When President Donald Trump appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020, liberals and progressives attacked her as a hardcore social conservative ideologue who would move the Court far to the right. And Barrett, who considered the late Justice Antonin Scalia a major inspiration, was among the five GOP-appointed justices who, in 2022, voted to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years. Yet in 2026, Barrett often draws biting criticism from far-right MAGA Republicans — attacks that, according to The New Republic's Steve Kennedy, show how extreme the right-wing legal movement's standards now are.
"The conservative legal movement finally caught the car in Trump's first term and secured a supermajority of right-wing justices willing to impose their vision on the country," Kennedy explains. "But under Trump, the movement has so thoroughly radicalized itself that even solid conservatives like Justice Amy Coney Barrett supposedly can't be trusted. Conservatives' refrain, for decades, had been 'no more Souters,' referring to Justice David Souter, a George H.W. Bush appointee who drifted leftward after joining the court. Now, even though they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, gut the Voting Rights Act, kill the administrative state, and many more longtime conservative goals, the call has shifted to 'No more Souters. No more Robertses. No more Barretts.'"
According to Kennedy, the right-wing legal movement's purity tests are so severe in 2026 that "even some of Trump's most extreme" picks for the lower federal courts "are taking heat."
"Consider Fifth Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham," Kennedy observes. "Oldham is a Federalist Society favorite whom Trump nominated to the country's most MAGA-influenced appeals court during his first term, and as expected, the judge has turned out to be an aggressive culture warrior and Trump stalwart widely discussed as a potential future Supreme Court nominee. Oldham has built his reputation on extreme opinions attacking administrative agencies, voting protections, abortion rights, and immigrants, often in rhetoric designed more to provoke than persuade. Oldham pushes such far-right legal ideas that even the highly conservative Supreme Court regularly reverses his opinions as steps too far."
Kennedy continues, "Despite Oldham’s clear record supporting right-wing priorities, conservative commentators have called him a 'meh in robes' and said that his potential nomination doesn't even pass the 'laugh test'…. When even judges like Andrew Oldham are considered potential Souters, it is clear that there is no limiting principle."
The Federalist Society and conservative legal movement achieved their long-term goals during Trump's first term, securing a six-justice conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court.
This coalition has successfully overturned major precedents and rolled back decades of progressive jurisprudence. However, the movement's ideological standards have become so extreme that even its own appointees—justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade and dismantle the Voting Rights Act—now face accusations of insufficient conservatism from hardline MAGA Republicans.
