This is an adapted excerpt from the July 11 episode of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff.”

It’s no secret that trust in our democratic institutions is at a historic low, and the judiciary has not escaped that criticism. According to Gallup, in 2024, just 35% of Americans expressed confidence in the nation’s judicial system, the lowest level the organization has ever recorded. That skepticism cuts across political lines, and it marks a whopping 24-point collapse in just four years.

To put that in perspective, that is one of the steepest declines in trust in the courts that Gallup has measured anywhere in the world — similar drops were recorded in places like Venezuela, Syria and Myanmar. 

Here in America, many say the people who run our institutions have become distant from those they’re meant to serve. And yet, in this moment, the federal courts are one of the few parts of our government still holding the line. 

While Congress, particularly under the leadership of Republicans, has largely surrendered its role as a check on President Donald Trump, federal judges have again and again stepped in to block some of the administration’s worst impulses.

It was the courts that halted deportations carried out without hearings. It was the courts that struck down, one by one, the executive orders punishing law firms for representing the president’s opponents.

It was a federal judge, only two weeks ago, who blocked the president’s attempt to seize control of mail-in voting before the midterm elections, stopping the U.S. Postal Service from carrying out changes to its delivery of mail-in ballots.

Another judge stopped the administration from building a national voter list. Another blocked Trump from requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote. That judge’s exact words were, “The Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections.”

And late last month, a federal judge ordered the Pentagon to stop requiring government escorts for New York Times journalists visiting the building.

This is just a small list. Time and again, when this administration has overreached, the judiciary has stepped in to safeguard democracy. That role has made the nation’s trial judges something they were never meant to be: the front line in some of the biggest constitutional disputes of our time.

These are not Supreme Court justices issuing landmark opinions months after the fact. These are federal district judges, often acting within days or even hours, deciding whether an executive order can take effect, whether a deportation can proceed, or whether a federal agency has exceeded the authority Congress gave it.

That has put an extraordinary amount of attention and pressure on judges who traditionally worked far from the national spotlight. Courtrooms that once handled disputes with little public notice have become the places where some of the country’s most consequential constitutional questions are being tested in real time.

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For doing their jobs, many of these judges are paying a steep price. Trump routinely calls judges who rule against him “crooked.”  Todd Blanche, then the Justice Department’s No. 2 and now its acting head, spoke of waging “war” against what he called “rogue activist judges.”

And the threats have followed. Last year alone, the U.S. Marshals Service investigated a record 564 threats against federal judges, roughly double the number from just five years ago. Some judges have even received anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes, which might seem innocent, but it sends the message, “We know where you live.”

So now a group of judges who have spent their careers speaking only through written opinions has decided that, at this moment, silence is no longer an option. In the days following America’s 250th birthday, they launched a bus tour through communities across Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.

A group of judges who have spent their careers speaking only through written opinions has decided that, at this moment, silence is no longer an option.

They’re calling it “Justice in Motion,” and they want to chat with Americans about why the rule of law matters. They’ve stopped at libraries, schools, diners and farmers markets, because, as the organizers put it, courts “cannot remain abstract institutions disconnected from the people they serve.”

The tour is inspired, in part, by something that happened thousands of miles away. When political leaders in Poland began weakening judicial independence, judges there did something remarkable: They left their courtrooms and traveled town to town, explaining in plain language why independent courts matter in a democracy.

Now, a group of retired American judges believes this country may need that same kind of civic conversation.

Courts can issue rulings. Judges can interpret the law. But the rule of law ultimately depends on something no court can order: public trust. And when the public conversation about the judiciary is dominated by Trump, judges who remain silent, as we generally expect them to, are at a disadvantage. 

Judicial restraint may protect the integrity of the courts, but it also allows Trump to distort the conversation. 

Allison Detzel contributed.

Jacob Soboroff

Jacob Soboroff is the anchor of “Connect with Jacob Soboroff,” premiering June 13

Amel Ahmed

Amel Ahmed is a Segment Producer for “Velshi.”