Trump Allies Turn on Amy Coney Barrett

Two conservative Supreme Court justices sided with the court's three liberal members in this week's decision on USAID payments—but Justice Amy Coney Barrett is taking a lot more flak than Chief Justice John Roberts. Some conservative commentators, calling Barrett a "closet Democrat," have suggested Trump made a mistake in choosing her for the court in 2020. Barrett has generally sided with conservatives in major cases, including those on abortion and affirmative action, but she has shown an independent streak that has caused some to accuse of disloyalty to Trump, NBC News reports.

• "DEI hire." Some critics argued that Barrett was only chosen because she was a woman, reports the Washington Post. "She is evil, chosen solely because she checked identity politics boxes," conservative activist Mike Cernovich said in a post on X. "Another DEI hire. It always ends badly." Steve Bannon, among others, claimed she had given Trump "stink eye" when he greeted justices before his address to Congress on Tuesday.

• A decisive vote. The ruling against Trump's emergency request was provisional, but Barrett's vote "suggested that the president cannot count on the court backing every element of his efforts to expand the authority of the executive branch," the New York Times reports. The Times predicts that her vote will be a decisive one in future cases involving limits on presidential authority. In January, Barrett voted to deny Trump's request to block sentencing in his New York criminal case.
• Defenders praise her resolve. Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who studied under Barrett, tells NBC News that she is unlikely to be shaken by the criticism. "She has the resolve to be on the court just like the other justices do," he says, adding that justices know "unpopularity is not a measure of what a judge is doing."
• "An excellent justice who takes her job seriously." Charles CW Cooke, a conservative writer at the National Review, says that while he doesn't agree with Barrett's decision this time, "she has a coherent and thoughtful approach toward the law" and there is no sign that the decision to leave a lower court's order in place was motivated by hostility to Trump. Cooke notes that Barrett has some "procedural preferences"—including being more "hawkish on standing" than many— and follows them rigorously. To "complain that the problem with Barrett is that she does not automatically vote with the Trump administration strikes me as corrupt," he writes. "Barrett is an excellent justice who takes her job seriously."

(More Amy Coney Barrett stories.)