Originally published March 27, 2026 for our weekly Issue of Mindful Intelligence Advisor. Subscribe to get weekly issues.
By STAFF
“When we removed our country’s corrupt judges, we faced a strong backlash from the so-called ‘international community,’ including the Biden administration. We did it anyway, because it was the only way to save our country.” – El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele
INTRODUCTION
ED. NOTE: We want to offer this caveat; Not ALL rulings against Trump are unjust progressive rulings, even from progressive judges. President Trump himself is a precedent breaker and sometimes he breaks Americanist standards himself. He also has a bad track record picking competent prosecuting attorneys, which has also empowered progressive judges to easily halt prosecutions of progressives.
GET THE LATEST ON JUDGEFARE HERE
This month’s bellwether could have been Iran because it is certainly the biggest story of the month. We recently did a report on Iran in our March 13, 2026, issue of MIA. While plenty has happened since then, the fundamental state of the war hasn’t. You can read an analysis of the current state of the war in our Situation Report for this month on page xx.
The Iran War remains THE bellwether story for global geopolitics, but at home, the emerging bellwether story is about the growing divisions between the progressive judiciary and the conservative executive. Acts by the progressive judiciary appear to be attempts to expand their powers until they become the de facto policy makers of the executive branch.
They might do this through direct orders or through selective ethics violations charges of those who dissent from the progressive program.
Recent rulings by what we would classify as progressive activist judges have only widened the divide between the conservative executive and the progressive judiciary.
We believe the judiciary is mostly controlled by progressives, directly through progressive activist judges and indirectly through bar associations, law schools, and other judicial enforcement institutions. This control is not absolute, nor are the progressive activist judges always in agreement with one another.
Their values, as a whole, are unique to their people, and alien to Americans, for they rest on the assumption that the social usurps the individual and social status usurps American rule of law. When it comes to “rights,” they tend to favor the weak individual over the social strong, but the social weak to the individual strong (at least their perceptions of the people who fit those categories).
A white middle-class American will be assumed to have less rights expectations than a non-white middle-class American because of the status of the group they belong to, the white middle class.
Equality will matter when it comes to limiting the rights of the strong against the weak, while individual liberty will matter when it comes to limiting the power of the strong and protecting the rights of the weak.
Remember, “the strong” is assessed according to the progressive hierarchy, not an Americanist one. A poor white orphan is in “the strong” category while a black middle class college student with loving parents is in the “weak” or “protected” category.
These are the values that drive these judges, and this is what makes them a consensual participant in what we see as a deliberate act to replace Americanist values in our courts with Progressive values, not through amendment changes properly ratified, but through sophistry executed by progressive judges.
We call this part of the progressive revolutionary war machine, Judgefare, the use of judges and the judiciary to stifle dissent and complete the transition from “Progmerica” to the Progressive U.S., now free to openly practice progressive values and bury Americanist values once and for all.
They will no longer be required to use American terms. They will no longer be required to act with restraint until they have more power. They will be free to be what they’ve always been, anti-American, Progressive.
In this report, we’ll highlight the recent rulings that triggered this analysis, we’ll spell out the Judgefare plan, the use of bar associations in this war against the republic, the SCOTUS defense of Judgefare, how the pushback has begun, and finally what might come next in the war between the progressive judiciary and the conservative executive.
A. RECENT RULINGS
A recent slate of decisions has come down from the courts that overwhelmingly rules against President Trump’s actions. While the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has delivered a victory to President Trump, allowing the deportation of illegals to third countries to continue, and the 8th Circuit has now allowed illegal alien detention without bond, they would be the only favorable ruling from the progressive-dominated judiciary.
Mostly Biden-appointed Judges have shut down numerous major Trump policies, including freezing federal funding, shutting down Voice of America, halting DEI investigations of progressive schools, stopping ICE detention facilities from opening, and even more.
Here are details of three examples from this month alone:
- PROTECTING “WOKE” ANTHROPIC – U.S. District Judge Rita Lin has issued a ruling that prevents President Trump from ordering the Pentagon to sever ties with the AI company, Anthropic. The Trump administration has determined Anthropic’s governance standards are not aligned with America’s standards.
The Federal judge has essentially ruled she knows better than Trump if Anthropic is aligned or not aligned with American standards. She said in her ruling, “Defendants’ designation of Anthropic as a ‘supply chain risk’ is likely both contrary to law and arbitrary and capricious.”
- DEI PROTECTION – U.S. District Judge F. Dennis Saylor has ruled the Department of Education cannot receive student admission data from colleges and universities. The Department was seeking information on race, gender, standardized test scores, and GPAs of applicants. The data would be collected and reviewed in a way that does not expose student IDs.
The data is needed to determine whether colleges and universities are complying with a SCOTUS order ending affirmative action in college admissions. The ruling will be appealed. The lawsuit was initiated by 17 Progressive states. We believe they are seeking to protect their Progressive institutions from an American plumb line.
- ICE STAND DOWN – A progressive activist judge has made another questionable ruling that seems as if it is intended to prevent ICE officers from effectively protecting their facilities from “protesters.”
Progressive judge Michael Simon has ruled that officers cannot use non-lethal means of crowd dispersal or control unless the crowd poses an “imminent threat of physical harm.” Non-lethal crowd control is a means of preventing protests from becoming riots.
This ruling effectively assures violence will happen at ICE facilities as ICE officers will only be able to respond AFTER the escalation has gotten out of control, meaning lethal force will be required.
This is exactly what they want, ICE officers killing protesters, who will all be portrayed by the progressive media as choir boys and girls that didn’t do no harm…all with children and mothers and fathers…
Judge Simon is married to a militant anti-ICE Progressive, Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici. That fact was not enough to warrant his removal from this case, because the decision makers are all Progressives themselves, so no action was taken against what seems to be a clear violation of constitutional standards.
Fortunately, a recent 9th circuit ruling has reversed this decision.
B. THE PLAN
- THE CONFERENCE – In July 2025, we covered a Judicial conference in Washington, D.C. that, in part, telegraphed the plan by the judiciary to assure its power was not usurped by an aggressive executive.
We reported at the time: In another blow to the perception of Rule of Law, The Federalist has discovered a memo that reveals a D.C. Judicial Conference in March turned into a cabal to undermine President Trump. The conference introduced inherent biases into their judgements before a case ever came before them.
At the center of the cabal is Chief Justice John Roberts and Judicial Supremacist D.C. Circuit Judge James Boesberg. The latter, Boesberg, would be the one who said the quiet parts out loud.
From the memorandum obtained by The Federalist, “… District of Columbia Chief Judge James Boasberg next raised his colleagues’ concerns that the Administration would disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis.”
- THE JUSTIFICATION – Progressives fundamentally believe conventional Americanist views, like being against abortion, or viewing homosexuality as a sin, or not believing in government welfare program efficacy, or being in favor of gun possession, are dog whistles of white supremacism. This is a view we believe is either shared or accepted by progressive activist judges.
ED. NOTE: It is not anti-American to believe in abortion, celebrate homosexuality, or believe in government welfare programs. It IS anti-American to be against your neighbor’s right to basic self-defense, which MUST include the right to bear arms. It is also anti-American to try to create a corporate-state governance standard that unpersons people with these anti-progressive views.
Through this ideology, progressive activist judges can view their trampling of the constitution as a better outcome than empowering evil to take over the land.
Nothing signals this better than a recent editorial in a progressive information war machine, The Nation. The title says it all, “Why Does the Supreme Court Treat Trump Like a ‘Regular’ President?”
The writer, Ellie Mystal, captures the depth of the delusion of the progressive and the nature of the war they think they are fighting. That war is a winner-take-all war, and the enemy, anyone not progressive, is literally the devil who, if he wins, WILL KILL US ALL.
She claims, “The Donald Trump who exists in the real world—the racist, fascist sexual predator who happily tweets out the illegal and unconstitutional motivations for his policies—does not exist according to the Supreme Court. Instead, the court has invented a different Trump, one who does not speak, does not lie, and adheres to the well-established norms regarding the use of executive power. It has dreamed up a normal US president, grafted this creation onto Trump’s legal filings, and then ruled as if this fiction were reality.”
- THE EXPANSION – Not only do progressive have progressive activist judges willing to subvert Americanist standards using sophistry as their dissecting tool, but they are also working to train progressive activist jurists to further subvert Americanist standards and undermine the republic by destabilizing its judiciary.
A left-wing activist network is training liberals how to slip onto juries in federal cases and then vote “not guilty” to derail prosecutions brought by the Trump Justice Department.
Recordings and training materials tied to the group Freedom Trainers show activists being coached on how to conceal their left-wing views during jury selection and then use jury nullification once they are seated on a jury. The webinars, slide decks, and pamphlets behind the effort all push the same approach: Blend in during selection, say the right things to get seated, and use the jury room to block convictions.
The premise is straightforward. Look like any other potential juror, avoid signaling their radical political agenda, and make it through voir dire, the jury selection process, without raising suspicion. Once deliberations begin, however, the guidance shifts sharply.
The method of moving into an Americanist institution and corrupting it from within is perfectly encapsulated in this jury nullification technique. Jury nullification in and of itself is a fine American tradition when it is used to challenge unconstitutional laws, but it is deliberate insurrection when done to fundamentally derail the whole American judiciary altogether.
It is only fitting that the Progressives would use a tool created to serve Americans and turn it into a bludgeon against the host nation they fed off until the time was right to assert their own nationhood, freed from Americanist trappings. This is exactly what the progressive “jurist” does once we let them inside the jury room, inside our American institutions.
C. THE BELLWETHER BOASBERG
James Emanuel “Jeb” Boasberg is the current Chief Judge of the United States District of Columbia. He was appointed to this position by former President Barack Obama in 2011. In 2014, Boesberg became a presiding judge in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). On January 1, 2020, he became the presiding Judge of the court. He served on the FISC court in 2021 and still has some involvement with the court.
He represents the quintessential Judgefare Judge, the judge who assumes the most judicial authority he possibly can. He could be viewed as the Charles II of the Judiciary. Charles II wanted the English crown to follow the French model, the model of absolute power for Kings.
Boasberg’s judicial history is FILLED with unprecedented claims of judicial authority, the very authority the progressives needed to consolidate power when Trump was out of office and prevent a long-term loss of power while Trump is in office.
Boasberg may yet warrant a full report on his own in the future, should events warrant it (and that looks increasingly more likely, but not inevitable).
Here are a few of his most impactful cases to illustrate what we mean when we claim Boesberg is a judicial absolutist. Let the reader decide for themselves if these actions match that assertion.
- THE “DUTY OF CANDOR” – 2019 – When Boasberg determined the FBI had “breached its duty of candor” in the Crossfire Hurricane investigation, he ordered the FBI to provide for the court a detailed explanation of how the FBI would assure there would be no more errors in their investigative reports.
The ruling was called “unprecedented.” It was an assertion of judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before.
- BANNING AGENTS FROM FISC COURT – 2020 – Boasberg issued a strict conduct order that banned the FBI agents who handled the Carter Page applications in the Crossfire Hurricane Report from ever participating in the FISC court again. Once again, the ruling was called “unprecedented.” It was an assertion of judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before.
- THE VENEZUELA RULINGS – These rulings could merit their own lengthy analysis as they serve as a Bellwether for judicial absolutist sophistry that will help Americans understand the nature of the opposition to their republic (and Boesberg most assuredly is no friend of Americanist standards).
The most startling ruling was Boasberg’s order to turn a plane around that was already on its way to deport Venezuelans. From this, Boasberg has sought to charge Trump officials with contempt of court. SCOTUS chose to somewhat hem him in, but not entirely, and the constitutionality of Boesberg’s actions remains unsettled.
These rulings were “unprecedented,” and they asserted judicial authority that hadn’t been claimed before. Like we said, Boasberg is the ideal Judgefare Judge for the progressive revolutionary cause.
D. BARFARE
Ben Weingarten, writing for The Federalist, summarized “barfare” in his report on the latest use of this political weapon to target another political opponent. He wrote, “By making life hell for conservative counselors, by hitting them with such complaints, the idea is to pick such legal talent off the playing field — while spooking others who might otherwise enter it — and thereby eliminate the left’s legal opposition.”
Barfare is the use of bar associations to bring frivolous, dubious, and outright false charges against non-Progressive government attorneys, as well as any defense attorney who might represent them. They mostly target attorneys who aggressively advance policies the progressives oppose.
The latest victim of Barfare appears to be U.S. Pardon Attorney Ed Martin, who allegedly violated ethical standards by enforcing President Trump’s constitutionally approved executive order ending DEI practices in government-funded schools. Martin now faces ethics violations charges by the bar authority in D.C. (the DC Disciplinary Counsel), the very authority he had been questioning and working to begin investigating.
Another victim of this barfare association was Jeff Clark, a former regulatory officer in the Trump administration. He said of the latest barfare assault on Martin, “Lawfare/Barfare is alive & well. Apparently, DC’s Disciplinary Counsel cares not that 1) DEI is an unconstitutional violation of equal protection of the laws; & 2) the President had issued an executive order banning it if an institution takes federal money. Blatantly political.”
The Trump administration is fighting back against this, which we’ll cover in the PUSHBACK section of this report.
E. SCOTUS PROTECTION
We wrote this news blurb on March 19, 2025. It encapsulates both SCOTUS’ protection of progressive activism in the judiciary and also Judge Boesberg, our bellwether progressive activist judge:
Chief Justice John Roberts injected himself into matters not directly in front of his court in defense of a district judge being threatened with impeachment for ruling against President Trump’s deportation operation decisions. Specifically, the district court judge ruled that a planeload of Venezuelan convicted felons should be immediately returned.
Chief Roberts wrote, “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
It should be noted Roberts didn’t say it was illegal, only that it was “not an appropriate response.” His argument is for precedent, while the argument itself is in defense of a man who has demonstrated a dangerous lack of restraint regarding that same guiding judicial standard, “precedent.”
After Roberts’ missive, Representative Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment against that same federal judge, U.S. District Court Judge James Boesberg. He is the same judge that gave tough sentences to convicted j6 protestors while giving alleged FBI plant Ray Eppes a lenient sentence.
A year later, there has been no substantive move against Boesberg’s “unprecedented” rulings, and John Roberts is still defending Boesberg from attacks.
Roberts took a public stance against the outrage being directed at progressive judges in general, saying “You see, from all over … [there’s] not just any one political perspective on it, that it’s more directed in a personal way, and that, frankly, can be actually quite dangerous. Judges around the country work very hard to get it right, and if they don’t, their opinions are subject to criticism. But personally directed hostility is dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”
Critics responded that had SCOTUS reined in rogue progressive activist judges who demonstrate repeatedly legal standards inconsistent with Americanist standards, the “rhetoric” he called dangerous would end, for it is only “dangerous” if it is inaccurate, not if it is true. It would be dangerous to try to chill such speech, as Roberts appears to be doing.
His public action also signals to lawyers in the executive what little protection they have against rogue progressive judges and the associations they control (such as the bar associations).
F. THE PUSHBACK
Starting from the top, there has been increasing pushback against progressive activist judges. The Trump administration itself is finally pushing back against the barfare assault on non-progressive executive legal officers and advocates.
The administration’s DOJ has proposed a rule change to curb barfare’s power: The Department of Justice proposes to establish a process for reviewing bar complaints and allegations against its attorneys.
Under the proposed rule, before a current or former Department lawyer may participate in any investigative steps initiated by the bar disciplinary authority of a State, Territory, or the District of Columbia in response to allegations that a current or former Department attorney violated an ethics rule while engaging in that attorney’s federal duties, the Department will have the right to review the allegations in the first instance and shall request that the bar disciplinary authority suspend any parallel investigations until the completion of the Department’s review.
This would provide a major impediment to the progressive association’s power to impede oppositional policy through selective and overreaching ethics violations charges that diminishes executive power while creating a de facto policymaking tool for progressive activist judiciary supremacists to wield arbitrarily (as it has been in recent years).
Outside of Trump’s increasing willingness to characterize progressive activist judges as being something approaching insurrectionist, no other substantive action has been taken by the administration to curb progressive activist judiciary supremacist power.
The more the judiciary’s power grows, the more American liberty is threatened by progressive courts that not only no longer recognize American rights, they also actively work to subvert them (when and where they can).
At the local level, police departments are defying judicial orders. In one case, the Las Vegas Police Department refused to release a serial violent criminal despite another criminal-enabling ruling by a progressive activist judge, who sought to release the criminal despite his violent and police-evading past.
In another instance, the Riverside County Sheriff’s office seized 650,000 ballots from a November 2025 election, alleging there were thousands more ballots cast than there were eligible voters. While the Progressive Activist DA has attempted to stop the investigation, the sheriff’s department, so far, has refused to comply, claiming the DA has no authority in the matter. The DA has made the same claim about them.
PREDICTIVE ANALYSIS
While rank-and-file conservatives seem to recognize the existential threat that a progressive activist judiciary poses to the American republic, elected Republicans have mostly refused to go beyond challenging their constitutionality. So far, every effort to censure or impeach a progressive activist judge by congress has ended in failure.
President Trump has no real power to blunt the judiciary outside of replacing it, and even then, he would not replace the progressive activists still dominating legal institutions, like bar associations and law schools.
The executive could have some power to check the power of progressive-controlled institutions, especially with a conservative court. We doubt, however, that a conservative court would give the executive as much power as it might need to remove the progressive threat from her American womb.
Furthermore, the GOP-majority Senate has been sitting on new judicial appointees by the Trump administration since his 2nd term began, even though the GOP allowed the Democrats to rush through a slate of Biden judges near the end of his term. Many of those same judges are leading the Judgefare assault on the American republic.
More and more, we suspect President Trump is looking to preserve anti-American power, like judicial overreach, for what he presumes will be the next regime in power, the faction we are loosely simply referring to as the “conservatives” (see our Final Thought on pg. xx for more on what “conservative” means in this context).
He isn’t existentially threatening progressive power, even as he seems willing to existentially threaten globalist power. At home, he has far more patience with the Democrat Party than he does the globalists of Europe. But he also has far more patience with China than he does some Republicans within his own party.
He seems to be far more pragmatic than idealist, and far less concerned with preserving and restoring American rights than with preserving American geopolitical and economic power.
For this reason, we doubt the Judgefare assault will change anytime soon. If anything, it will only get worse, until one ruling is so far beyond the pale, failure to act will immediately undermine the whole Federal government’s legitimacy as a representative of an American republic.
This is not to say such a ruling is inevitable, but only that it will take a rash decision made in anger by a narcissistic progressive activist judge that critically affects American security to compel the President to act in a substantive way to remove progressives from the courts altogether.
We do not think such a ruling is likely before the general election this year. If the polls start to turn on the Democrats, the likelihood of such a ruling increase before the election. If the Democrats win both the House and the Senate, expect activist judges to file contempt charges against Trump officials for a myriad of “reasons.”
President Trump does not appear to have the real stomach for the existential fight he would trigger if he moved as aggressively against the activist judges as the El Salvadorans did when reclaiming their country from another parasitical faction, the cartels, natural allies of progressives.
Trump would need a smoking gun to act, like a video recording of activist judges conspiring to undermine Trump policies knowingly using “word games” to invent legal standards on the fly so they can effectively contain and eventually destroy the evil that is Trump
This smoking gun video, or evidence like it, is not likely to come out anytime soon. Until it does, expect the Trump policies to slowly wind down, and some to get reversed, as activist judges will only be emboldened by the lack of decisive action from the Trump administration and the GOP’s congressional leadership.
SCOTUS is divided into three camps, the progressives, the Americanists, and the pragmatists. There are three members in each camp. So long as the court has a minority of Americans, but also a minority of progressives, expect some checks on progressive power to continue, but hardly decisively.
The continued allowance of lower court serial constitutional abuse and overreach by SCOTUS will also add to the emboldening of more clearly unconstitutional rulings in the name of stopping the devil, Donald Trump.
We will continue to watch our bellwether Judgefare judge, James Boesberg, as well as all the other Judgefare judges plotting deconstruction of American Rule of Law in the name of stopping Hitler (Trump) even as we close this report.
Let us pray a smoking gun is delivered that allows the President to act decisively to end the progressive activist threat within our judiciary.
ED. NOTE: In our Quarterly review, scheduled for release on Friday, April 10, 2026, be sure to check out our Predictive Analysis for the next three months in our Situation Report.
FURTHER RESOURCES:
A History of American Law – Lawrence M. Friedman
Judicial Activism and the Assault on Christianity – Greg Bredemeier
