Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan on Tuesday appeared before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, where Barrett described in stark terms the escalating threats directed at her and her family since the fall of Roe v. Wade.
According to Gateway Pundit, Justice Barrett recounted how the climate around the Court deteriorated after the unprecedented leak of a draft opinion in May 2022, when Politico published Justice Samuel Alitos majority draft overturning Roe. In that draft, Alito declared, Roe was egregiously wrong from the start, adding, We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. It is time to heed the Constitution and return the issue of abortion to the peoples elected representatives.
Alito later made clear the gravity of that breach, stating, This made us targets of assassination, a warning that has since been borne out by a series of threats and plots against conservative justices. On Tuesday, Barrett revealed that her own children have been forced to confront this reality firsthand, recalling how her 12-year-old son discovered her bulletproof vest in their home.
I didnt expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one, Amy Coney Barrett said, underscoring the personal cost of serving on the nations highest court in an era of hyper-partisan rage. I was very, very grateful that I had Supreme Court police outside my home, she said, a quiet rebuke to those on the left who downplayed or excused protests and intimidation campaigns outside justices residences.
That danger is not theoretical. In May, police rushed to Barretts home after a report of suspicious noise believed to be gunfire, only to discover it was a swatting call once they met with her security detail. The call, which came through the Fairfax County non-emergency line, was part of a disturbing pattern of harassment aimed at silencing conservative jurists through fear.
The threats have extended beyond Barrett. In June 2022, a California man, Nicholas John Roske of Simi Valley, was arrested near the Maryland home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh after reportedly telling police he had come there to kill Kavanaugh, enraged over abortion and gun rights. The attempted assassination of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was a disgusting attack against our entire judicial system by a profoundly disturbed individual, said then-Attorney General Pamela Bondi, a reminder that when the lefts rhetoric paints conservative justices as illegitimate, it is the rule of lawand the safety of those who uphold itthat ultimately hangs in the balance.
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