Justice Amy Coney Barrett, appointed to the Supreme Court by Donald Trump in 2020, is facing backlash from some within the MAGA movement, who question her allegiance to Trump’s agenda. Despite a consistent record of conservative rulings on major issues such as abortion and affirmative action, Barrett has drawn criticism from Trump loyalists for recent decisions where she diverged from their preferred outcomes.
The frustration intensified following two closely contested 5-4 rulings in which Barrett’s vote proved pivotal. In one case, she sided with the majority to block a Trump administration initiative that sought to withhold payments from contractors working with the U.S. Agency for International Development. The decision sparked immediate condemnation from prominent figures in Trump’s orbit.
Mike Davis, a former clerk for Justice Neil Gorsuch and a vocal right-wing activist, disparaged Barrett as “a rattled law professor with her head up her a—,” portraying her as weak and indecisive. Other hard-right influencers, including Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer, sought to discredit her by branding her a “DEI judge,” a term used to disparage diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, noted NBC News. Loomer specifically labeled Barrett a “DEI appointee,” citing Trump’s prior pledge to nominate a woman to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Even her demeanor has become a target. A brief moment between Barrett and Trump during his recent congressional address led some MAGA influencers, including Rogan O’Handley (known online as DC_Draino), to interpret her facial expression as “bitter,” suggesting it reflected animosity toward the former president.
Oh boy
Look at how Justice Amy Coney Barrett looks at our duly elected President, the man who put her on the Supreme Court
She looks very bitter
No wonder why she keeps ruling with the liberals against him
What the heck ACB?! pic.twitter.com/Q9SDqTUcyg
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) March 5, 2025
Supporters of Barrett dismiss these criticisms, emphasizing that she remains a staunch conservative and arguing that expecting unwavering loyalty to Trump rather than an independent judicial philosophy is misguided. Barrett herself has not publicly addressed the attacks.
The National Review explained: “Over the last four years, I’ve disagreed with Barrett a few times, but never because I’ve thought she was playing games, engineering a preferred outcome, or giving in to political pressure. As a former legal academic, Barrett clearly has some procedural preferences — she’s more hawkish on standing than many, she’s skeptical of the virtues of the emergency docket, and she dislikes reaching the merits of a big case when the details aren’t entirely clear — and she follows those preferences rigorously. As far as I can see, this is what she did here. While I agreed with the dissent rather than the majority (which did not present much of an argument), the fact that (1) temporary restraining orders are not supposed to be appealable and (2) the facts of this particular case were hotly disputed made a comprehensible Barrett-esque case against the Court’s getting involved this time. Were I a Supreme Court justice, I’d have come to the opposite conclusion, but my dissent would have been narrow rather than perplexed. This was not the sort of unmoored, mystical, shapeless garbage that we routinely got from John Paul Stevens, David Souter, and Anthony Kennedy, and nobody should allow themselves to be persuaded otherwise.
To look at these narrow foibles and conclude that Barrett was a poor choice by Donald Trump thus strikes me as extreme and ridiculous. To go one further and complain that the problem with Barrett is that she does not automatically vote with the Trump administration strikes me as corrupt. Barrett is an excellent justice who takes her job seriously. Sometimes, her attachment to her prerequisites is going to benefit the team that appointed her, and sometimes it is not. Which is the whole point of the judiciary — or at least ought to be.”
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