How Socialist Democrats Use The Soros Strategy To Fill Local Courts With Woke Judges

While Democrats talk about packing the Supreme Court, George Soros is moving from electing crime-friendly district attorneys to pro-crime judges at lower levels who will move up into increasingly prominent positions over their lifetimes. It’s a significant pivot in the well-established “Soros strategy,” which floods relatively low-cost and bottom-of-the-ballot races with advertising to seat leftist district attorneys. In a new report, the Center for American Institutions documents how the flow of dark money into DA races and state supreme court campaigns has chipped away at trust in judicial institutions. While the funding comes from both sides of the aisle, “nothing in the Republican stable matches the Democratic Party’s network of interlocking nonprofits,” and the Soros-run groups “are the biggest and most complete political/financial complexes,” the report notes. Recent events demonstrate how effectively the Soros strategy can be deployed in state judge races by adding campaign workers to money. The Democratic Socialists of America have already backed candidates, usually their own members, in district attorney races, notably in Austin, Texas, and Queens County, New York. But as influential as DAs are in deciding which cases to bring, why not elect the judges who decide cases? The idea of holding positions in the hopelessly corrupt American justice system is absurd to some members of the DSA, especially the Marxists. But others see the opportunity: achieving a small measure of justice for the downtrodden, and advancing an attack on landlords and the carceral state. In fact, DSAers and their allies can already be found in low-level judicial positions in a number of municipalities. Soros-Style Judicial Takeover Campaigns DSA and allied groups start by pulling together slates of candidates. In Los Angeles, a driving force is La Defensa, a nonprofit that is fiscally sponsored by the Soros-connected Tides Advocacy. Co-founded by Eunisses Hernandez, who won a city council seat with DSA’s enthusiastic support, La Defensa has backed public defenders and civil rights lawyers for judgeships. La Defensa ran a 2023 election bootcamp for the five public defenders, several of whom called themselves the “Defenders of Justice.” Three won their 2024 elections, including two of the “Defenders.” The purported champions of the downtrodden substantially outspent their more conventional opponents. This improved upon the “Defenders of Justice” yield of only one victor in 2022. In Pittsburgh, it was the “Slate of Eight” advancing the Soros strategy in the judicial system. In 2021, 10 of the 34 slots on Pittsburgh’s Court of Common Pleas were open. Opposed, like their LA counterparts, to pre-trial detention and cash bail, some slate members also spoke out against ever trying adolescents as adults and probation for teens. Five won seats. None of them were assigned to the criminal division; instead, they wound up in the civil, family, or “orphans” divisions, mitigating the negative fallout of their victories. Another slate contested seats in 2025. As a sympathetic journalist put it, the activists are “playing a long game” with the goal of “building more power on the bench overall.” DSA Judges Wreak Havoc These DSA-supported judges mirror the Soros prosecutors in handing down ideological decisions that generate havoc and rebukes. In 2025 the Nevada Commission on Judicial Discipline suspended DSA Judge Erika Ballou for misconduct. When the Nevada Supreme Court reversed one of her decisions, she ignored the order to return the prisoner to custody. She resigned. DSA-supported Mik Pappas, a magisterial district judge in Pittsburgh from 2018 to 2023, believed that landlords too easily evicted tenants and cash bail was unjust. In his first year, evictions dropped by 39 percent. He became a former magistrate when he resigned without explanation. His term was marked by controversy over such matters as releasing without bail a Chinese national arrested for indecent sexual assault who promptly caught a plane home and failing to sign warrants. Another DSA-endorsed Pittsburgh magistrate, Xander Orenstein, was investigated by the state Judicial Conduct Board for a series of cases that ended badly. While the board found nothing illegal in, for example, releasing a man accused of assault who went on to stab a man to death, an impeachment effort followed. The Republican state representative who filed the complaint against Orenstein observed that “un-elect[ing]” judges like him out of office is “the only real solution.” That happened to Houston’s DSA-supported Franklin Bynum, after his sanction was upheld. Bynum, who posted a selfie wearing a defund the police T-shirt after he was elected in 2018, failed “to comply with and maintain professional competence in the law in his handling of cases.” He lost his 2022 bid for reelection. The packing of the lower courts with socialist judges reflects a strategy to ensure the takeover of our courts at every level. We are witnessing in real time a judicial revolution that needs to be countered. Paula Baker is a visiting professor at Arizona State University’s Center for American Institutions. Donald T. Critchlow is the director of the Center for American Institutions. cash bailCenter for American InstitutionsDefenders of JusticeDemocratic Socialists of Americadistrict attorneysDSAErika BallouEunisses HernandezFranklin BynumGeorge SorosJosé GarzaLa Defensalocal judgesLos AngelesMarxismMik Pappaspre-trial detentionpublic defendersSlate of EightSoros DATides AdvocacyXander Orenstein