Conservative National Review slams MAGA for 'abuse of' Amy Coney Barrett

Many MAGA Republicans exploded in anger when conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with Chief Justice John Roberts and three Democratic appointees — Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — in Trump v. Barbara, which invalidated an executive order by President Donald Trump calling for an end to birthright citizenship. This wasn't the first time MAGA Republicans raged against Barrett, and an editorial by the conservative National Review calls out MAGA "abuse of" the Trump appointee.

Barrett has a decidedly conservative resumé, describing herself as an "originalist" and an admirer of the late Justice Antonin Scalia. But her willingness to occasionally buck MAGA and vote with the Democratic justices is infuriating MAGA Republicans and Trump loyalists.

"Criticism comes, rightly, with the territory of being a Supreme Court justice," the National Review editors argue in their editorial. "Hysteria shouldn't. With the conclusion of the 2025–26 Supreme Court term and Donald Trump's defeat on birthright citizenship, we have been treated to another round of abuse from right-leaning commentators directed toward Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The immediate trigger of their ire is Barrett's joining the Trump v. Barbara majority (along with Chief Justice John Roberts and, on the outcome, Justice Brett Kavanaugh) striking down Trump's executive order on birthright citizenship."

The Review editors continue, "Barrett critics also cite her majority opinion in Watson v. Republican National Committee, which allowed states to accept ballots postmarked by Election Day for up to five days later, as well as her vote, along with Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch, to strike down Trump's 'emergency' global tariffs and her rulings against Trump in a few of last summer's torrent of emergency decisions on deportations."

On the MAGA far right, the conservative justice is often attacked as "Amy 'Commie' Barrett" — which is the type of rhetoric the Review is calling out.

"It's the intemperate vitriol of these attacks, and their utter lack of perspective, that appalls us," the Review editors lament. "Critics brand Barrett a traitor, a DEI hire and a left-winger who has doomed the country. They complain that she makes poor decisions because she is a woman and a mother of adopted children from Haiti. Perhaps more ominously, there is much muttering that future Republicans should fill judicial vacancies with fewer people devoted to the law and more who will be mere party apparatchiks, voting in the results-oriented fashion we traditionally associate with the liberal justices…. No, we don't always agree with her, or with the Court's decisions since her arrival in 2020 formed the current 6–3 majority."

The Review editors continue, "Nor, for that matter, do we agree every single time with any of her distinguished colleagues. The Court's cases are often hard, and its justices fallible. That's why there are nine of them."