“Maybe I lack imagination, but I didnt expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Congress on Monday.
Justice Barrett was explaining in vivid terms why the Supreme Court had requested an additional $14.6 million, as part of its $228 million budget request, for enhanced security.
SUPREME COURT JUSTICES HEAD TO CAPITOL HILL FOR FIRST CONGRESSIONAL APPEARANCE SINCE 2019
Her fellow witness, Justice Elena Kagan, observed that threats against the Supreme Court had risen 38% this year. Justice Barrett herself had suffered a “swatting” attack earlier this year, in which someone falsely reported an armed shooter at her house. More alarmingly, an assassin attempted to kill Justice Brett Kavanaugh after the 2022 leak of the courts Dobbs opinion, which overturned Roe v. Wade and its creation of a constitutional right to abortion.
While the justices are often willing to write hundreds of pages setting out their opinions on constitutional law, they left unanswered the question of why threats have risen so sharply.
The answer seems clear. Left-wing activists and leaders have waged war against the court. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., for example, warned Justices Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch against overruling Roe. He appeared on the front steps of the Supreme Court and threatened that they would “pay the price” and “wont know what hit [them].”
DEMOCRATIC SENATOR CLAIMS GOP ‘STOLE’ TWO SCOTUS SEATS IN 2016, 2020, CALLS FOR EXPANSION
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., has attempted to raise ethical doubts about the justices because they allegedly accepted gifts from wealthy benefactors.Â
Virtually all the major leaders of the Democratic Party agree with the idea of packing the Supreme Court because they disagree with its decisions. Former Vice President Kamala Harris declared in May that Democrats should consider expanding the court with liberals and punishing conservatives. “This is a moment where there are no bad ideas,” the 2024 Democratic presidential candidate said on a podcast.
These attacks stem from the lefts larger attack on the Supreme Court as an agent of the Trump administration. Schumer, for example, often criticizes what he dubs “the MAGA Supreme Court” for transforming government agencies into “members-only clubs for his golf buddies and cronies.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries decries “the corrupt conservative majority on the Supreme Court appointed by Donald Trump” for taking “a blowtorch” to civil rights laws.
