What is the job of the American judiciary?
If you said to decide cases based on the law and the U.S. Constitution, you would be correct—unless you’re playing by MAGA rules. Rabid supporters of Donald Trump, and the president himself, have a different view of what judges are for. In their opinion, judges should be loyalists, backing whatever the president does, no matter how unconstitutional. And they’re putting us all in jeopardy.
Judges who have ruled against Trump and his policies have come under MAGA fire, with some facing dire threats. The latest target—in fact, a perennial target—of this ire is Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who found herself in the crosshairs over a dissent objecting to the Trump administration’s decision to implement an obscure and more than two-centuries-old law (intended for use in times of war) to deport migrants they claimed were gang members, without due process.
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Barrett didn’t even sign on to the whole dissent, which was penned by Sonia Sotomayor, but she did join a section saying that anyone being deported was entitled to due process, that they must have the option of a court hearing. The other conservative justices sided with Trump and allowed deportations to continue, at least for now, although they said that individuals being targeted for removal from the U.S. must be advised thereof, and must have the option to challenge their deportation in federal court.
(Barrett was also part of the Court’s unanimous decision Thursday calling for the Trump administration to “facilitate” the return of a man mistakenly deported to a prison in El Salvador.)
Cue the right-wing meltdown.
“Is anyone thinking today… ‘Please no more women on the Supreme Court!‘” asked right-wing X personality Catturd. After Sen. Mike Lee tweeted his disappointment over Barrett’s position, Elon Musk replied, “Suicidal empathy is a civilizational risk.” His followers then opined on the fundamental problems with women in the Supreme Court: “Women tend to think with emotion instead of logic,” “liberal women are a true threat to society,” and so on. Conservative provocateur Ann Coulter tweeted a photo of Coney Barrett with her children, two of whom are adoptees from Haiti, adding the comment, “Who could have seen that coming?”
Another commonly stated objection was that, as Trump had appointed Barrett, her ruling against him was disloyal. Trump “gave her her dream job and complimented her and praised her—and she’s been an ungrateful, backstabbing POS since day one,” Catturd tweeted again, calling her “Amy Commie Barrett.” Failed Republican politician Tricia Flanagan tweeted, “Here’s the simple truth that no one wants to admit—most women are not emotionally fit to be on the Supreme Court,” because “women tend to be more emotionally vulnerable.”
Laura Loomer added, “Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee.”
We’re in a new political universe now, one in which the chief presumption is that white men are inherently qualified for their roles while women and racial minorities are presumptively not. In some ways, this is very retro, harking back to days when these groups were formally excluded from public office, many jobs and public participation, and when various white male authority figures would opine on their lack of aptitude for these roles.
But MAGA ideology is even worse: A person’s professional and social fitness is determined solely by loyalty to a single strong man. Intelligence, credentials, experience, expertise, even the basic ability to function as a working adult? None of that matters. This is how we get Trump’s Cabinet stacked with some of the least qualified people to set foot in the Senate chamber at the same time as his administration rails against DEI. The same party that claims to abhor identity politics actually adopts the most extreme version of it, one in which white men are considered deserving of all power, influence, and confidence by virtue of who they are, regardless of any qualifications.
There are some tenuous exceptions to this rule, and they apply to women and racial minorities who prove their unbending loyalty to the leader. That isn’t Coney Barrett. She is a staunch conservative and an anti-feminist—hardly a friend to liberals or a reflexive anti-Trumper—but she does not behave as if her entire role is to back the president. She is a judge, not a Twitter-addicted MAGA activist. And that makes her a MAGA enemy.
This is because the MAGA movement is an authoritarian one, and Trump is an authoritarian president. One thing authoritarians do (or try to do) is take over judiciaries. If these leaders can take over constitutional courts, either by stacking them with judges willing to subvert the rule of law or by intimidating others so that they override the law’s limits, then they can rule with at least the veneer of legitimacy.
Trump has done both. In his first term, he appointed a series of startlingly unqualified federal judges—people who had never sat on the bench, who so lacked the basic ability to do their jobs that the decidedly non-partisan American Bar Association raised concerns. This has been a key strategy for staffing his White House more broadly; after all, elevating people who would never be in any position of power without you and who have no professional future outside of you is an efficient way to engender loyalty.
Where carrots haven’t worked, though, Trump and his MAGA movement have gotten out sticks. They have gone after judges, elected officials and commentators alike for the grave sin of not adequately backing the regime, leveling death threats and pushing some politicians to hire private security. The threats against some public figures were so serious that the Biden administration gave them protective details—which Trump promptly ended. Some Republicans have reportedly said in private that they hesitate to oppose Trump because they’re so afraid.
Judges are among our last bulwarks against full-on fascism. MAGA extremists know this as well as liberals and genuine patriots who believe America’s constitution trumps any one American president. The bullying of Amy Coney Barrett serves two purposes, then: It seeks to intimidate all of those who might stand up to Trump, and it reminds women that the MAGA movement believes our place in public life is purely ornamental.
