MAGA mirrors far left in calling Justice Barrett a 'DEI hire.' Knock it off. | Opinion
MAGA supporters are starting to mirror the far left. True conservatives applaud the independence of the Supreme Court and the judicial branch of our government.
Conservatives are winning.
President Donald Trump is back in the White House, and Republicans have majorities in the U.S. Senate and the House. They also control most state governments, which are increasingly important as Trump shrinks the federal payroll and the bureaucracy's power.
Trump last week gave one of his best speeches as millions of Americans watched, and Democrats looked ridiculous in their futile attempts to protest the president during his address to a joint session of Congress
Rather than celebrate, however, many of the MAGA faithful have decided to turn on their own.
Social media has been flooded in recent days with criticism of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett, nominated by Trump in 2020. And it’s coming from Trump’s MAGA wing of the party.
Barrett’s purported faux pas?
She made the “dire” error of siding against the Trump administration in a ruling related to paying foreign aid organizations for work that already had been completed for the government. She and Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal justices in the decision.
And that’s not all. The night before this decision came out, Barrett attended Trump’s speech in the House chambers, and she did not look appropriately gleeful to the MAGA crowd when the president walked by the justices on his way to the stage.
Heaven forbid!
Barrett isn't a cheerleader for Trump, so she must be a fraud? Give me a break.
Yet, rather than applaud the independence of the U.S. Supreme Court – at the top of one of our country’s three distinct branches of government – these far-right, so-called Republicans decided to label Barrett as a “DEI hire.”
I guess that’s because she’s a woman. Nearly five years after her confirmation to the court, it seems a bit late to worry about that now. Never mind that Barrett is clearly a brilliant lawyer and principled conservative who has been the deciding vote in some of the most pivotal decisions in recent years, including overturning Roe v. Wade in 2022.
Let’s take a look at some of the backlash.
Human Events senior editor Jack Posobiec wrote that Barrett should be seen as an example of the “danger of Republican DEI.” He claims that Barrett’s vote “defied Trump,” who “gave her the robe.”
That’s such an embarrassing opinion coming from someone who claims to be a conservative. No justice is on the court to serve the president who appointed them. Rather, each justice must be committed to ensuring all executive action and laws mesh with our Constitution. Period.
And there’s no reason to believe that Barrett has done anything other than that, whether MAGA likes her position or not.
That didn’t stop other MAGA influencers from joining in the Barrett bashing. Mike Cernovich called Barrett “evil,” and Laura Loomer labeled her a “DEI appointee.”
The far right looks a lot like the far left. And that's not good.
You know what this piling on reminds me of? The far left.
What MAGA is doing with Barrett is the same kind of purity test that progressives have put on members of the Democratic Party, pushing that party to such an extreme that it no longer appeals to many of its own base.
It also feels a lot like classic cancel culture – a tool the left has used for years to silence people and views it doesn’t agree with. In 2022, Barrett got a taste of this kind of cancellation when hundreds of progressives in the publishing industry tried to ban a book she was writing before it was published because they didn’t like her position on overturning Roe.
Ironically, the subject of her book in part is a look at “how judges are not supposed to bring their personal feelings into how they rule.”
Conservatives can’t let this kind of intolerance for other views and knee-jerk tribalism take over the Republican Party.
No matter which side it’s coming from, it’s a bad look.
Barrett, 53, is the youngest sitting justice. I'm a conservative who’s glad she is likely to be around for a long while.
Ingrid Jacques is a columnist at Paste BN. Contact her at ijacques@usatoday.com or on X, formerly Twitter: @Ingrid_Jacques