A new poll finds Justice Amy Coney Barrett has become the least-liked member of the Supreme Court, and a Vox analysis on Wednesday argued the reason should unsettle anyone watching whom President Donald Trump picks next.
Barrett, Trump’s third appointee, now carries the worst net favorability of any of the nine justices, according to an Economist/YouGov survey, sitting barely above water even within her own party. Overall approval of the court is 36 percent, with 80 percent of Democrats disapproving.
Vox senior correspondent Ian Millhiser traces the erosion of Republican support to two late-June rulings in which Barrett broke with Trump. She wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in the Mississippi mail-ballot case rejecting the RNC’s bid to toss late-arriving ballots, and joined the majority upholding birthright citizenship against Trump’s effort to end it.
The right was sent into a frenzy, with firebrand Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) calling for Barrett to be “removed from the Bench.” Right-wing podcaster Matt Walsh branded her a “DEI hire,” and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly called her a “turncoat.”
CNN reported last year that Trump himself had privately complained that she is “weak.”
Millhiser argued Barrett is hardly a moderate — she joined the decision overturning Roe — but that her occasional breaks involve questions the White House never screened for when it vetted her in 2020. The ominous part, he wrote, is what comes next.
“That’s one reason to keep an eye on the MAGA backlash against Barrett. Future Republican White Houses are more likely to vet any judicial nominee very closely to make sure that they will vote to abolish birthright citizenship, regardless of what the Constitution says,” he warned.