The Justice Department has turned its fire on the federal bench itself. Attorney General Todd Blanche filed a judicial-misconduct complaint on Wednesday against seven of the eight sitting judges on Minnesota's federal district court, demanding the Eighth Circuit investigate them and that they recuse themselves from every case — criminal or civil — involving the Department of Homeland Security.

The target: a New York Times article in which then-Chief Judge Patrick Schiltz sat for a 90-minute on-the-record interview and six colleagues also spoke, describing how the government's noncompliance with court orders during "Operation Metro Surge" — the immigration enforcement blitz that produced thousands of arrests in the Twin Cities last winter — amounted to, in their words, a grave threat to the rule of law. Blanche called the judges' comments "overtly political," accused them of showing "obvious bias" against DHS, and said their conduct "undermined public confidence in an impartial judiciary in Minnesota."

Months of Friction Boil Over

The complaint is the latest escalation in a monthslong standoff between Minnesota's bench and the administration. Judges there have repeatedly threatened DOJ officials and ICE leadership with contempt over noncompliance with orders, a separate federal judge quashed DOJ subpoenas targeting Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, and DHS General Counsel James Percival had already publicly accused the judges of "essentially conspiring" with one another to slow immigration enforcement, according to The New Republic.

Schiltz pushed back directly, telling the Times the noncompliance he described was "most, if not all" the product of "incompetence, not conscious defiance" by government lawyers juggling the case surge — and that speaking out fell "well within the ethical rules," citing a February 2026 judicial ethics advisory opinion that explicitly permits judges to publicly defend judicial independence.

"If DOJ doesn't want judges to speak [publicly] about DOJ's noncompliance with court orders, it should spend more time fixing those practices and less time filing frivolous misconduct complaints." — Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court

Legal watchdogs and court observers were quick to frame the move as retaliatory. Critics note that disqualifying nearly the entire bench from DHS matters would effectively freeze immigration-related prosecutions and civil suits across the district, while supporters of the administration argue judges crossed an ethical line by discussing the government's conduct in pending and recurring case types with reporters, according to CNN's reporting.

The clash isn't confined to Minnesota, either — a separate court fight playing out this same week saw a federal judge bar ICE agents from making arrests at courthouses nationwide, part of a broader pattern of judges pushing back on the administration's immigration enforcement tactics.

The complaint now sits with the Eighth Circuit's judicial council, which handles misconduct referrals for Minnesota's bench. The bar for judicial disqualification is notoriously high, and similar complaints against individual judges elsewhere have gone nowhere in the past — but the sheer scale of this filing, targeting seven judges appointed by presidents of both parties at once, marks a new front in the administration's fight with the federal judiciary heading into the midterms.