Federal judges doxxing wave: 126 federal threat prosecutions in 2025, 400+ tracked threats to judges

What happened

The federal judiciary went through a sustained wave of doxxing and threats in 2025 that carried into 2026. CBS News reported on February 19, 2026 that federal prosecutors charged 126 people in 2025 with threatening public officials, a more than threefold increase over the past decade. Twelve of those cases involved threats against judges; others targeted members of Congress, federal law enforcement, and current and former presidents. In many of the cases, a doxxing came first: the target's home address was posted, and the threats followed.

The Speak Up for Justice (SU4J) coalition, co-founded by US District Judge Esther Salas and trial attorney Paul Kiesel after the 2020 attack on the Salas family, reported more than 400 threats against judges by mid-2025.

The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) found that online violent threats and impeachment calls targeting judges rose 327% between May 2024 and March 2025. GPAHE tied the increase mainly to escalating anti-democratic rhetoric from prominent far-right figures, amplified online as courts issued a series of high-profile rulings against the Trump administration.

Incidents documented in public reporting:

• In March 2026, US District Judge R. Brooke Jackson of the District of Colorado said from the bench that someone in Florida posted his photo and home address online during an ICE-related case before him, describing his court as one that "loves illegal immigrants" and inviting people to his home. He later allowed ICE agents to testify in the case under only their initials, citing the threat environment on the record.
• US District Judge John J. McConnell Jr. of the District of Rhode Island reported six credible death threats and about 400 threatening or harassing calls after his rulings against the administration's federal funding freeze, including a voicemail calling for his assassination. A pizza was delivered to his home in the name of Daniel Anderl.
• The federal judiciary accelerated an upgrade to its case management system on March 10, 2026, after a July 2025 hack exposed sealed court filings.

How it started

Each documented doxxing followed the same path. A judge was identified by name from a public court docket. The home address came from a data broker listing or a property record. Someone posted the address on social media or a partisan site. The threats came after.

The Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, often shortened to the Anderl Act, became federal law in December 2022 as part of that year's defense authorization act. It lets federal judges and their immediate family require data brokers and government agencies to remove home addresses, phone numbers, and other covered information, and it gives them a civil claim if a broker refuses. The Administrative Office of the US Courts runs a central program that files these removals for judges who opt in. Some judges had enrolled and some had not, and even where demands were filed, broker compliance was inconsistent and listings often reappeared.

Why this case matters

Two earlier attacks drove federal judicial-security law. In 2005, the husband and mother of US District Judge Joan Lefkow were murdered in her Chicago home by a litigant she had ruled against. In 2020, a man who found US District Judge Esther Salas's home address online came to her New Jersey door and opened fire, killing her 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, and wounding her husband. The law is named for him.

The 2025 wave shows that the law is a baseline, not a guarantee. The figures reported by CBS News and Speak Up for Justice describe a threat level the existing protections have not closed.

Federal judges have the strongest legal protection of any official category. State court judges, prosecutors, and federal law enforcement officers generally have less, or none. The same path that exposed Judge Jackson works against any official whose name appears on a public docket.

What this means for you

If your name appears on public records or court filings, the route to your front door is short. A data broker listing or a property record ties your name to your home address and the people who live there.

If you are a federal judge, the Anderl Act is the legal tool, and the Administrative Office of the US Courts program is one way to use it. Because broker compliance is uneven and listings return, removals have to be filed and then filed again when the information reappears.

If you are a state court judge, prosecutor, or law enforcement officer, coverage varies. Some states have analogs to New Jersey's Daniel's Law that may cover you, and many states have nothing comparable. The step that does not depend on your title is removing your home address from the commercial sites that resell it.

For more on how doxxing works and what to do if you have been doxxed, see /doxxing and /doxxing/recovery.