cases in the country. Nor is there the same mandate to protect them.

Federal judges benefit from high-level threat monitoring and subsidized professional home security systems. But state judges typically rely on local law enforcement agencies for help and pay out of their own pockets for those services.

In interviews, some state judges said they had spent thousands of dollars to protect their homes after receiving death threats. Many said they felt that local authorities were not equipped to properly investigate such threats, and that they themselves were not given enough security training. Several state judges said that local authorities had admitted to not having the resources to protect them at all times and advised them to arm themselves. A 2024 judicial survey of hundreds of state judges found that nearly a third of respondents reported carrying a gun for protection since taking the bench.

Ever since she took the bench as a lower-court judge in 1998, Chief Justice Loretta Rush of the Indiana Supreme Court has been the subject of harassment, including threats of vehicle sabotage, a bomb scare and graphic threats to burn her alive.

Justice Rush said that judges had always been targeted but that she had never seen a climate like the present. The danger isn’t just personal, she said, but a structural threat to the American legal system.

“The idea of shooting a judge because of the role they have fundamentally affects what it means to live in a free society,” Justice Rush said.

Judicial Independence at Risk

There is no conclusive research on why threats against judges are on the rise, although they are part of a larger national trend of rising political violence. Some federal judges have pointed to President Trump’s rhetoric — he has slammed judges as “disloyal” and recently called on lawmakers to pass a crime bill that “cracks down on rogue judges.” But other judges said they did not blame Mr. Trump and instead pointed to a broader, corrosive distrust of public institutions and increased partisan tribalism. Judges in rural areas where everyone knows everyone say they feel particularly vulnerable.

Even when harassment does not escalate to physical harm, the psychological toll can be profound. It may be difficult for judges to be impartial if their decision-making is clouded by concern for their or their family’s safety.

“These threats affect the independence of our judiciary and people’s willingness to serve,” said Julie Kocurek, a state court judge in Texas. In 2015, she survived an assassination attempt in her own driveway by a man who had a case pending in her court. Local authorities had been made aware of a death threat the man had made shortly before, but dismissed it as “not credible,” a police officer later testified at trial. The shooting resulted in extensive wounds to her face and body and the loss of a finger.

The Times requested data on threats directed at judges from all 50 states from 2020 to 2025. Many do not track that information systematically. However, an analysis of 15 states that provided specific data on judicial threats revealed a surge, with threats climbing in all but two of them.

In Texas, general court-security-related incidents, which include seized weapons, disorderly conduct and physical assaults, jumped from 447 in 2023 to 2,129 in 2025. In New York, judicial security investigations more than doubled from 204 cases in 2020 to a peak of 514 in 2024, and remained at high levels with 487 new cases opened in 2025. In New Jersey, threats against judges have climbed from 444 in 2023 to 550 in 2025. In Pennsylvania, threats against judicial officials have grown from 104 in 2022 to more than 200 annually ever since.

And even before the shooting in Indiana, a 2023 court survey of 214 judges in that state found that 159 had been the subject of threats, with jurists reporting litigants who brandished firearms during remote proceedings or vowed to set them on fire.

Ron Zayas, the chief executive of Ironwall, a company that contracts with courts to provide data protection and security services, said the number of what he considered credible threats of violence against the state judges his company supports rose by more than 40 percent in recent years. Death threats among them have increased by 65 percent since 2024, with women and judges of color bearing a disproportionate burden.

In interviews, surveys and legislative testimony, judges recounted confrontations at churches, election sites and hair salons. Despite some legislative efforts to shield judges’ privacy, in many states their homes remain vulnerable targets. Incident reports from just the last six months in New Mexico, for example, revealed a plot to assassinate a jurist at his home, coordinated over jail phones, and a separate case in which a woman tracked down a judge’s personal address to confront her over a custody issue.

Judges consistently report feeling inadequately protected. In a 2024 randomized national survey published in Court Review, the quarterly journal of the American Judges Association, more than half of 398 state judges who responded reported receiving threats of harm. One judge reported receiving a letter threatening the rape and murder of her family, but said the police didn’t follow up on it; another reported sleeping with a shotgun for about two weeks before authorities arrested a neighbor who had threatened to infiltrate his home.

Half of the judges surveyed reported receiving less than a day of official security training, far less than what the U.S. Marshals offer federal judges.

In 2024, after the murder of a retired judge by a former defendant, Wisconsin jurists testified in support of a package of security bills. The Wisconsin court system documented 232 threats against judges in the year preceding the hearing, 114 of which were direct threats of physical harm or death.

One judge described an attempt by a divorce litigant to hire a hit man from jail, while another recounted how litigants had photographed her home and scared her children. Another judge testified that a man who had also tracked down her home address online entered the courthouse and left her a pound of leaking raw meat accompanied by a note: “Here is some burger to fry and burn like you burned me.”

In interviews, judges across the country described having to take measures to protect themselves because local law enforcement agencies did not have sufficient resources.

Vivian Medinilla, who recently retired as a state judge in Delaware, said she and her staff began receiving telephone calls with death threats against her and her children in 2021, but state court security would not act on them, telling her that they did not rise to the level of a crime. After she thought she heard someone in the back of her home, she purchased and installed her own home security system. She said she wished the authorities had conducted even a cursory investigation.

“Follow up and come back and tell me that you at least looked into it,” she said. The state agency that oversees Delaware court security declined to comment on her account.

Judge Carroll Kelly, who presides over domestic violence cases in Miami, received threats from an Army veteran last year after she issued a risk protection order that temporarily took away his firearms.

County law enforcement officials posted a patrol car outside her house after she learned of the threat. The next morning, they notified her that they believed the man had driven past her house in the middle of the night. A multiagency team gave her a blunt assessment: “If he wants to get you, he is so highly trained, he’s going to get you,” she recalled.

Terrified, Judge Kelly packed a bag and decamped to a hotel for five days. Soon law enforcement officials delivered more bad news: They were sorry they couldn’t guard her home indefinitely and said she should think about getting a gun. She ultimately paid out of pocket to install an expensive home security system.

“We have no resources for judges when this happens,” she said. “We’re really out there alone.”

A Terrifying Video

When Judge Johnson joined the Dixie County court in Florida in 2015, the small-town dynamics there made her a direct target for those unhappy with her decisions.

Family law is the most dangerous judicial assignment, experts say, because the intimate nature of domestic disputes can pose a greater risk of targeted violence, especially when adjudicated in small-town courthouses without tight security. Judge Johnson said she had received other threats, but Christopher Cambron, the man who would later call himself “the Patriot,” stood out from the rest.

Mr. Cambron had started threatening her after she heard his 2016 child dependency case, a civil court proceeding that determines whether a child requires the protection of the state. She had issued a security order against him after he threatened state child protection team workers, inspiring his fury. The harassment persisted for years.

He called Judge Johnson’s office and left rambling, vitriolic messages about her appearance and her divorce, she said. She became even more alarmed, she said, when he attacked her on social media, called her an “inbred pig” and said judges like her needed to die. None of his threats were specific enough to warrant a law enforcement response, Judge Johnson said the sheriff’s office told her.

But in the September 2023 video, Mr. Cambron declared that the time to execute Judge Johnson was “today.” He somehow knew how Judge Johnson wore her hair when she wasn’t in court — up in a ponytail, instead of down and blow-dried.

Still, the authorities did not take action. Because Mr. Cambron had moved to Louisiana by then, local authorities told her they didn’t have jurisdiction, so Judge Johnson spent months pressuring a state-level law enforcement agency to help. Judge Johnson said she pleaded with them to conduct a simple “knock and talk” check at his home to assess how serious a threat he posed.

The Dixie County Sheriff’s Office and the Florida Department of Law Enforcement did not respond to requests for comment.

There is a high bar for what constitutes a true threat under the First Amendment. But the police don’t always have the staff, resources and training to fully determine whether a threat is credible. Even the most well-meaning local police departments are organized around making arrests after a crime occurs instead of intervening earlier to neutralize threats beforehand, said John Muffler, a retired U.S. Marshal who is now a private security consultant.

“I hate to say it, because I respect the law tremendously, but I don’t think that they took it seriously,” Judge Johnson said.

But Judge Johnson continued to push. In February 2024, five months after the video was posted, a Louisiana police officer knocked on Mr. Cambron’s door.

He readily admitted to the officer that he had created the video, according to police records of his interview. His goal, he said, was to inspire “fear.”

But the police officer’s visit changed the investigation’s momentum. “He came back and was like, ‘No, no, this is legitimate,’” Judge Johnson recalled. “And the fire got lit.”

Mr. Cambron was arrested and extradited back to Florida, where he was charged with “written or electronic threat to kill.” A jury convicted him and he was sentenced to 15 years in state prison.

During the trial, the defense argued that Mr. Cambron was “trying to redress his grievances” through the video, as was his constitutional right.

“The First Amendment is very valuable, and most of all for people saying unpopular things, especially things that criticize people in power,” said his lawyer, Yancey Burnett, in a recent interview. “And if we can’t do that, then the First Amendment doesn’t mean that much.”

In court, the prosecution countered that the Constitution did not give people the right to terrorize others. “You do not have the freedom to claim that you’re going to execute someone,” the prosecutor told the jury.

A Push for New Laws

Some states find the political will to enact tougher judicial security measures only after a tragedy occurs.

Following the murders of judges in both states, Maryland and Wisconsin enacted laws in 2024 to, in part, scrub jurists’ home addresses from the internet and establish more centralized systems to track threats before they turn deadly. Texas offers some of the country’s strongest protections for state judges because of the near-fatal failure in Judge Kocurek’s case.

The 2020 murder of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, by a gunman at their home in New Jersey became the catalyst for a namesake federal law that helps judges remove their personal data from the internet. But there is still no comprehensive national legislation. This year, a bipartisan group of lawmakers hopes to pass a bill that would establish a national resource center providing state courts with more technical assistance and threat-tracking infrastructure.

But the most difficult shift, judges said, may be cultural: moving away from the idea that threats are a standard occupational hazard.

After Mr. Cambron’s conviction, Judge Johnson began speaking out for the first time, sharing her story at judicial conferences. She said she was stunned by the flood of colleagues who came forward with their own accounts.

“I’m not going to tell you where that line is between viable threat and First Amendment, because judges fight for the First Amendment and the Constitution,” said Judge Johnson. “But I wish the public understood that these aren’t just threats to judges. They are threats to authority, democracy and our nation.”

Georgia Gee contributed research. Steven Rich contributed data reporting. Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs contributed reporting.

Katie J.M. Baker is a national investigative correspondent for The Times.Read 40 comments

---

Across the U.S. With The Times

Our reporters are exploring how America defines itself.

---

• $400 Bibles: The growing interest in premium Bibles includes a wide array of translations assembled with high-quality materials, like genuine leather covers, and in many cases extras like elaborate color illustrations.
• Siblings Raising Children: When undocumented parents are detained by ICE agents, children who are American citizens are often left to raise each other.
• Women’s Right to Vote: Adherents to biblical patriarchy support one vote per household: the husband’s. They say the idea is catching on.
• A Disaffected Farmer: For 20 years, Tim O’Harrow has asked lawmakers, mostly Republicans, to acknowledge that America’s food supply depends on immigrants. Politics went in the other direction.

Related Content

More in U.S.

By Jia Lynn Yang

April 10, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.Add The New York Times on Google 

At his Senate confirmation hearing in March to become the next secretary of homeland security, Markwayne Mullin explained how his tenure would be different from that of his attention-seeking predecessor, Kristi Noem. “My goal in six months is that we’re not in the lead story every single day,” Mullin said.

Gone for now are the concentrated surges into American cities leading to dramatic — and sometimes deadly — clashes between immigration agents and protesters. Mass raids of Home Depot parking lots in search of undocumented day laborers are no longer routine. Immigration enforcement officials continue to deport nearly 1,000 people a day, many of them with no criminal record. But the Trump administration is also ramping up another strategy: to take apart immigrants’ lives, piece by piece, until they decide to leave the country altogether.

In February, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a new federal rule blocking “mixed status” families from living in publicly subsidized housing, which could cause an estimated 80,000 people to lose their homes, including about 37,000 children, nearly all of them U.S. citizens. Starting in March, roughly 200,000 immigrants began losing their commercial driver’s licenses, under a new ban on truckers who are asylum seekers, refugees or undocumented immigrants who arrived as children. The Trump administration has reportedly weighed an order that would require banks to verify their customers’ citizenship status. Access to capital has already been curtailed. Starting last month, noncitizens can no longer obtain small business loans through the federal government, even if they are here legally.

Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s anti-immigration agenda, is lobbying Republican-led states to cut off services. In a meeting last month in Washington, he asked Texas lawmakers why they had not already passed a bill ending public education funding for undocumented children.

In this, the administration is learning a lesson familiar to past presidents of both parties: Millions of people without the right papers are deeply embedded in American society. Even with the world’s most expansive — and expanding — deportation apparatus, the United States does not have remotely enough bureaucratic bandwidth to remove immigrants en masse. And as the public turns against the administration’s most visible, aggressive methods, it’s no surprise it is resorting to another strategy.

Self-deportation is an idea with deep roots. Well before the United States established its first immigration court, the government systematically pressured people to leave by making their lives intolerable. But perhaps no president has made self-deportation such an explicit policy, or taken it to such extreme lengths, as Trump. The Department of Homeland Security regularly trumpets a standing offer to pay $2,600 to any immigrant who exits the country, more than double the sum being offered a year ago. “Home is just a few clicks away!” the department posted on X last month, while also offering a free flight to a home country.

As the Trump administration shifts its strategy away from audacious, citywide raids, it seeks to apply pressure at every point of contact between immigrants and the government, using the country’s vast bureaucracy. But the most important tool for encouraging self-deportation today is the same as it was more than a century ago: fear.

Editors’ Picks

The Click That Cost $11,000 and Other Travel PitfallsAll Aboard a Nostalgia Cruise, With a Blast From the Boy Band PastWhy Manatees Need Humans to Slow Down and Pay Attention

A History of Fear

Immigrants decide to leave this country all the time. They might have always had temporary designs on the United States, a place to simply earn a degree or save some money. A 2010 study found that about one-third of immigrants eventually return to their home country.

Others make the decision less freely. Many unauthorized immigrants, when confronted by a government agent, are pressured to leave rather than fight an official deportation order and risk detention. Adam Goodman, author of “The Deportation Machine: America’s Long History of Expelling Immigrants” and a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, estimates that about 85 percent of all deportations in U.S. history fall into this category.

Self-deportations are a hazier, unofficial category. The immigrants who self-deport may never cross paths with an agent of the government, making them nearly impossible to count. They may even be in the country legally. And while historians have documented that some leave because their neighbors made their daily lives miserable, many are undeterred.

Going back to the colonial era, there have been efforts to pressure people into self-deporting. In the late 19th century, state and local officials on the West Coast passed laws designed to make Chinese immigrants leave: denying them admission to hospitals and public schools, banning their firecrackers and ceremonial gongs. When these measures didn’t substantially reduce the Chinese population, or temper the anger of white residents, Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which restricted Chinese immigration and expanded the government’s power to deport.

Citizens still turned to racial terror: They set fire to Chinese businesses and homes, erected gallows, hung effigies and even murdered Chinese residents. In 1885 and 1886, at least 168 communities drove out their Chinese residents with mob violence, the historian Beth Lew-Williams writes in her book “The Chinese Must Go.” Yet all these threats ultimately yielded only partial results. Many Chinese decided to stay in the country. And despite the ban, unauthorized immigrants continued to arrive.

At the turn of the 20th century, amid a nationwide anti-immigrant panic, the federal government passed laws to restrict immigration and deport more people. In 1924, Congress established the Border Patrol. But self-deportation endured; it was too convenient a method when the number of unwanted people outstripped the government’s resources. It also became intertwined with the formal deportation system: Officials learned that the more terrifying they made the prospect of deportation, the fewer people they would have to remove.

During the Great Depression, local officials across the country blamed Mexican Americans for the sudden lack of jobs. State and federal agents worked together to conduct surprise sweeps designed to terrify people into leaving. One local director of immigration in Los Angeles explained that while “the machinery set up for deportation would be entirely inadequate on a large scale,” he believed that “with a little deportation publicity, a large number of these aliens, actuated by guilty self-consciousness, would move south and over the line on their own accord particularly if stimulated by a few arrests.” Between 1929 and 1939, at least half a million people left the country, according to Goodman.

Half a century later, the West Coast again played host to the old idea. Anti-immigrant feeling swelled in California as the state faced an economic downturn and rising unauthorized Mexican migration. In 1994, California passed Proposition 187, which barred hospitals and schools from serving undocumented immigrants. Federal courts would eventually strike down the law, but many states followed suit. At the time, the national effort was pushed by Kris Kobach, a conservative law professor who later became Kansas’ secretary of state, who argued that with a full-blown self-deportation policy, the country could halve its undocumented population. And the government would not need to remove anyone “at gunpoint,” as Kobach explained in an interview, calling his self-deportation plan “a more humane way.”

In 2010, Arizona passed a landmark anti-immigration bill that was unmistakably designed with self-deportation in mind. Lawmakers declared in the text of the bill that “the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement,” borrowing from the title of a 2008 paper by Kobach on self-deportation. The law allowed the police to demand “papers” if they suspected a person was undocumented. The police could also arrest a person without a warrant if they suspected the person should be deported. Elements of this law, too, would be struck down by courts, but not before it had its intended effect. An estimated 100,000 Hispanic residents left Arizona the year the law was passed, though some might have left because the state was in the middle of a recession.

Under the second Trump administration, the federal government is making national policy from the ideas that drove the California and Arizona laws. Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, passed last summer, cut health care benefits for immigrants, including many who are here legally. It also imposed a 1 percent tax on remittances and significantly raised fees for immigrants seeking humanitarian protection through due process.

But the most powerful incentive for self-deportation, in the past and today, is the legal deportation process itself. In expanding the number of immigration agents and warehouses, Trump’s bill fortified a national architecture of fear, one that is reinforced daily by the reports — in the news media and by word of mouth — of inedible food, inadequate medical care and the denial of religious rituals in detention centers.

Reshaping the Country

But does terrifying people into leaving the country work? Only partly, and it’s difficult to measure. Those who go of their own accord tend to leave no paper trail. A CNN report last month found that only 72,000 had taken the Trump administration’s much-advertised financial incentives to self-deport — nowhere near the promised 2.2 million.

Most people cling to their lives in the United States — however difficult they become — because they can no longer imagine being anywhere else. Nearly half of the country’s undocumented immigrants have lived here for two decades or more. More than 30 percent are homeowners. And the more difficult it becomes to traverse the border, the less likely some people are to leave, for fear that they won’t be able to return.

“Some people more risk-averse will leave, and the ones who stay will be terrified,” says K-Sue Park, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who argues that the threat of deportation is a way to keep certain people, especially low-paid workers, in check. “They won’t be able to do anything. They won’t even attempt to exercise any of the rights they might exercise.”

A self-deportation campaign of fear can still reshape the country, though. What such policies succeed most in doing is driving undocumented people further underground. They vanish from schools and churches, retreating to an ever smaller circle of daily life. They avoid seeking basic medical care, including vaccinations that are important for protecting the health of the broader public. They are more likely to drive without insurance or a license, making roads less safe for everyone.

And the terror spreads well beyond those who are ostensibly being targeted. By definition, the net is broad, catching far more people than the number who can be deported. The threat of profiling based on race and ethnicity — now permitted by the Supreme Court — has led some citizens to carry their passports with them. Green card holders, once close legal kin to citizens, are being advised by their lawyers to take extra precautions when they leave the country and return. A decades-old misdemeanor charge, however minor, can now lead to detention. As the country has seen, people with green cards, student visas and temporary protected status — legitimate under one president, then void under another — have discovered the fragility of their status.

With Trump retreating for now from showy street-level crackdown, self-deportation is the growing shadow zone of our immigration system, in which threats and intimidation operate where the law will not or cannot go. It is less visible by design. But whether or not people decide to leave this country, the fear that has been let loose is here to stay.

Jia Lynn Yang is a senior Times writer.

See more on: U.S. Politics, Homeland Security Department, Kris W Kobach, Stephen Miller, Kristi NoemRead 59 comments

• Share full article
• 59

https://www.cnn.com/2026/04/09/us/video/iowa-farmers-zeleny-vrtc-digvid