Reviewing her voting record, there’s no denying Amy Coney Barrett’s conservative credentials.
Appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2020, she voted in favour of granting the US president immunity from criminal prosecution, ending affirmative action in college admissions and overturning Roe v Wade; restricting access to abortion for American women.
But this week she fell out of favour with Mr Trump’s Magabase after siding with one conservative and three liberal justices to reject the president’s freeze on foreign aid.
The ruling prompted a torrent of online hate by critics who called Ms Coney Barrett “evil”, a “DEI hire”, and a “closet Democrat”.
She has even been likened to Left-wing darling Greta Thunberg.
It was the second time in two-months that two Republican nominees – Justice Barrett and Chief Justice John G Roberts Jr — had voted with justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson to shoot down legally-contentious Trump policies.
Justice Barrett, a mother of seven, was rushed onto a lifetime position on the court by Mr Trump after Ruth Ginsburg, a liberal icon, died in September 2020.
Justice Barrett and her family at the White House in 2020. She has seven children, two of which are adopted – Stefani Reynolds
She joined the court just a month later, weeks before the 2020 presidential election.
At the time, her appointment was met with glee by Mr Trump’s supporters, who pointed to her lifelong opposition to expanding abortion rights.
As a law professor, she signed a statement in a newspaper in 2006 that opposed “abortion on demand”. Since then, she has voted to enhance constitutional protections for gun owners and protect Mr Trump from criminal prosecution.
But her recent votes on Supreme Court rulings have elicited severe backlash from the president’s base.
Last month, Supreme Court judges, including Justice Barrett, voted to block Mr Trump from removing the leader of an independent watchdog agency.
Last week, she voted to back a federal judge who ordered Mr Trump’s administration to begin repaying global health groups $2bn for completed work, the final straw for some Maga supporters who demanded she be impeached.
“Amy Coney Barrett was put on the Court to overturn Roe v Wade. Her work is done. Impeach and remove,” one post read.
Eric Daugherty, a Maga-supporting conservative media personality, said she was an “anti-Trump judge”.
“Democrats are loving Amy Coney Barrett lately. Tells you everything,” he said.
Justice Barrett signed a statement in a newspaper in 2006 that opposed ‘abortion on demand’ – Brian Branch Price
Meanwhile, Mike Cernovich, another conservative activist, labelled her “evil” and suggested she was selected to “check identity politics boxes”.
“Another DEI hire. It always ends badly,” he said.
But perhaps more important for critics than her voting record was her encounter with the US president last week.
In a clip that was widely shared on X, Mr Trump shook the hands of several Supreme Court justices, including Justice Barrett, after his State of the Union address.
According to the president’s supporters, her face showed her “disdain” for Mr Trump.
On his “War Room” podcast, former Trump adviser and Maga loyalist Steve Bannon said Justice Barrett had given the president the “stink eye”.
“That’s not a look of admiration,” he added.
Criticism of Justice Barrett, whose appointment was once targeted by Democrats, has divided the right.
While Maga activists are furious, other legal schools have leapt to her defence, highlighting her staunchly conservative voting record.
Justice Barrett voted with the court’s two most conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, more than 80 per cent of the time in the term that ended last year. By contrast, she voted with Justice Sotomayor less than 70 per cent of the time.
Ed Whelan, a conservative legal commentator, said he couldn’t believe the backlash she had received given that she helped to overturn Roe v Wade, which the American-Right had fought to achieve for decades.
“Justice Barrett has proven to be an outstanding conservative justice. Whether or not she got it right in denying the Trump administration the emergency relief it requested, it’s incredibly myopic for her critics to broadly condemn her for that vote,” Mr Whelan told the Telegraph.
Meanwhile, Robby Starbuck, a Trump-supporting conservative activist, told the Telegraph her appointment to the Supreme Court had been a mistake.
“Our standard should be that only people with a Clarence Thomas ideology should be nominated to the court,” he said.
The widespread backlash, at least for the moment, appears to be confined to Mr Trump’s base, with the president opting not to wade in.
Mr Trump and Justice Barrett after she was sworn in – BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI
But senior figures in his administration, including Elon Musk and JD Vance, have openly questioned the judiciary’s authority after facing pushback over the president’s agenda.
Mr Musk, a key Trump ally, has repeatedly called for “corrupt” judges to be impeached and say they should not be able to “stop every presidential action”.
“If any judge anywhere can stop every presidential action everywhere, we do not live in a democracy,” he posted last month.
Mr Vance also suggested a judge should not be able to block Mr Trump’s policies.
“If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a judge tried to command the attorney general in how to use her discretion as a prosecutor, that’s also illegal. Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power,” Mr Vance said over the weekend.
The comments were followed by a spike in threats of violence against the judiciary, according to 11 judges who spoke to Reuters.
Chief Justice Roberts, in his end-of-year report in 2024, warned about the rising number of threats against the judiciary’s independence, saying it was “dangerous” for elected officials to ignore court rulings they disagree with.
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