Appointed by Trump in 2020, Barrett has played a key role in several landmark conservative victories, including overturning Roe v. Wade, striking down affirmative action, and expanding Second Amendment rights.
Yet, despite her highly conservative record and devotion to an originalist jurisprudence tethered tightly to the Constitution, MAGA loyalists have begun to attack her, accusing her of betraying the conservative movement.
Trump loyalists reached a boiling point with Barrett on March 5 after she sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and the three Democratic-appointed justices — Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Ketanji Brown Jackson — to deny a plea by Trump to cancel a lower court’s order to pay $2 billion in federal foreign aid spending for already-completed work.
MAGA’s backlash against Trump’s third high court appointment
The 5-4 order let stand a decision by U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of President Joe Biden, angering Trump allies who saw it as an unnecessary roadblock to his executive authority.
Mike Davis, a former Supreme Court clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch and a staunch Trump supporter, attacked Barrett as “weak and timid,” adding, “She is a rattled law professor with her head up her a**.”
Influencers on the Right followed suit, including Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer, who called her a “DEI” judge in reference to Trump’s promise to appoint a woman to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Loomer went further, posting a picture of Barrett’s family, which includes two adopted black children from Haiti, to suggest she was never truly committed to the MAGA agenda.
Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee. pic.twitter.com/9uPAXmeBd8
— Laura Loomer (@LauraLoomer) March 5, 2025
Even Barrett’s body language toward Trump at the recent congressional address has been scrutinized, with conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley, @DC_Draino on X, claiming she looked at Trump with “bitterness.”
The scrutiny against Barrett’s misalignment from at least four other conservative members comes as the Democratic-appointed bloc of justices is siding together in nearly every case. Kagan, Sotomayor, and Jackson can often be found as a trio of dissenters in numerous cases before them. During the 2023-24 term, Kagan and Sotomayor were aligned in their votes approximately 97% of the time, highlighting a major degree of cohesion within the liberal bloc.
Court watchers defend Barrett
Barrett’s defenders have also emerged, arguing that the attacks are not only unfounded but misguided, ignoring her consistent conservative jurisprudence.
Derek Muller, a Notre Dame law professor who studied under Barrett, dismissed the notion that the justice would be swayed by online attacks, saying she understands that “unpopularity is not a measure of what a judge is doing.”
Similarly, Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, called the attacks on Barrett “despicable” and “sexist,” while noting that Supreme Court justices are not expected to follow “political orthodoxy” in every case.
Other experts see the MAGA outrage as uninformed posturing. Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western Reserve Law School, dismissed the idea that Barrett is a swing vote, calling it “bizarre” and noting that her voting record remains consistently conservative.
“If their job is to get sound bites on YouTube or talk radio, then outrage at every little thing—even if you don’t know what’s going on—makes sense,” Adler said. “If the goal is to provide insight, you might want to make sure you know what you’re talking about,” Adler told the Washington Examiner.
Prominent experts stand by Alito’s fiery dissent
Alan Dershowitz, a prominent constitutional lawyer, largely agreed with Alito’s aggravated dissent in the $2 billion foreign aid ruling. He suggested that Barrett and Roberts erred by allowing a lower court judge to compel the executive branch to spend taxpayer funds, calling it an overreach of judicial power.
“Does a single district court judge … have the unchecked power to compel the government of the United States to pay out $2 billion?” Alito wrote, joining Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh. “The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No.’”
Dershowitz, while acknowledging that checks and balances are important, agreed with Alito that a single federal judge should not have that level of authority over the presidency.
“What this is, although a final decision on this amount of aid that has already been earned, it’s not a final decision on the whole issue of who has the power to withhold, and if Congress has authorized it. Those are very complex issues,” Dershowitz said during his online show The Dershow.
Alito’s dissent in the foreign aid case has drawn widespread praise from conservative legal scholars, who see Barrett’s vote as a major misstep.
Josh Blackman, a law professor at South Texas College of Law, went so far as to suggest that Barrett should never have been appointed to the Supreme Court in the first place in an op-ed for Reason.
“If the goal was to give Chief Justice Roberts a wing-woman, mission accomplished,” Blackman added.
Data say Barrett isn’t a swing vote
Despite the outcry, legal experts emphasize that Barrett is not showing signs of becoming a swing justice in the mold of retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, who sat adjacent to Barrett during Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress on the night before the Supreme Court shot down his foreign aid freeze effort.
Kennedy, a Reagan appointee who sat on the court from 1988 to 2018, was a true swing vote who frequently sided with liberals on abortion, LGBT issues, and the death penalty. Barrett, in contrast, has ruled consistently with the conservative bloc in cases like Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), which overturned Roe v. Wade; Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which struck down race-based college admissions; and New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022), which expanded Second Amendment rights.
According to Adam Feldman’s Empirical SCOTUS blog, which keeps intricate records and statistics about the high court, Barrett was in the majority 92% of the time in the 2023-24 term, third only to Roberts (96%) and Kavanaugh (95%).
However, last term also saw some moments in which Barrett diverged from the conservative bloc. While she sided for Trump in the Trump v. United States immunity case, she penned a concurrence that suggested she may have narrowed the scope of the ruling embraced by the majority. She also dissented in the Fischer v. United States case last year, which dealt with charges against Jan. 6 rioters under obstruction laws, while liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the majority to limit the scope and application of an obstruction statute levied against dozens of Jan. 6 defendants.
GianCarlo Canaparo, a Heritage Foundation fellow, criticized Barrett and Roberts for siding against the Trump administration in the foreign aid case, arguing Alito’s approach was correct. He told the Washington Examiner the pair’s aligning with the liberal bloc could embolden Judge Ali to harm the Trump administration further, even with the possibility of holding it in contempt.
A Time article in 2019 described Kavanaugh as forming an “influential alliance” with Roberts, alongside Alito. Amid Barrett’s recent alignments with Roberts on the court’s “shadow docket,” some critics question whether she has fallen under his influence. Roberts, a frequent MAGA target despite being a Republican appointee, drew backlash for upholding Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Canaparo rejected the idea that more recently appointed justices should default to aligning with the chief justice, noting that Thomas, with his consistent judicial philosophy and who is the eldest member on the bench, offers an alternative and more “principled” guide.
“Why would that be the default?” Canaparo said. “You might not be a free agent like Thomas on day one, but that doesn’t mean you fall in line with the chief.”
He added, “A new justice may align with someone, but there’s no reason it should be the chief over anyone else.”
Is she objectively trending further from the Right?
As of now, there are simply not “enough data points” to determine whether she is moving closer in line with the chief justice’s judicial stride, Feldman told the Washington Examiner.
“She votes about 90% of the time” with Roberts and Kavanaugh in every passing term since her 2020 confirmation, he added, noting that while some critics hope she will succumb to their gripes, “I have a hard time believing that she will be susceptible to these comments.”
“What is interesting is that she has moved away from Thomas since she joined the Court (who I see as the conservative pole on the Court) and although it isn’t smooth, she has moved in the direction of Sotomayor who is on the left pole of the Court,” Feldman said.
Conclusion: Barrett remains conservative but not a partisan loyalist
Barrett is still one of the most conservative justices on the high court, but her unwillingness to bend to MAGA’s demands made her a target of scrutiny.
It is also crucial to emphasize that the foreign aid decision that enraged MAGA activists is likely headed back to the justices again at some point.
Ali is currently meting out a request for a preliminary injunction in that case, and if Trump is once again ordered to pay the $2 billion under another constrained deadline, he can restart the appeals process.
ALITO ‘STUNNED’ AFTER SUPREME COURT REJECTION OF TRUMP FOREIGN AID FREEZE
Additionally, Alito and three other justices appear ready to grant review of the case on the merits. It only takes four justices to grant certiorari, or agree to a merits argument before the full nine members.
Barrett’s record is clear: She is an originalist, a textualist, and a conservative judge — but not a rubber stamp for every last request made by the Trump administration, especially in underdeveloped cases.
