Whenever Justice Amy Coney Barrett arrived at an auditorium or a library or a university last month to discuss her new book, she encountered a familiar sight: protesters.
They lined the streets, chanting and carrying signs. One wore a handmaid’s costume, a symbol of oppression. Another was dressed as liberal icon Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose death in 2020 created a vacancy on the Supreme Court that President Trump would fill with Barrett.
For Barrett, protesters have become routine, another logistical wrinkle in her everyday life, much like the ones who regularly gather at her home outside Washington, D.C., where she lives with her husband and younger children. What surprises her, she told me in a wide-ranging interview in her chambers late last month, is how she can let it roll off her back.
It seems to have started with McConnell cheating Obama out of appointments, then we got Citizens United, a couple unfortunately timed deaths, and what were witnessing now is the result. History won’t be kind to this court and it shouldn’t, many rightfully view it as illegitimate.