Despite its many groundbreaking victories for originalism and textualism, the Supreme Court’s term closed with a barrage of vitriol from some conservatives aimed at Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The biggest trigger was the Court’s birthright citizenship decision, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo5OWU0Ojc2NDE4MWI0MTg2M2EzYjM4NTc2YTM4YTcwNDEwYzcyYTBlMTg5OTZjYmI3YzJkNWNmNWVlOWE2NTJmZGU5OTU6cDpGOkY">Trump v. Barbara</a>, which came on the Court’s last day. Social media lit up with barbs declaring that Barrett had veered Left. The College Republicans from her alma mater and former employer, Notre Dame, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/x.com/NDRepublicans/status/2071981700813377755___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzpjZWJkOjkzOGM0ZmI2MTY0Y2E4NmY0NzYyYjBlNDE0OWQwYTc3NmY1MmM2MDM0ZDkzNGRkYTI1NGQ3NGJmYjA2ZjY1NmI6cDpUOkY">called</a> her an “absolute disgrace” and Rep. Nancy Mace <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/x.com/NancyMace/status/2071979617569636863?s=20___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzoxODVhOjQzNWRhYmEzNTcyMTMzZGRiNDk1MzczMjEzM2RhMTM2YjU2MzQyODI4MGI5NzBlMDc1MWFkMGI0NzYzMTc2ZDU6cDpUOkY">declared</a> that she “should be removed from the Bench.” Missing from the pile-on was any contextual analysis of Barrett’s full track record on the Court.
Frustration over Barbara is understandable. Conservatives (including me) care about immigration enforcement and hoped for a different outcome. But the justices do not cast votes on outcomes, and it’s a mistake to judge them solely by the question, “Did my side win or lose?” Fidelity to the Constitution is what matters. We should credit the originalist majority for its good-faith effort to apply originalism and textualism in difficult cases. No approach does better at reading the law as it is rather than as judges wish it to be.
The Court regularly wrestles with hard methodological questions, and even principled originalists sometimes err. Take Justice Antonin Scalia, who more than anyone else steered the Court — and legal scholarship generally — toward originalism. He wrote the Court’s decision in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep494/usrep494872/usrep494872.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1M2QyOmI3ZmZmYzc1MDIzZTc5YzkwZWQzZTg1OGU4NTJmNjA5NmM2MTI1ODZhNDFhOGU5NTRhMDQwNjVkMDVjYThiYzM6cDpGOkY">Employment Division v. Smith</a> (1990), gutting free-exercise protections so badly that Congress had to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to fix it. He spent years championing Chevron deference to agency interpretations of ambiguous laws. And in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep545/usrep545001/usrep545001.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpmMDc5OmQ0NDdiZTUxNTBkNmU5ZmM2ZWZhZTAyYTA3MTUwYmI4ZTNjZjIwYTE1YjQxYjUzZTg2NzFmM2JiNThmNTEzYzg6cDpGOkY">Gonzales v. Raich</a> (2005), he provided a concurring vote for a sweeping reading of the Commerce Clause that let the federal government prohibit local cultivation of marijuana — an affront to federalism.
Justice Clarence Thomas, a favorite of mine and of many other originalists, dissented in Raich. But weeks later, he wrote the Court’s opinion in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/usrep/usrep545/usrep545967/usrep545967.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoxZDk0OjYzOTFjNTBmZTRlYWUzM2ExNGFlYTljYWQ4NDhhYmMzY2NkNjY4ZjQyZjhiYzBhNTc4NmM2NGM2NmRiNzc2ZTg6cDpGOkY">National Cable &amp; Telecommunications Assn. v. Brand X Internet Services</a>, which expanded Chevron deference over Scalia’s dissent. (In 2020, Thomas <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/19-402_o75p.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo4ZGJiOjQ0YTI3ZTlkZTA1ZjYxZjRlZWE1YTUzMWQyNGU0N2NjMjk5ZDMwYTA2YjU4YjdlMzc0MjRlYWU5ZjJjZGUxOTY6cDpGOkY">changed his position</a>.) Justice Samuel Alito, another towering originalist, balked at perhaps the <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/fragmented-gundy-court-suggests-the-nondelegation-doctrine-might-have-a-future/___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6ZjIwMWYwZGQxYzJhNjhiMGM1YTg3NzgxNTUyMzQ1ZTg6NzpkOGI5OmM2OWE5ZGQzYTNiZmE2ODk3YWJlNTgzMGIyODU4OWZlMzZhYjFiODM4MjY1MDU2NWI4MWRmZmExMTdiMjk2ZWY6cDpUOkY">best opportunity</a> over the past decade to revive the nondelegation doctrine, the separation-of-powers principle under which Congress is prevented from transferring its legislative power to another branch. Those are long-serving judicial superstars.
Of course, many Republican appointees drifted leftward over time, embracing the bald judicial activism of “living Constitution” liberals: Harry Blackmun, John Paul Stevens, Sandra Day O’Connor, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter. Justice Barrett is not one of them. In fact, she helped clean up the jurisprudential mess those justices had made — most notably voting to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpjMWM0OjkxODNiZmRhMmYzMzM3MDJjMDQ1ZGYwZDZkY2E3YmQwNjY4MWIxOTM3Nzk1MzdjZTI0M2ExYjI1ZWJjZGFjOTE6cDpGOkY">Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization</a> and to overturn racial preferences in education in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo3MTFjOjY1ZDI3NGZiZTFjZDgwMzc5NmM5Mjk4YmNkZjU2ODk1NmQ0YTkyMTk5ZTRjOTZhZjY0NzVhOGUyMDQ2MDQyM2E6cDpGOkY">SFFA v. Harvard</a>. She also voted to end Chevron deference in <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/22-451_7m58.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0ZjA5OmMyMGZlMjlhZDUxZmQwZDAzNmFjZjNhNWQ5M2I1YzZhMDQxNDk3NDdhNmI1NTVkOGVjODk5NTI4ZDE3MzIwYzY6cDpGOkY">Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo</a>. 
Apart from those jurisprudential earthquakes, she has been a reliable originalist vote in hard-fought First Amendment cases, on both speech and free exercise — supporting a web designer’s <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/21-476_c185.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzplZDRjOmZmMjEwMWFhZGYxZjkzMzAwMzM5Zjk0ZTNhOGEzNWI5NjBkN2FlNzI5NjI4MWVkM2U4YmFmNWQwYmIzMDk0YjI6cDpGOkY">ability to refuse websites</a> that violate her religious beliefs, protecting parents’ <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24-297_4f14.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1MDZhOmMxNTI1MTdmZGJjNzdjMzc4ZTM4ZTFiNDU3YTliM2ZiZjM3OTdjM2Q1ZjIzMzhhNmU3Mjg4NzI0OWIwYzVhZTc6cDpGOkY">right to opt out</a> of sexual material in public schools, upholding states’ ability to require <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-1122_3e04.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpkZjE2OjRjNTk4NzMyYTAwYzJkNGM5YTZhOWFiZmMzZDkzNmM5ZWNmMTY5YjJlNTNlNzE1ZWJjYWYyNTNmYjNhOWZlNTc6cDpGOkY">age verification</a> for pornography, <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-621_h315.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzpmYjlkOjU1OWQ5NzYyN2UyODBlOTdiNzYxNzA2YmM5M2Y4MWQxNjgwYzRlNGVlMzhlNjIwNjY5OWNiYTA5OGY0MTU5YmQ6cDpGOkY">safeguarding political speech</a>, and striking down Colorado’s <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-539_fd9g.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoyNTM5OmRjOTg5MDkzMzgwMDRhYTJlNmU0YmVmNzk1N2QxMDQ0ODBjZWYwMGY3ZTcyZjRlZGMxZWJlMTRmOTRlMGZhNTA6cDpGOkY">“conversion therapy” ban</a>. The same holds for Second Amendment protections of the individual right to bear arms in cases from <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-843_7j80.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzowMjRhOjA2OTA2ZjBlYTA5ZTg5YTNhNDA2YzdmNzY3ZWU5NDcxODQ5NWM0MGRjMjc2MWRmOTIwNDAyMDkzYjEwNjZlZDY6cDpGOkY">New York State Rifle &amp; Pistol Assn. v. Bruen</a> in 2022 to <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-1046_nmio.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzplMGY3OmNjMjRiNDJkMGJiM2YwM2Q1ODIyY2FhOGI5NTA1MTU3OGM5Y2M2MDU5MjJiYmIwMDMxMTZhMTI3ZDBkYTY1NzY6cDpGOkY">Wolford v. Lopez</a> this term.
Barrett helped the Court reject activist contortions of the Equal Protection Clause — efforts to stop states from <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/23-477_2cp3.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo1ZjAwOjhjZTNkYTY3YzFkMGE4NmI4ODE3YjgxZTFmZGI2MjlmNWFjZTYwYTQ2NDQ3ZDI0MTQ5ZDIzYmU2MTIzYjhjYmI6cDpGOkY">prohibiting transitioning procedures</a> for minors and <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-43_2b35.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0NjllOjJlYjcwMDUwNGQ0Y2Y5ODBmOGU4MjQ0MzJkYzI5MmFmNDE3YTQxNjEwOWJmMzVmMjhhMDUxZjNjZTc2ZTNjMWU6cDpGOkY">limiting women’s sports</a> to biological females. She supported extending the colorblind principle to <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/24-109_21o3.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo0MDM4OmU4OTRjNjdhMmYyMDFhNDdlNTQxODUwOWY5YThkYTI4ZTJlOGMzOTY0ZjY0NzBhOGQxNmZkZjczOTA5NmYzNDE6cDpGOkY">racial gerrymandering</a> cases.
A strong protector of the separation of powers, Barrett <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-332_qn12.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzoxNTgwOmY5MWJjY2JiOWE4MTRlZDJiOTNhMzg4M2U4YzM1YjE1OWIxYTBlMzBmN2FiMTllOGMyMjRiMmIyYzZhZjkyYzc6cDpGOkY">defended</a> the president’s ability to fire heads of “independent” commissions — overturning a 91-year-old precedent that had <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/farewell-humphreys-executor/___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo3NjFhOmQxZjNiMjRlZGRmMmVmNzFkMTNhM2VhNWE2OGZjZGZjN2VjODhlNmRhYWJjY2I4ZTFhYTg2Zjk2NjJlNmY1NTE6cDpGOkY">fueled</a> the modern unaccountable administrative state — and dissented with other conservatives when the majority declined to apply the same principle to the Federal Reserve. She has also invoked the major questions doctrine to check executive overreach involving draconian <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/20-1530_n758.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6Nzo5NmQ5OmQxNWNiYjZlZWZmODVhNzAzZTA0NTAyM2M3Zjg2ZGRlYjYyNzk5M2Y3MGI4YmVhYzY3YjZjOWE2YmNlYjI5OTE6cDpGOkY">carbon mandates</a> and <a href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/r01/___https:/www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/22-506_nmip.pdf___.YXAzOmNyY2E6YzpvZmZpY2UzNjVfZW1haWxzX2F0dGFjaG1lbnQ6YjhhOWQ2MmM2OTYyMjMzYTViODE4Y2NhZmQ2NWRhYzY6NzozMGNmOmM4NjU5MTQ2Zjk4Y2IzZjU1Njk2MjJmMGFmMjMzZWI4NjE0YzRjN2VkNjExZWYyZTIxYTk3ODQzM2Q1YTRkMzk6cDpGOkY">student loan forgiveness</a>. Yet all these strong rulings risk being overshadowed by the online fury over Barbara, a challenging case in which originalists differed over the text and history of the Citizenship Clause. Barrett’s critics selectively ignore this term’s other textualist victories, several of which she joined on the side of immigration enforcement, including the president’s termination of Temporary Protected Status.
The major originalist and textualist victories in the six years since Barrett joined the Court seemed completely out of reach a generation ago. That is not a record of a justice, let alone a majority of the Court, slouching leftward. This is one of the greatest Courts in American history, and Justice Barrett is an instrumental part of it.
***
Carrie Severino is the President of the Judicial Crisis Network.

Senators Meet With Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett

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Amy Coney Barrett

Anthony Kennedy

antonin scalia

Clarence Thomas

Dobbs v. Jackson

DW Opinion

Equal Protection Clause

first amendment

Harry Blackmun

John Paul Stevens

Roe v. Wade's Long And Brutal Legacy

Sandra Day O’Connor

second amendment

supreme court

Trump v. Barbara

Justice Amy Coney Barrett delivered a chilling account to lawmakers on Tuesday on the threats she has faced after the infamous Dobbs leak.
Testifying before a House Appropriations subcommittee on the Supreme Court&#8217;s 2027 budget, Barrett revealed that her own children have been swept up in the wave of threats and harassment aimed at the nation&#8217;s highest court — from a bulletproof vest she had to explain to her young son to a terrifying swatting hoax that sent police cruisers swarming her street.
Roughly six weeks before her testimony, Barrett revealed, her family was targeted in a swatting attack — a false report of gunfire and yelling inside her home that sent a fleet of police cars racing to her door. One of her teenage sons opened the door to head out with friends only to find the street lined with squad cars, she said. Supreme Court police on scene were able to convince local officers that the call was a hoax before anyone tried to force entry.
Barrett said she and other justices have also received anonymous, intimidating deliveries sent under a specific name: Daniel Anderl, the slain son of federal judge Esther Salas.
Anderl, 20, was gunned down at the family&#8217;s North Brunswick, New Jersey, home in July 2020 by a gunman disguised as a FedEx courier. The shooter, lawyer Roy Den Hollander, had appeared before Salas in court and was believed to have been targeting the judge herself. Anderl answered the door and was killed instantly; his father, attorney Mark Anderl, was critically wounded. Den Hollander took his own life soon after, and investigators later discovered he&#8217;d been scoping out other female judges as potential targets.
The killing spurred passage of &#8220;Daniel&#8217;s Law&#8221; in New Jersey and the federal Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act, signed in December 2022, which shields judges&#8217; home addresses and personal data from public disclosure.
Barrett&#8217;s remarks also revived scrutiny of the still-unsolved Dobbs leak — the 2022 disclosure of Justice Samuel Alito&#8217;s draft opinion gutting Roe v. Wade, published by POLITICO weeks before the official ruling. The breach, the first of its kind in Court history, ignited protests outside justices&#8217; homes and led to a man&#8217;s arrest near Justice Brett Kavanaugh&#8217;s residence on attempted murder charges.
A probe that grilled nearly 100 court staffers came up empty in 2023; the FBI announced in 2025 it was reopening the case.
The leaker&#8217;s identity remains one of the Court&#8217;s most stubborn unsolved mysteries.

Kagan, Barrett To Defend Budget As Hill Tensions Simmer

Barrett Tells Congress Of Chilling Threats Against Her

Death Threats

Daily Wire White House Correspondent <a href="mailto:molohan@dailywire.com">Mary Margaret Olohan</a> on Wednesday pressed Vice President JD Vance to weigh in on the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding birthright citizenship and whether he&#8217;s upset with conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
<a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25-365_4hdj.pdf">In a landmark ruling</a> authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court held that children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.
Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, joined Roberts in the decision, which dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s immigration agenda and drew strong backlash from conservatives.
“Some conservatives are angry with Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Are you one of them?” Olohan asked Vance after he delivered remarks to troops in Virginia Beach. 
“Well, look, do I think she made a mistake in the ruling? I do. I don&#8217;t know how anybody can say that if a person who is an illegal alien, or a person, for example, who&#8217;s pregnant and comes to the United States on a vacation, they have a baby, and all of a sudden their entire family gets the benefits of American citizenship,” Vance said. 
“I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;s what the framers of the 14th Amendment had in mind. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s the right case, but look, it was 5-4. Sometimes the Supreme Court makes mistakes, we&#8217;re going to try to correct that mistake, but nobody&#8217;s perfect, including the Supreme Court,” Vance added. 
The Daily Wire also asked the Vice President about speculation — and a bogus NPR report — claiming Justice Samuel Alito will soon retire from the bench. 
“I don&#8217;t know, you know, Justice Alito is such an amazing guy, and I think the Supreme Court, he would be irreplaceable, but of course, if he retired, that&#8217;s up to him, and we would try to do the best job we could at finding a proper replacement,&#8221; Vance told The Daily Wire. 
Vance also responded to The Daily Wire’s question about why Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez <a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/2072096503724908646?s=20">hopes</a> that the vice president leads the 2028 Republican ticket.
“I don&#8217;t think much about 2028, as you know,” Vance said to Olohan. &#8220;My attitude is, let&#8217;s do a good job now, let&#8217;s continue to try to make some wins for the American people. We can worry about the future when the future comes, but we got an important midterm election here. We got to keep the people in Congress who&#8217;ve been fighting for our troops and our veterans.&#8221;
“That&#8217;s what I&#8217;m focused on,” he said.
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Credit: CSPAN
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JD Vance/Amy Coney Barrett

Daily Wire Asks JD Vance If He’s Angry With Barrett Over SCOTUS Loss

birthright citizenship

jd vance

News

For years, saying that men and women, and that boys and girls are different, has been viewed as an act of aggression in many of America’s most elite sectors.
Yesterday, the Supreme Court treated it as what it is: the truth.
In upholding West Virginia’s and Idaho’s laws barring males from female sports, the Court held that a state “may maintain women’s and girls’ sports for biological females.” The reasoning was almost startling in its obviousness — and a fact of nature and commonsense that would have been unquestioned even two decades ago. Given the inherent physical differences between the sexes, separate teams reduce injury and secure fair competition. This is not bigotry. It is biology, and it is, at its heart, justice.
Justice Thomas, concurring, went to the root of the issue that the majority only gestured toward, and he did so contra the prevailing legal methods so fashionable today. The official positivist story is that judges exclude moral considerations from their rulings. The reality is that all judges operate from moral premises — inevitably so, often quietly, and in the background — and getting the morality right is no small matter. And Justice Thomas got it right. Sex, he wrote, is immutable and binary; men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women and girls, however sincerely they believe otherwise. That is as clear a declaration of human ontology and teleology as you will ever see in a Supreme Court ruling. That is the deeper victory here — a victory tethered to natural law. The Court did not merely side with the girls who watched a male claim their state shot put title. It sided, however modestly, with reality itself. When reason, nature, the common good, and the law converge, truth wins. That is moral sanity, and it has been in short supply.
But a ruling that vindicates the meaning and reality of sex is also a fitting occasion to warn my own side against abusing it. For even as conservatives rightly celebrate the Court’s recognition that sex is real and weighty, a faction on the right has spent recent months committing the mirror-image error — treating sex as though it settles questions it has no business settling.
The target has been Justice Amy Coney Barrett, and yesterday’s ruling on birthright citizenship is putting her gender in the crosshairs once again. Disagree with her jurisprudence on immigration and birthright citizenship all you want; that’s your prerogative. But discrediting her reasoning by appeal to her sex, or to her status as an adoptive mother — as some now do — is a category error. It is also textbook Bulverism, C.S. Lewis’s name for the trick of explaining why someone is wrong without first bothering to show that she is wrong: “you only think that because you’re a woman.”
A legal argument is sound or unsound on its own terms. The sex of the one making it has no bearing on whether it tracks with the truth. The intellect’s apprehension of reality is not indexed by sex; the human mind, male or female, is equally capable of grasping what is. Truth answers to human nature’s fittedness to reality as such — not to truth qua sex. That sex carries real teleological weight for vocation and embodiment is entirely true, and entirely beside the point here.
The adoptive-mother line some use to discredit her is even worse, because it isn’t even about her reasoning. It infers bias from biography. A judge’s conclusions stand or fall on her construction of the law — for good or for ill — not on the shape of her family. Attack the argument, or concede you haven’t got one. I’m no expert on the Constitution and immigration, and Justice Barrett may well be wrong. If she is, make the case from text and history — not from sex.
And here is the irony the moment lays bare. The progressive who insists a male can be a female denies that sex means anything fixed at all. The populist who insists Barrett rules as she does because she is a woman insists that sex means everything — that it skews the very operations of the intellect. Both are failures of the same faulty anthropology. Both refuse to see the human person as he and she actually are: embodied, sexed, and therefore genuinely different in vocation and form; yet equally rational, equally answerable to reality, equally made in the image of the God who is Truth. To suggest otherwise is to deny the ontological and epistemological equality of men and women as image-bearers of God.
The Court got the first half right today. Sex is real. It is given. It is not ours to redefine. The task now falling to conservatives is to hold the second half with the same conviction: that honoring the difference between men and women never requires pretending a woman cannot think or that her status as an adoptive mother necessarily colors her rulings. A movement that learns to say sex is real will have won an argument. A movement that also learns when sex is beside the point will have learned wisdom.
***
Andrew T. Walker is associate professor of Christian Ethics and Public Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and managing editor of WORLD Opinions. He is a fellow at The Ethics and Public Policy Center.

The Court Got Sex Right. Now The Right Must Not Get It Wrong.

conservatism

gender ideology

transgender

Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow, a Democrat who&#8217;s running for U.S. Senate in 2026, said in a video posted to social media on Thursday that she &#8220;would not be able to control&#8221; herself if she saw conservative Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh in public.
The undated video, posted on X by Townhall, shows McMorrow answering a question from someone about the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. McMorrow, a Notre Dame grad and one of the Democratic leaders in the Michigan Senate, said that it makes her &#8220;furious&#8221; that Coney Barrett also graduated from Notre Dame.
&#8220;I talked to somebody yesterday who said they saw her with Brett Kavanaugh at a tailgate last weekend. I was like, &#8216;I would not be able to control myself,'&#8221; McMorrow said. &#8220;That would be a bad— there would be beers thrown in people&#8217;s faces.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
🚨WATCH: Democrat Candidate for Senate in Michigan Mallory McMorrow says that she would not be able to stop herself from hurling cans of beer at Amy Coney Barrett &amp; Brett Kavanaugh if she saw them in public.
Despicable! <a href="https://t.co/aQTsPBnvQC">pic.twitter.com/aQTsPBnvQC</a>
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) <a href="https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/2001727745919680652?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 18, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Daily Wire reached out to McMorrow&#8217;s Senate office and her campaign team to ask about her comments, but they did not respond.
Conservative Supreme Court justices have been the target of intense criticism from Democratic leaders in recent years. In 2020, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/05/chuck-schumer-supreme-court-comments-121960">called out</a> Kavanaugh and Justice Neil Gorsuch by name and warned that they would &#8220;pay the price&#8221; if they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.
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&#8220;You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions,&#8221; Schumer added at the time. The Democratic leader was rebuked by many of his colleagues and by Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”
Then, in 2022, shortly after the court overturned Roe v. Wade, a trans-identifying male traveled to the home of Kavanaugh with plans to assassinate the conservative justice.
McMorrow is one of three Democrats who are seeking to replace retiring Democratic Senator Gary Peters. The 2026 election in Michigan will be one of the most closely watched contests in the country, as Republicans hope to capitalize on the open seat. McMorrow, 39, has served in the Michigan Senate since 2019 and became the Senate majority whip in 2023, where she has focused on advocating for abortion, especially after the Supreme Court&#8217;s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Earlier this year, McMorrow rubbed shoulders with a radical leftist blogger who mocked Charlie Kirk after he was assassinated. In late September, McMorrow <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/michigan-democrat-teams-up-with-leftist-blogger-who-mocked-charlie-kirk-after-assassination">attended a fundraiser</a> alongside Rebecca Schoenkopf, who, a day after Kirk was killed, published an article titled “Second Amendment Comes for Charlie Kirk.”

Mallory McMorrow/Brett Kavanaugh/Amy Coney Barrett

Dem Senate Hopeful Says She’d Throw Beer At Conservative Justices, Lacks Self-Control

2026 Midterms

brett kavanaugh

Democrats

Elections

michigan

politics

U.S. Senate

Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett defended the 2022 decision overturning landmark abortion cases Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey during a recent interview — and also admitted that the public protest in reaction to that case caused her to invest in a bulletproof vest for her own protection.
Barrett, in her first interview since joining the court in 2020, told CBS anchor Norah O&#8217;Donnell that the Court&#8217;s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women&#8217;s Health Organization had not outlawed abortion at all, but rather had returned it to the democratic process. She also said that both Roe and Casey had wrongfully defended a &#8220;right&#8221; that did not exist under the Constitution.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Must Watch: Justice Amy Coney Barrett sets the record straight on the majority&#8217;s message to the American people in the Dobbs decision:
“The central message of Dobbs: Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said… <a href="https://t.co/isFjhf8NdM">pic.twitter.com/isFjhf8NdM</a>
— Carrie Severino (@JCNSeverino) <a href="https://twitter.com/JCNSeverino/status/1965062438266527828?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 8, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;The central message of Dobbs: Dobbs did not render abortion illegal. Dobbs did not say anything about whether abortion is immoral. Dobbs said that these are questions that are left to the states. &#8230; What Dobbs says is that those calls are properly left to the democratic process, and the states have been working those out,&#8221; Barrett said.
&#8220;The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs gave that decision to the democratic process and to the states,” Barrett said. “It didn’t roll back rights. It didn’t render abortion illegal, unconstitutional, or anything else. And in effect, many states very fully protected abortion rights, more than under the regime of Roe since the time of the decision in Dobbs.&#8221;
O&#8217;Donnell pushed back, arguing that overturning Roe had stripped away &#8220;a federal right to abortion. A constitutional right to an abortion.&#8221;
Barrett argued that such a right had never existed in the first place — and that both Roe and Casey &#8220;had been in error&#8221; to assert that it had.
&#8220;Well, what it said is that the Constitution had not protected the abortion right under the Due Process Clause. And it said that Roe had been an error and Casey had been in error to hold otherwise,&#8221; she said.
The protests that erupted both before and after the decision was rendered — particularly after a leaked draft of the decision went public — prompted Barrett to take action to protect herself. She told O&#8217;Donnell that she&#8217;d purchased a bulletproof vest — and then had to explain to her own children why she&#8217;d felt the need to do so.

Supreme Court Justices Pose For Formal Group Photo

Justice Barrett Defends Dobbs Decision, Admits She Had To Buy Bulletproof Vest Afterward

abortion

courts

Legacy media made another feeble attempt to malign Justice Amy Coney Barrett on the eve of the release of her new book. But contrary to the whispers of palace intrigue surrounding the Court’s Dobbs decision, her book, &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1">Listening to the Law</a>,&#8221; is a window into the careful legal reasoning and conscientious commitment to the law that has defined her career. It reminds us that liberty depends on intellect, conscience, and the steady moral vision women of faith uniquely bring to public life. Barrett embodies these traits, and they are mirrored in women across the country who refuse to be cowed. 
Barrett’s convictions never wavered when she was maligned for her Catholic faith. During her Seventh Circuit confirmation, Senator Dianne Feinstein warned of the “dogma living loudly” in Barrett — a jab she met with intelligence, poise, and unflinching calm. Her Supreme Court confirmation displayed the same razor-sharp clarity. While many American women see in Barrett traits they recognize in themselves — dedication, moral clarity, and attention to conscience — there will only ever be one ACB. I recognized it in small, ordinary ways, too. A friend once gave me a coffee mug that read, “The Dogma Lives Loudly Within Me”—a playful badge of honor. Even when the mug was accidentally shattered by a child unloading the dishwasher, the sentiment remained intact, much like the enduring faith of women who live their convictions quietly but resolutely, holding conscience above convenience.
In &#8220;Listening to the Law,&#8221; Barrett reflects on family, faith, and the role of law in society. She recalls her great-grandmother, a widowed mother of thirteen during the Depression, noting that “No generation starts afresh; each is shaped by its predecessors.”
<div id="attachment_968825" style="width: 394px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-968825" class="size-large wp-image-968825" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-384x576.jpg" alt="Credit: Sentinel Books" width="384" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-384x576.jpg 384w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-200x300.jpg 200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-768x1152.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-1360x2040.jpg 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/09/MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-40-PM-5434-scaled.jpg 1707w" sizes=" (max-width: 384px) 100vw, 384px" /></a>Credit: Sentinel Books</div>
She observes that “Law is but one piece of what it takes to make a healthy society, and it (like everything else in life) exists in the midst of relationships.” She underscores that the Constitution commits us to pluralism through protections like those guaranteed by the First Amendment, which “requires the government to tolerate all opinions and all religions.” To critics who “suggest that people of faith have a particularly difficult time following the law rather than their moral views,” Barrett reiterates her understanding that “the guiding principle in every case is what the law requires, not what aligns with the judge’s own concept of justice.” Such resolve, she shows, can be met exactly because of the humility that derives from faith. And her own grounding in a large, loving family shines through — the book is dedicated simply to “Jesse,” her husband — a tribute both understated and profound.
When it comes to safeguarding America’s first freedom, Barrett’s rigor is urgently needed. Sooner rather than later, the Supreme Court will revisit Employment Division v. Smith. Authored by Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Barrett clerked, Smith held that sincerely held religious objections do not exempt people from complying with “neutral and generally applicable laws.”
In practice, Smith has often crushed religious liberty, particularly regarding anti-discrimination laws tied to sexual orientation and gender identity. Barrett’s careful attention to conscience — the “feminine genius” St. John Paul II celebrated—is precisely what the Court needs to craft a workable framework for protecting the free exercise rights of those whose beliefs are countercultural. The stakes are far from abstract: the religious convictions of real women hang in the judicial balance.
Consider Cathy Miller, a Christian baker from California, fined for refusing to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex marriage, who has asked the Court to hear her case this term. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor, who still refuse to include abortifacients or contraceptives in their health care plans despite the authoritarian demands of the Affordable Care Act’s “contraceptive mandate,” holding fast to Church teaching. Lori Smith, a Colorado website designer, refused to create speech she did not believe in — and won at the Supreme Court. Jessica Bates, a widowed Oregon mother, was blocked from fostering children because she would not embrace gender ideology — until the Ninth Circuit, of all places, vindicated her. These women were not seeking to impose beliefs on others, but to defend the right of all Americans to live out their faith without government coercion. They stand as sentinels between the state and the citizen’s conscience.
Backing them are brilliant women lawyers and scholars who turn principle into action. Kristen Waggoner, president of Alliance Defending Freedom, has argued multiple Supreme Court cases. Lori Windham of the Becket Fund shields institutions and individuals from government overreach. Legal scholars like Mary Ann Glendon, Nicole Garnett, Helen Alvaré, and Stephanie Barclay provide indispensable intellectual firepower. Protecting religious liberty is neither abstract nor optional. It demands moral clarity, expert advocacy, and strategic rigor.
&#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Listening-Law-Reflections-Court-Constitution/dp/0593421868/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.ILSOy3KahPQkW1N9rrNO_q4yhhX-A5gHnGstjpJkVxIJEAnrRe9w_lF2EUAzY8ASQZ9CZqVDHgKZt8ve0nfVVfwqI92ZVk_q0-xS0_0MvGjhlohklgHmlqVEi16JQXap9StaJ9rMCJYS5c-zfbRU2u7nrMK7Ps-ryfWBC5LGZTDLoJ6JVQxpOU7zm2FeSFITwHaNi6WP9-IfOtCiQoJ3-HjnOJseV05XFTe7FBtb5Jo.5_511Qkt6JuwwSSsSnxDilB7c5pvyEXA08tcA6xNPMM&amp;qid=1757008559&amp;sr=8-1">Listening to the Law</a>&#8221; shows that defending liberty requires both intellect and conscience. Barrett’s reflections illuminate the careful reasoning and moral clarity she brings to public life. Just as the other women highlighted here confront cultural and legal pressures with courage and fidelity, Barrett’s reflections on the law remind us that protecting religious freedom — our First Freedom — depends on women of faith. Through courage, attention to conscience, and steadfast commitment to the common good and the rule of law, they ensure liberty endures for generations to come.
* * *
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer is Director of the <a href="https://conscience-project.org/">Conscience Project.</a>
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Correction: A previous version of this article stated Kristen Waggoner was the former president of Alliance Defending Freedom. She is, in fact, the current president of the ADF.

MixCollage-04-Sep-2025-01-28-PM-1170

The Dogma Still Lives Loudly: Amy Coney Barrett And The Witness Of Women Of Faith

Books

Dobbs

women

There’s been a great deal of talk about the Trump vs. CASA decision at the Supreme Court. This, as you know, is the decision that put restrictions on universal injunctions against Trump administration policies issued by federal judge James Boasberg while Boasberg was wearing a cardboard Burger King crown and spinning around the room with his black robe flung out as if it were a pair of wings and simultaneously singing, “Look at me, mother. I am the ruler of the universe. Everyone look at me.” The court decided six to three along ideological lines that Boasberg should not only quit with the injunctions but also possibly see a mental health professional or at least turn down the volume in order to stop disturbing the neighbors. Boasberg responded to the decision by sitting curled up in a corner and sucking his thumb while still wearing the Burger King crown and muttering, “I don’t care what they say. I’m the ruler of everybody,” but in a much softer voice so the Supreme Court wouldn’t hear him and take his cardboard crown away and make him go to bed early.
The court’s decision was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett and much of the media attention focused on Barrett’s comments about a dissenting opinion written by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Many felt that Barrett’s response to Jackson’s dissent was derogatory, disdainful, humiliating, sardonic, mocking, derisive, sarcastic, belittling, disparaging, denigrating, contemptuous, taunting and even humiliating — and I know I already said that, but it was so derogatory it was actually humiliating twice, and possibly vice versa.
Now part of the reaction to Barrett’s comments might have arisen from the fact that, during her confirmation hearing, Barrett answered questions with so much precision and expertise that it gave the impression that she’s a highly intelligent woman and also kind of hot in a wonk-girl Catholic mom sort of way, whereas at her confirmation hearing, Ketanji Jackson couldn’t even say what a woman is, giving the impression that she was a DEI hire, selected because she’s a black woman without taking into account the fact that she’s also a functional idiot.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show">WATCH: The Andrew Klavan Show</a></h3>
But here at the Andrew Klavan show, we feel we should take Justice Jackson’s dissent seriously because, you know, that would be funnier. So after spending a great many minutes reading the dissent in depth… I’m not sure exactly how many minutes, but it was a lot. Maybe ten even. I lost count around six or seven. But anyway, after spending a great many minutes studying Justice Jackson’s dissent, I have some important observations.
Jackson dissents to the court&#8217;s decision on the grounds that it hides behind a “smokescreen” of “legalese,” by comparing the issues involved in the case to legal precedents in American and English jurisprudence. Instead of this process, sometimes known as “applying the law,” or “judging,” Jackson proposes a different standard called the “sassy black woman” test. In this test, also known as the “Jasmine Crockett standard,” all court decisions and other forms of reasoned discourse must be able to withstand a black woman putting her fist against one upraised hip and saying completely incomprehensible things in an aggressive sing-song voice while leaving the g’s off the endings of her words and using foul language to declare herself entitled to be heard despite the fact that she’s obviously a functional idiot. Furthermore, if said sassy black woman ends said tirade with the words “full stop,” any disagreement will immediately be deemed racist even if it can be shown that it’s not her skin color that’s at issue but only her functional idiocy.
Justice Jackson also writes in her dissent — and this is a real quote, “A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: ‘what good is the Constitution?’” This, of course, is a reference to the famous Martian clause in the founding documents of Planet Zeebeegununu in the Ratchet and Clank Solana Galaxy, which declares that the opinions of fictional extraterrestrials should be given priority, because, honey-child, these space aliens are way smarter than a fool like you, full stop. 
All in all, I think we can agree that the Jackson dissent is a mind-bogglingly deep dissent, if you spell dissent d-e-s-c-e-n-t.
* * *
This excerpt is taken from the opening satirical monologue of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-andrew-klavan-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Andrew Klavan Show</a>.”
Andrew Klavan is the host of “The Andrew Klavan Show” at The Daily Wire. Klavan is the bestselling author of numerous books, including the Cameron Winter Mystery series. The fourth installment, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613165536?ref_=dbs_m_mng_rwt_calw_thcv_3&amp;storeType=ebooks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">A Woman Underground.</a>” His most recent nonfiction release is “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kingdom-Cain-Finding-Literature-Darkness/dp/0310368340/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=nMYjR&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_p=bc3ba8d1-5076-4ab7-9ba8-a5c6211e002d&amp;pf_rd_r=133-8344803-2786917&amp;pd_rd_wg=7a8J3&amp;pd_rd_r=5791ea0f-6d96-4732-9d6a-3a4e6b348bb5&amp;ref_=aufs_ap_sc_dsk" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Kingdom of Cain: Finding God in the Literature of Darkness.</a>” (May 2025, Zondervan/HarperCollins). Follow him on X: <a href="https://x.com/andrewklavan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@andrewklavan</a>
The views expressed in this satirical article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

President Biden Delivers State Of The Union Address

Justice Jackson Invokes Famous ‘Martian Clause’ In Dissent

Justice Jackson Invokes Famous 'Martian Clause' In Dissent

Andrew Klavan

Humor

ketanji brown jackson

satire

SCOTUS

trump administration

Justice Amy Coney Barrett may have penned the majority opinion in the Supreme Court&#8217;s recent case on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions. But it was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her dissent that landed in the spotlight — and not in a good way.
In her opinion for the 6-3 majority in Trump v. Casa, INC, Barrett <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/justice-amy-coney-barrett-lays-the-legal-smackdown-on-justice-ketanji-brown-jackson">jabbed at Jackson</a>, suggesting that her dissent was &#8220;untethered&#8221; to any past precedent and stood in direct opposition to the Constitution.
&#8220;We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON’S argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries’ worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary,&#8221; Barrett wrote.
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But a closer look at Jackson&#8217;s dissent reveals that Barrett left out some of the strangest rabbit holes down which Jackson attempted to take the Court.
&#8220;A Martian arriving here from another planet would see these circumstances and surely wonder: &#8216;what good is the Constitution, then?'&#8221; Jackson wrote in her dissent.
&#8220;What, really, is this system for protecting people’s rights if it amounts to this—placing the onus on the victims to invoke the law’s protection, and rendering the very institution that has the singular function of ensuring compliance with the Constitution powerless to prevent the Government from violating it? &#8216;Those things Americans call constitutional rights seem hardly worth the paper they are written on!'&#8221;
Jackson was roundly mocked for adding a parenthetical &#8220;wait for it,&#8221; ostensibly to give her dissent a dramatic pause.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
KBJ’s dissent actually includes the phrase…wait for it… <a href="https://t.co/AGMu2KQULB">pic.twitter.com/AGMu2KQULB</a>
— Not the Bee (@Not_the_Bee) <a href="https://twitter.com/Not_the_Bee/status/1939002006913614116?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 28, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;As I understand the concern, in this clash over the respective powers of two coordinate branches of Government, the majority sees a power grab — but not by a presumably lawless Executive choosing to act in a manner that flouts the plain text of the Constitution. Instead, to the majority, the power-hungry actors are . . . (wait for it) . . . the district courts.&#8221;
Throughout her dissent, Jackson — whom President Joe Biden named to the Court after <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bidens-supreme-court-pick-championed-advocates-of-critical-race-theory-in-lectures-speeches">pledging</a> to nominate a black woman — gives no quarter to the possibility that district courts, by dramatically increasing the power and reach of their own decisions based solely on their demand that it be so, actually are the ones participating in a &#8220;power grab&#8221; — nor does she consider the possibility that an executive acting in a way that she dislikes is not necessarily a lawless one.

President Biden Delivers Remarks On Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation To Supreme Court

Biden’s Lone SCOTUS Pick Wonders What Aliens Would Think Of The Court’s Latest Decision

Biden's Lone SCOTUS Pick Wonders What Aliens Would Think Of The Court's Latest Decision

donald trump

When the Justices on the Supreme Court are at odds over major and often contentious issues, the verbal jabs and sometimes even insults that typically play out behind closed doors can make their way into written opinions — and in the case of Trump v. CASA, Inc., Justice Amy Coney Barrett did not disappoint.
Barrett penned the majority opinion in the case that revolves around the idea of birthright citizenship and whether it should apply to the children of illegal aliens — but also tackles the issue of the universal injunctions, being handed down on a regular basis by cherry-picked judges in liberal courts in an attempt to prevent President Donald Trump from implementing his policies.
Trump cheered the win in a post to his Truth Social platform, saying, &#8220;GIANT WIN in the United States Supreme Court! Even the Birthright Citizenship Hoax has been, indirectly, hit hard. It had to do with the babies of slaves (same year!), not the SCAMMING of our Immigration process. Congratulations to Attorney General Pam Bondi, Solicitor General John Sauer, and the entire DOJ.&#8221;
But in addition to laying out the Court&#8217;s opinion, Barrett took the opportunity to deliver a few precision strikes on the body&#8217;s newest justice, appointed by former President Joe Biden, Ketanji Brown Jackson. Barrett&#8217;s remarks aimed at Jackson — who is perhaps best known for her inability to answer, on direct questioning, &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/yes-judge-ketanji-brown-jackson-can-define-woman-the-woke-left-just-wont-let-her">what is a woman?</a>&#8221; — paint a clear picture of a justice more interested in activism than a Constitutional reading and application of the law.
Barrett began by addressing the principal dissent — which was joined by Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan, but written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor — and then panned Jackson&#8217;s by comparison.
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&#8220;The principal dissent focuses on conventional legal terrain, like the Judiciary Act of 1789 and our cases on equity,&#8221; Barrett wrote. &#8220;JUSTICE JACKSON, however, chooses a startling line of attack that is tethered neither to these sources nor, frankly, to any doctrine whatsoever. Waving away attention to the limits on judicial power as a &#8216;mind-numbingly technical query &#8230; she offers a vision of the judicial role that would make even the most ardent defender of judicial supremacy blush. In her telling, the fundamental role of the courts is to &#8216;order everyone (including the Executive) to follow the law — full stop.'&#8221;
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Amazing. Justice Barrett goes straight after Justice Jackson’s inability to do law. Jackson wants to tell the entire executive branch what to do and refuses to comply with Constitutional limitations. Insanely dangerous, and Barrett is right to call it out. <a href="https://t.co/lRmkQvEgYZ">pic.twitter.com/lRmkQvEgYZ</a>
— May Mailman (@MayMailman) <a href="https://twitter.com/MayMailman/status/1938605036184990038?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Still referencing Jackson&#8217;s dissent in the case, Barrett wrote, &#8220;We will not dwell on JUSTICE JACKSON&#8217;S argument, which is at odds with more than two centuries&#8217; worth of precedent, not to mention the Constitution itself. We observe only this: JUSTICE JACKSON decries an imperial Executive while embracing an imperial Judiciary.&#8221;
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Amy Coney Barrett pulls no punches on judicial authoritarianism. Says Jackson is at odds with “the Constitution itself” and “ decries an imperial executive while embracing an imperial judiciary.”
This is good ACB! <a href="https://t.co/vPFGm078qd">pic.twitter.com/vPFGm078qd</a>
— Megan Basham (@megbasham) <a href="https://twitter.com/megbasham/status/1938629561601888502?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2025</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Observing the limits on judicial authority — including, as relevant here, the boundaries of the Judiciary Act of 1789 — is required by a judge’s oath to follow the law,&#8221; Barrett continued, adding, &#8220;JUSTICE JACKSON skips over that part. Because analyzing the governing statute involves boring &#8216;legalese,&#8217; post, at 3, she seeks to answer &#8216;a far more basic question of enormous practical significance: May a federal court in the United States of America order the Executive to follow the law?&#8217; Ibid. In other words, it is unecessary to consider whether Congress has constrained the Judiciary; what matters is how the Judiciary may constrain the Executive. JUSTICE JACKSON would do well to heed her own admonition: &#8216;[E]veryone, from the President on down, is bound by law.&#8217; Ibid. That goes for judges too.&#8221;
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More of Barrett nuking Jackson from orbit: <a href="https://t.co/joKaIdtr0v">pic.twitter.com/joKaIdtr0v</a>
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) <a href="https://twitter.com/conncarroll/status/1938606567508644039?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2025</a></blockquote>
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Senate Holds Confirmation Hearing For Amy Coney Barrett To Be Supreme Court Justice

Justice Amy Coney Barrett Lays The Legal Smackdown On Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

What Is A Woman

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump announced his first wave of his judicial nominees on Tuesday, a highly-anticipated event given the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-leonard-leos-plan-for-conservatives-to-crush-liberal-dominance">massive impact</a> Trump had on the federal judiciary during his last administration.
The nominations comes as top Trump administration officials — and Trump himself — daily express their frustration with judges who immediately block the president&#8217;s orders. As recently as Wednesday morning, Trump posted on Truth Social: &#8220;Our Court System is not letting me do the job I was Elected to do. Activist judges must let the Trump Administration deport murderers, and other criminals who have come into our Country illegally, WITHOUT DELAY!!!&#8221;
Trump <a href="https://x.com/TheElizMitchell/status/1919868297916391549">promised The Daily Signal&#8217;s Elizabeth Mitchell</a> on Sunday evening that he would release his nominee names &#8220;rapidly,&#8221; noting, “We’re putting them in rapidly and trying to get very good ones.&#8221; Several nominees came from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey&#8217;s office, Bailey pointed out on Wednesday, boasting: &#8220;Missouri is leading the way in restoring legal excellence to the federal bench.&#8221;
First came the nomination of Whitney D. Hermandorfer of Tennessee, a former clerk for Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh, to serve as a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Her nomination drew quick criticism from leftist critics and judicial groups, such as the Leadership Conference on Civil &amp; Human Rights, which called her nomination “appalling.&#8221;
Trump described her as &#8220;a staunch defender of girl&#8217;s and women&#8217;s sports,&#8221; and Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) praised her career as &#8220;nothing short of outstanding,&#8221; dubbing her &#8220;a rising star in Tennessee.&#8221;
Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti said in a statement that &#8220;Whitney Hermandorfer&#8217;s unwavering commitment to the rule of law, her exacting analytical rigor, and her unshakeable optimism will serve our country well.&#8221;
JCN&#8217;s Carrie Severino predicted that Trump&#8217;s other nominees will face criticism from left-wing groups as well,<a href="https://x.com/JCNSeverino/status/1920169760408363483"> warning</a>, &#8220;Expect to see more of the same duplicated attacks from the Left on the president’s judicial picks as we did with Hermandorfer.&#8221;
The Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Thomas Jipping <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/the-judicial-appointment-train-is-leaving-the-station/">offered</a> a similar prediction: &#8220;Expect more of this mantra, with the name of the current nominee cut and pasted, in the months ahead.&#8221;
Trump also nominated a former clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas, Joshua M. Divine of Missouri, to serve as judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri and Western District of Missouri. Divine also previously served as chief counsel to Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley and is currently the Solicitor General of Missouri.
<div id="attachment_917233" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-announces-first-wave-of-judicial-nominees-amid-fury-from-left-wing-activists/neil-gorsuch-is-sworn-in-as-associate-justice-to-supreme-court-2" rel="attachment wp-att-917233"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-917233" class="wp-image-917233 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-666855120-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-666855120-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-666855120-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-666855120-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/05/GettyImages-666855120.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" /></a>(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;Joshua has devoutly served the Great State of Missouri, as the State’s Solicitor General and, previously, as Chief Counsel to Senator Josh Hawley, a true Patriot,&#8221; the president said in a Truth Social post. &#8220;A former Clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Joshua knows what is required to protect the Rule of Law and Constitutional Rights for the Great People of Missouri. We must have Constitutionalist Judges now, more than EVER BEFORE. Congratulations Joshua!&#8221;
Trump tapped Zachary Bluestone to serve as judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. Bluestone (described by Trump as a &#8220;true legal warrior&#8221; as well as &#8220;tough, smart, and LOVES our great country&#8221;) is currently appellate chief and a violent crimes prosecutor in the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri and previously served in the Missouri Attorney General’s Office as Deputy Solicitor General.
Maria A. Lanahan, the current principal deputy solicitor general in the Missouri Attorney General&#8217;s Office, has been nominated to serve as a judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, and Cristian M. Stevens, who served as first assistant attorney general and deputy attorney general of the criminal division in the Missouri Attorney General&#8217;s Office, is also nominated to serve as judge on the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.
Trump described Stevens as &#8220;a Great Patriot,&#8221; and Lanahan as &#8220;a very Smart and Talented Lawyer&#8221; who &#8220;will do GREAT work in this new role.&#8221;
The last Trump nominee is Edward Aloysius O’Connell, whom Trump is nominating to serve as an associate judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. O&#8217;Connell is currently the chief of staff and deputy general council of the Office of the Inspector General of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. He has spent the past two decades serving as a prosecutor in the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia.
&#8220;Eddie will help fix Violent Crime in the City by restoring the RULE OF LAW to Washington, D.C.,&#8221; Trump posted on Wednesday evening. &#8220;Eddie served for nearly two decades as a Tough on Crime Prosecutor for the Office of the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, where he prosecuted many Horrific Crimes, including Homicides, Domestic Violence, Organized Crime, Narcotics Offenses, and more. D.C. could, and should, be a wonderful place, if political hacks would stop making such terrible decisions.&#8221;
&#8220;I know Eddie will help make everyone much safer,&#8221; the president added. &#8220;Congratulations Eddie!&#8221;
Demand Justice, one of the most vocal leftist activism groups opposing the president&#8217;s nominees, this week accused Trump&#8217;s nominees of having  &#8220;extreme backgrounds&#8221; and arguing that their resumes &#8220;signal Trump’s intent to continue to transform the federal judiciary into another arm of the MAGA movement by appointing loyalist judges who will rubber stamp his most controversial and lawless policies.&#8221;
&#8220;These state AGs have aggressively used their offices to advance the MAGA agenda and, in one case, even to protect Trump himself from legal accountability,&#8221; the group argued.
“Trump’s first slate of nominees is exactly what we predicted–it includes loyalists who have a proven record of advocating for the kinds of radical policies featured in the Project 2025 agenda,&#8221; claimed Demand Justice Interim Executive Director Maggie Jo Buchanan. &#8220;While Trump and his allies continue to attack fair-minded jurists, he is also going after the independence of our courts by appointing politically motivated lawyers who will greenlight his extreme agenda from the bench.&#8221;

US-CHINA-POLITICS-DIPLOMACY

Trump Announces First Wave Of Judicial Nominees Amid Fury From Left-Wing Activists

9th Circuit

Conservative Supreme Court justices suggested approval for the nation&#8217;s first taxpayer-funded Catholic charter school in a landmark case that could dramatically expand religious freedom in American education.
St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, proposed by two Oklahoma Catholic dioceses, would offer K-12 education with an explicitly religious curriculum as a state-funded charter school.
Hundreds of families have already signed up while the school awaits the resolution of legal challenges, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/us-supreme-court-mulls-legality-milestone-religious-charter-school-2025-04-30/">according</a> to Reuters.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh pushed back against the state&#8217;s exclusion of religion during arguments, stating: &#8220;&#8230; You can&#8217;t treat religious people and religious institutions and religious speech as second class in the United States,&#8221; adding that excluding religious schools &#8220;seems like rank discrimination.&#8221;
Attorney James Campbell, a lawyer for the state&#8217;s charter school board that approved St. Isidore, told Justice Kavanaugh that Oklahoma already permits charter schools with specific themes, noting that only religion seemed to be off limits, the Associated Press <a href="https://apnews.com/article/supreme-court-religious-catholic-charter-school-oklahoma-983ed57aabeae53e4b58367c5021f5e1">reported</a>.
“They’re not asking for special treatment, not asking for favoritism,” Kavanaugh concurred. “They’re just saying, ’Don’t treat us worse because we’re religious.&#8217;”
Chief Justice John Roberts challenged both sides of the argument, and will likely be the swing vote after Justice Amy Coney Barrett recused herself without an explanation. She is a former Notre Dame Law School professor, a major supporter of publicly funded religious charter schools.
&#8220;This does strike me as a much more comprehensive involvement,&#8221; Roberts said, distinguishing it from earlier cases involving &#8220;limited state benefits, such as playground improvements, tuition and tax credits.&#8221;
The court’s three liberal justices were in uniform opposition to the charter school’s creation, with Justice Sotomayor <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/2024/24-394_1b72.pdf">saying</a>, “What would you do with a charter school that doesn’t want to teach evolution? Or doesn’t want to teach history, including the history of slavery?”
In the event of a 4-4 tie, the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s 6-2 ruling blocking the creation of St. Isidore would be left in place, which deemed the charter school a &#8220;governmental entity&#8221; that would violate constitutional limits on government involvement in religion.
The case has divided Oklahoma Republicans, with Governor Kevin Stitt and the Trump administration backing the school, while Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond opposes it, per Reuters.
If approved, St. Isidore would represent a significant shift in American education by becoming the first publicly funded charter school with an explicitly religious curriculum.
The Supreme Court&#8217;s decision is expected by the end of June.

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