The Independence Day edition of the PBS News Hour, guest-anchored by John Yang, featured two liberal Supreme Court experts sympathetically discussing Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee whose votes have trended leftward of late, pleasing liberals and disappointing conservatives.
Besides using left-wing lingo on transgender issues, the panelists also discussed conservative death threats against Barrett without mentioning the left-wing assassination attempt against Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
After discussing with left-leaning SCOTUS blog co-founder (now PBS Supreme Court analyst) Amy Howe about how “the court's conservative majority delivered a string of legal victories for President Trump, many of them in emergency appeals….” The topic switched to Trump-nominated Justice Amy Coney Barrett and New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor's recent favorable profile of Barrett, the left's latest heroine.
Anchor John Yang: Jodi, the majority opinion on the case involving nationwide injunctions was written by, who's gotten a lot of attention, some skepticism from conservatives. You took a deep dive into Barrett's jurisprudence and the criticism about her. What did you find?
Jodi Kantor, The New York Times: She's very much the justice of the season for several reasons. She's part of the fulcrum of the court right now, the center of the court, along with Chief John Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. This is a court where the power is really concentrated in those three people. Those are the three people you have to convince.
Kantor continued by spotlighting the revolting threats made against Barrett, while crowning her a "beacon of hope for liberals."
...Earlier this year, there was a series of extraordinary attacks and threats against her by MAGA figures. Remember, she was appointed by President Trump. A lot of these statements were way over the line. They were personal. They were about her family. Like many other federal judges, she was getting some very scary threats. At the same time, she became something of a beacon of hope for liberals who began to notice something we were able to quantify in numbers, which is that she was showing signs of leftward drift. Then, as you say, she wrote the birthright citizen opinion, which was remarkable for a relatively junior justice to take on....
As usual, conservatives are blamed for instigating a "culture war" started by the left, in this case transgender issues and the misnomer of "gender-affirming care" (i.e. genital mutilation surgery) for teenagers.
John Yang: And, Amy, one of the other issues or the areas that the court got into this year was the culture wars. Talk about some of those cases.
Amy Howe: Yes, so there were a couple of those cases. The court in December heard a challenge to Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care. And by a vote of 6-3, the justices upheld the Tennessee law….
The topic then turned to threats made against Supreme Court justices.
Yang: Jodi also talked about the threats that have gone against some of these justices. The day after the court's term ended, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at a judicial conference in North Carolina and addressed the rising criticism and threats….Jodi, in your story about Justice Barrett, you found threats not only against her, but against her family.
Kantor’s mid-June piece on Justice Barrett included anecdotes of threats and pointed the finger at “Mr. Trump’s allies.”
PBS left the implication that the only violent threats against the Supreme Court come from the left. There was no mention of the assassination attempt on a conservative justice loathed by the media, the June 2022 attempt on the life of Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
This slanted segment was brought to you in part by BNSF Railway.
A transcript is available, click "Expand."
PBS News Hour
7/4/25
7:08:39 p.m. (ET)John Yang: As the Supreme Court headed into its summer break, the justices gave President Trump a big win, saying that district court judges do not have the authority to issue the sort of nationwide injunctions that had blocked administration policies.
It capped a term in which the court's conservative majority delivered a string of legal victories for President Trump, many of them in emergency appeals, what's called the shadow docket.
Earlier, I spoke with two court watchers about the term just ended and what could be coming next.
PBS News Supreme Court analyst Amy Howe is the co-founder of SCOTUSblog, and Jodi Kantor, a New York Times investigative reporter who's covered the justices and the court in depth.
Amy, how unusual is the administration's use of emergency appeals?
Amy Howe: It's really unusual.
And when I think back at this term that's just ending, that's really what we're going to remember, because it wasn't the kind of historic decisions on the merits that we had in past terms on issues like abortion and gun rights and administrative law, but the administration came to the Supreme Court over and over again on its emergency appeals dockets.
And these are the cases that the Supreme Court is generally deciding without oral argument and sometimes without written decisions or even knowing how all of the justices voted.
And in fact the Trump administration in the first 5.5 months or so of — since the inauguration on January 20 has already come to the Supreme Court on the emergency docket more than 20 times, which is more than twice as many, just to put it into context, than the George W. Bush administration and the Obama administration combined in 16 years.
John Yang: And how have they done? What's their success rate, as it were?
Amy Howe: Their success rate is high. I mean, the biggest victory was the victory on the universal or nationwide injunctions. That was a case in which the Supreme Court did hear oral argument and issue a written decision on the merits.
But they have had a lot of success on other issues, including immigration and the president's efforts to remake the federal work force. And although these are theoretically temporary rulings that pause lower courts' orders while the litigation continues in the lower courts, they can have permanent repercussions if you're talking about firing federal employees, about deporting people or separating transgender service members from the military.
John Yang: Jodi, the majority opinion on the case involving nationwide injunctions was written by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who's gotten a lot of attention, some skepticism from conservatives. You took a deep dive into Barrett's jurisprudence and the criticism about her. What did you find?
Jodi Kantor, The New York Times: She's very much the justice of the season for several reasons.
She's part of the fulcrum of the court right now, the center of the court, along with Chief John Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. This is a court where the power is really concentrated in those three people. Those are the three people you have to convince.
Earlier this year, there was a series of extraordinary attacks and threats against her by MAGA figures. Remember, she was appointed by President Trump. A lot of these statements were way over the line. They were personal. They were about her family. Like many other federal judges, she was getting some very scary threats.
At the same time, she became something of a beacon of hope for liberals who began to notice something we were able to quantify in numbers, which is that she was showing signs of leftward drift. Then, as you say, she wrote the birthright citizen opinion, which was remarkable for a relatively junior justice to take on.
I mean, this is a decision that does some reordering of our legal system. And we can start to hear her voice clearly, more clearly than ever before, and to see that, really just five years after coming onto the court, her influence is very much rising.
John Yang: And, Amy, one of the other issues or the areas that the court got into this year was the culture wars. Talk about some of those cases.
Amy Howe: Yes, so there were a couple of those cases. The court in December heard a challenge to Tennessee's ban on gender-affirming care.
And by a vote of 6-3, the justices upheld the Tennessee law. And this will affect similar laws in a number of other states. This was a case in which Justice Barrett actually joined the six-justice majority and then wrote a concurring opinion and said — in which she would have gone further and reached an issue that the majority didn't address, whether or not transgender people are a suspect or a protected class.
And then they issued a decision in a case out of Montgomery County, Maryland, in the Washington, D.C., suburbs. They ruled that parents have a right to opt their children out of instruction using LGBTQ-themed storybooks.
John Yang: Amy, you heard Jodi say that Justice Barrett is in the center of the court, along with the chief justice, John Roberts, and Justice Kavanaugh.
What does it say about the ideological spectrum or ideological shift of this court that these three would be in the middle? They're not moderates, are they?
Amy Howe: They're definitely not moderates in any definition of the word. It just says that the center of the court has shifted to the right.
John Yang: Jodi also talked about the threats that have gone against some of these justices. The day after the court's term ended, Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at a judicial conference in North Carolina and addressed the rising criticism and threats.
JOHN ROBERTS, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: The danger, of course, is somebody might pick up on that. And we have had, of course, serious threats of violence and murder of judges just simply for doing their work. Threatening the judges for doing their job is totally unacceptable and people should be careful about doing that.
John Yang: Jodi, in your story about Justice Barrett, you found threats not only against her, but against her family.
Jodi Kantor: Exactly.
We actually obtained the police report about a bomb threat to her sister in South Carolina. The language is really menacing. It's really specific. It was an empty threat. There was no bomb. But it is a truly scary sign of the times that it's not just the jurists who are being threatened. It's their extended families.
John Yang: And you also say that her youngest son asked why mommy has a bulletproof vest.
Jodi Kantor: She conjured up this really memorable moment in a recent speech. She talks about being at home and her young son spies the bulletproof vest lying somewhere in the house and asks her, what is this? Why do you have it?
John Yang: Amy, how are the justices coping with this?
Amy Howe: It's hard to say exactly. The court does not comment on the justices' security. I have been going to the Supreme Court for a long time. There was visibly more security at the Supreme Court when the court is in session and then surrounding the justices when they are out and about in the public.
But I imagine it has to really weigh on them.
John Yang: Amy Howe, Jodi Kantor, thank you both very much.
Amy Howe: Thank you.
Jodi Kantor: Thank you.
