Trump-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett says she has come to terms with being “unpopular” over her controversial Supreme Court rulings.
Speaking at a D.C. event to promote her new book, Barrett—who has come under fire from MAGA world for some of her decisions—admitted she’s had to tune out the backlash she gets from all political sides.
“To do this job, you have to be willing to be unpopular,” the 53-year-old said.
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“There’s a little bit of an element of loneliness because you never know who is going to criticize you and who is not,” she added. “But the job is to tune it out and do the right thing anyway.”
Barrett was also confronted by hecklers as she took the stage, resulting in two people being removed by security.
“Why don’t you explain how you treat trans people?” one woman yelled in the audience before she was escorted out. “You’re a terrible person!”
During her 45-minute appearance at the annual Library of Congress National Book Festival, Barrett gave a rare but tepid glimpse into life on the U.S. Supreme Court, avoiding tricky topics such as the Trump administration’s policies or her role in overturning abortion rights in America.
But she revealed that she initially hesitated joining the bench after the White House approached her in 2020, partly because it would involve moving her seven children to Washington and also because she knew the Senate confirmation process would be “difficult.”
“I needed to think about it,” she said.
Barrett was nominated by Trump months before the 2020 election after the death of liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg created a hotly contested vacancy.
Her appointment gave Trump his third Supreme Court pick and the 6-3 conservative majority that has overwhelmingly ruled in his favor on everything from abortion and gun rights, to transgender care and presidential immunity.
But Barrett has faced the wrath of MAGA in recent months, too—and the private frustration of the president himself—over some of her decisions.
In March, for example, she voted to reject Trump’s attempt to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid, prompting legal commentator Mike Davis to declare on Steve Bannon’s podcast, “She’s a rattled law professor with her head up her a--.”
Earlier in January, Barrett sided with Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a fellow conservative, and the liberal justices of the court to allow Trump to be sentenced in his so-called “hush money” trial.
And in May, she enraged MAGA Republicans by recusing herself from an Oklahoma charter school case, which concerned a bid to create the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school.
“Amy Coney Barrett was a DEI appointee,” far-right influencer Laura Loomer wrote on X alongside a photo of the Justice’s children. Two of them are adopted from Haiti, and her youngest biological child has Down Syndrome.
Speaking in D.C to promote her book, Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution, Barrett spoke about the camaraderie shared by the nine justices of the Supreme Court, which also includes conservative Justices Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and liberal Justices Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Sonia Sotamayer.
“I think it’s one thing that surprises people: that the justices get along,” she said, citing the unlikely friendship between late conservative Justice Antonin Scalia and Bader Ginsburg.
“It’s heated, and there’s a lot of debate on the page, but I think that you can be like Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsburg were—even though they disagreed really vehemently, often in cases, you can be friends.”
During her softball interview with philanthropist David Rubenstein, she did not, however, go into detail about any of the scathing dissents her liberal colleagues have issued in recent months on issues such as birthright citizenship, nationwide injunctions, and transgender rights.
Nor did she discuss her role in repealing Roe v. Wade, although her book makes clear that she believes the court had no right to declare a federal constitutional right to abortion in the first place.
Listening to the Law will be published on September 9, with Barrett reportedly securing a $2 million advance to write it.
Asked if she would write a second book in the future, she replied, “No—I think this is a kind of one-and-done.”
