Not much is remarked yet on the federal judges trying to legislate from the bench in denying Donald Trump’s executive orders and immigration policies is how a number of them all live within walking (or at least biking) distance of each other. James Boasberg, who tried to order the Trump administration to bring back planes of violent illegal alien gang members being flown to El Salvador’s prisons, lives in “Chevy Chase, D.C.,” the posh D.C. neighborhood bordering the town of Chevy Chase, Maryland, where Boasberg’s Yale Law classmate Justice Brett Kavanaugh resides.

Judge Theodore Chuang, who believes the Trump administrations defunding USAID and laying off its staff is “unconstitutional” lives in another town bordering Chevy Chase, D.C. -- Bethesda, Maryland. The distance from Boasberg’s home on Huntington Street NW in D.C. to Chuang’s on Sebago Road in Bethesda is four miles, a less than ten-minute drive.

One might be concerned about how many of the judicial decisions being made are by judges who are essentially all from the same small geographic area and insular community. You could be even more concerned if you realize the community they are part of is perhaps the only one that has something to lose from DOGE, since D.C. and its wealthy suburbs all float on federal tax dollars taken from the rest of the country. There are endless examples of this, though one of the most obvious is the federal gas tax, a fifth of which goes to subsidize the subways of six cities, including the Metro system that services Washington, D.C. and Bethesda. Even though the people paying the gas taxes all around the country have never used a subway in their life.

More concerning, and closer to a conflict of interest, is where their spouses work. Boasberg’s wife runs an abortion provider and investigators think Chuang’s wife works for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

But their real conflict of interest, especially on any decisions related to DOGE and trimming federal spending or the federal workforce, is their homes, more specifically their home equity. Boasberg’s Huntington Street NW house (which he paid in the $600,000s for back in 1995) has a Zillow estimate of just under $2 million. Chuang’s house on Sebago Road (which he paid in the low $700s in the naughts) has a Zillow estimate of $1.5 million. Two homes sold on Huntington Street in the past two years went for approximately $2 million; all four nearby houses on Sebago Road that sold in the past two years all went for over $1.1 million.

These are large homes in lovely neighborhoods, each with good public schools and public transportation. They are considered safe, though when Democrats had a meltdown, the even posher bordering Chevy Chase, Maryland was not that safe for Justice Kavanaugh, whose family was stalked by a man with chloroform and zip ties who had posted his intent to kill Justice Kavanaugh.

This month the inventory of homes for sale in the D.C. area is up 30.3% over the same month last year. The inventory in Washington, D.C. proper is up 30.7% (in Montgomery County, Maryland, which includes Bethesda, it’s up almost 20%). Prices in D.C. proper have dropped 2%.

There are other reasons inventory could have grown. Interest rates have dropped a little, so sellers who thought no one could afford their homes may have decided they can now finally put them on the market. But some economists are predicting a real estate crash. During the last crash, in 2008, D.C. was insulated by a fountain of tax dollars; outside the Beltway, homes were for sale at 60% of their pre-crash price. Inside the Beltway, they did not drop at all.

President Trump, Elon Musk, and DOGE are aiming to drastically cut this fountain of your tax dollars on which D.C. and its real estate values float. The D.C.-area judges who could lose a million dollars in home equity if DOGE is successful should recuse themselves as they have a major conflict of interest.

Image: Famartin