These Reagan-appointed judges have had it with Trump

A handful have lashed out against Trump in their rulings. Now, one judge has resigned from his post in order to speak out more forcefully.

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Now a fourth member of the Reagan-era fraternity has joined them: U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf, who took the bench in Massachusetts 40 years ago on the same day as Young. Wolf resigned his senior judgeship last week with the sole purpose of speaking out against what he sees as Trump’s incursion on the rule of law and the high court’s acquiescence to it.

It’s not an accident. Not only do these Reagan-appointed judges wield their seniority as a weapon, but their legal and judicial careers were all forged in the embers of Watergate, when a president’s assertion of vast, unprecedented power threatened to topple the justice system. They all worked and clerked for attorneys and judges tasked with rebuilding confidence in the federal government after Richard Nixon’s resignation and saw in it a vindication of principled appeals to impartial justice.

In a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO, Wolf said his own upbringing as a public corruption prosecutor during that moment of rebuilding is what has contributed to his alarm today. He sees echoes of that era in Trump’s second term but is worried that Americans — who would not have tolerated such behavior in the Watergate era, he says — may be too conditioned to view the world through partisan lenses to respond similarly today.

“I don’t know where the American people are today,” Wolf lamented. “When they’re repeatedly told that judges who rule against a president — they are corrupt and they should be impeached. I’m afraid if the courts do not have the support they need … our rule of law and our democracy will be doomed.”

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https://www.politico.com/news/2025/11/14/donald-trump-judges-00652762