President Donald Trump was dealt another bruising loss from the Supreme Court on one of his biggest political goals, and as one GOP strategist argued for MS NOW, the typical backlash from his MAGA supporters was “especially galling” this time around, and called into question the movement’s treatment of the “moderate conservative woman.”
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As their term for the year came to an end, the court issued its hotly anticipated ruling in a case that would decide whether or not Trump had the authority to alter the definition of birthright citizenship, an idea that legal experts across the spectrum dismissed as beyond blatantly unconstitutional, given that Trump essentially attempted to invalidate the 14th Amendment without Congress. The justices ultimately ruled against him, but by a much slimmer margin than anticipated — 5-4 on the constitutional argument — raising alarms that conservatives may be encouraged to continue pursuing changes to birthright citizenship through different methods.
One of the justices in the majority for that ruling was Amy Coney Barrett, one of the three conservatives that Trump appointed to the court in his first term. Barrett has recently emerged as a conservative SCOTUS justice willing to break with the president on certain rulings, drawing considerable ire from his MAGA army as a result. This latest vote was no different, with various far-right voices calling for her to be removed from the court for her part in the birthright citizenship ruling, with some even going so far as to tar her as a “DEI” hire.
Writing MS NOW on Sunday, Republican strategist Susan Del Percio wrote that while “Misogyny in Trump world is nothing new,” there was “something especially galling about” the reactions to Barrett this time around, especially from voices in the conservative movement that one might have expected to do better.
“Misogyny in Trump world is nothing new. But there’s something especially galling about watching a once trailblazing woman like former Rep. Nancy Mace call for Barrett to be removed from the bench in what feels like a desperate attempt to stay relevant,” Del Percio wrote. “I didn’t see Mace, the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel in South Carolina, calling for the chief justice to be removed.”
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Del Percio further highlighted comments from far-right commentator Matt Walsh, who said in the wake of the ruling that “The worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women” and encouraged future Republican presidents to avoid nominating women to the bench in the future. She summed up this comment as “ragebait, pure and simple,” but also stressed that Walsh’s obvious motivations do not “make it any less gross,” and chastised Barrett’s critics for not calling out the male justices who vote the same way as she does, and for exhibiting the same behaviors they have spent decades claiming to hate when coming from liberals.
“As transparent as his motivations might be, they still do come at a cost,” Del Percio continued. “Barrett’s occasionally centrist legal opinions merely confirm the fact that she is, in fact, a principled and thoughtful jurist. But conservatives, who have spent the past decade heckling liberals about purity tests and cancel culture, are now demanding ideological subservience and judicial groupthink. And they are singling her out in a way they don’t seem to be doing with other conservatives on the court who sometimes side with liberals. Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, joined Barrett and the liberal majority to strike down Trump’s international tariffs earlier this year.”
She concluded: “When Barrett is demeaned by self-serving ideologues, every conservative, liberal and moderate member of the Supreme Court is diminished. America’s judicial system is one of our most treasured principles, and it is all of our jobs to defend it – not just when it is convenient, but even when we disagree with its conclusions.”
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