Over the last year, Republican politicians have escalated their efforts to manipulate state courts, responding to judicial checks on red-state legislatures with retaliatory legislative checks on the judiciary itself.
In Utah, Republicans expanded the state’s highest court in response to rulings that overturned an abortion ban and enforced a voter-enacted “fair maps” ballot initiative that prevented a partisan gerrymander in the 2026 midterms. In Montana, Republicans stacked the state judicial standards commission with sympathetic partisans and then refiled ethics complaints aimed at judges who have invalidated Republican-backed laws. In several states, legislatures are pushing bills that would channel future high-stakes political cases into Republican-friendly venues, blunting judicial power in states where courts have frustrated conservative priorities.
None of these initiatives are subtle. Each is a direct intervention by political actors into the functioning of an ostensibly independent branch of government, and each one passed. For Republicans, the judiciary is no longer entitled to deference or respect. Reshaping courts in response to unwelcome rulings is now an acceptable move in Republican politics.
The success of these recent attacks on state courts should force a harder look at some of the attacks that have failed, too. As demonstrated by how far Republicans have already managed to shift the Overton window, proposals that seem outlandish and extreme today could become law in the years to come.
In January, for example, Iowa lawmakers introduced a bill that would have eliminated judicial review altogether, stripping courts of their authority to invalidate statutes that violate the state constitution. The bill followed a years-long Republican effort to overturn the Iowa Supreme Court’s holding that abortion access is a fundamental right. Now that the court has overturned that decision and allowed Iowa’s “fetal heartbeat” abortion ban to take effect, the bill would ensure that the ban remains in place so long as Republicans hold the legislature.
For more than two centuries, the American legal system has rested on the premise that courts can strike down laws that are unconstitutional. The Iowa proposal would have stripped that power away entirely, collapsing the distinction between constitutional limits and legislative will.
In Wyoming, lawmakers pushed a more personal form of retaliation against judges they do not like. After state courts blocked an anti-abortion law in January, a month later, Republicans sought to slash $3.6 million in court security funding. Proponents did not even attempt to disguise their goal. “If this branch of government has a vested interest in protecting your life, why does it suddenly lose that interest when the life in question comes to the unborn?” said Rep. Rachel Rodriguez-Williams, who introduced the bill. “If the state government exists to protect life…then that principle must apply consistently, not selectively.” The message was clear: If courts stand in the way of legislative objectives, lawmakers can threaten not just their authority, but their physical safety, too.
Finally, in Missouri, Republicans have spent seven years trying to undo a Missouri Supreme Court rule prohibiting judges from jailing defendants solely because they cannot afford bail. This year, state senator Rick Brattin introduced a bill that would have made it a felony for a judge to release a prior offender who later commits another felony. Republicans framed the bill as a public safety measure, but in practice, it would criminalize judicial discretion, transforming a judge’s routine bail and release decisions into personal legal gambles. The predictable result would be the collapse of individualized decisionmaking in favor of blanket detention—essentially a legislative override of judicial power achieved by threat of prosecution.
The good news, relatively speaking, is that the Missouri proposal faces an uphill battle, and the Iowa and Wyoming legislatures have already set their proposals aside. But the fact that lawmakers are even entertaining measures like these is a marked shift from previous years. This shift has accelerated under President Donald Trump, who frequently brands adverse rulings as illegitimate and questions the authority of courts to constrain Republican prerogatives. The lesson absorbed by many state lawmakers is not merely that courts are ideological battlegrounds, but that institutional guardrails themselves are negotiable.
State courts decide key questions that shape everyday life, from voting rules to abortion access to criminal punishment. They decide 95 percent of civil and criminal cases in the United States each year. Republican lawmakers understand that undermining judicial independence undermines democratic accountability, and have thus normalized targeting judges who rule against them. Even if they don’t succeed at first, these more aggressive measures are best understood not as aberrations, but as previews of what’s coming next.
