A federal judge appointed by former President Ronald Reagan has resigned from the bench, saying he can no longer remain silent about what he views as an assault on the rule of law by President Donald Trump.
Mark L. Wolf, named to the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts in 1985, detailed his decision in a November 2025 essay in The Atlantic. He wrote that he had expected to serve for the rest of his life but felt compelled to step down. “My reason is simple: I no longer can bear to be restrained by what judges can say publicly or do outside the courtroom,” Wolf stated. “President Donald Trump is using the law for partisan purposes, targeting his adversaries while sparing his friends and donors from investigation, prosecution, and possible punishment.”
Wolf, 78 at the time, added that this approach contradicted everything he had stood for during more than 50 years in the Department of Justice and on the bench. “The White House’s assault on the rule of law is so deeply disturbing to me that I feel compelled to speak out. Silence, for me, is now intolerable,” he wrote. He traced his views on nonpartisan justice to his early service under Attorney General Edward Levi during the Ford administration, shortly after the Watergate scandal that led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Wolf had taken senior status in 2013; his active seat was filled in 2014 by Judge Indira Talwani, an appointee of President Barack Obama. In comments to The New York Times, he said he hoped to serve as “a spokesperson for embattled judges who, consistent with the code of conduct, feel they cannot speak candidly to the American people.”
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson rejected the criticism, telling Fox News Digital that judges who “want to inject their own personal agenda into the law have no place on the bench.” She noted that the Trump administration had secured more than 20 Supreme Court victories upholding its policies “despite an unprecedented number of legal challenges and unlawful lower court rulings.” Jackson added that “any other radical judges that want to complain to the press should at least have the decency to resign before doing so.”
The resignation came months before the November 2026 midterm elections. In related political developments, Republican National Committee Chairman Joe Gruters has highlighted what he describes as a significant financial advantage for Republicans this cycle. Speaking on Breitbart, Gruters said the collective conservative side could have as much as $800 million available, compared with roughly $350 million on the left. He pointed to the Democratic National Committee’s reported negative balance and noted that a forthcoming court ruling on coordinated campaign limits could further amplify Republican spending power by allowing parties to spend at the candidate rate.
Gruters framed the landscape as a potential historic reversal from prior cycles in which Democrats often held the fundraising edge, arguing that stronger coordination and resources position Republicans favorably heading into the midterms.
