President Trump on Saturday nominated Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, putting the Roman Catholic mother of seven on track to join the most powerful judicial body in the United States.
Gird yourself.
The Left’s anti-religious and anti-family bigotry aimed at Barrett, which began even before the president announced her for the Supreme Court, is about to get a lot uglier. Expect the worst sort of lurid, personal attacks on the judge’s faith and personal life from Democratic lawmakers, left-wing activists, and their mutual allies in the press.
In the world of politics, for example, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, already said this week that Barrett’s religion is fair game.
“Look, it wasn’t her religious views — it’s anybody’s views that they bring to their decision-making,” the senator told CNN. “So, they keep telling us that none of the things they wrote or said yesterday should infringe on their decision, but how can we be assured that they can be objective?”
Asked directly whether Barrett’s faith is off the table, Hirono responded simply, “No.”
“Why should we say you get a lifetime appointment so that you can reflect your ideological agenda in your decision making?” the senator asked.
This is not the first time that the Hawaii lawmaker has applied a religious litmus test for a Catholic judicial nominee. It certainly is not a first for members of the Democratic Party.
Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein of California, Kamala Harris of California, Chuck Schumer of New York, and Dick Durbin of Illinois each have gone full anti-Catholic in the past when dealing with Catholic judicial candidates. In fact, Feinstein stated explicitly in 2017 that Barrett was maybe a little too Catholic to sit on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.
The “dogma lives loudly within you,” the California senator told Barrett.
And 16 years before that, Feinstein, Durbin, and Schumer deployed anti-Catholic bigotry to scaremonger over Judge William Pryor’s “deeply held beliefs.”
In the world of left-wing activism, the anti-Barrett attacks have been uniquely ugly and personal, including questions about whether the judge’s adopted Haitian children are really prisoners of a so-called Christian cult.
Democratic strategist Dana Houle, for example, said Friday that there have been “so many” horrible adoptions from Haiti by “ultra-religious” families such as Barrett’s, that “the only reason to not question the legitimacy of the adoption is the effect it would have on her kids.”
John Lee Brougher, the managing director of the progressive advocacy group NextGen America, said elsewhere, “As an adoptee, I need to know more about the circumstances of how Amy Coney Barrett came to adopt her children and the treatment of them since. Transracial adoption is fraught with trauma and potential for harm, and everything I see here is deeply concerning.”
“Anti-racist” superstar Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: “Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”
In the news media, the anti-Barrett commentary has been similarly deranged, with much of it focusing on the idea that the judge is a fundamentalist nut-job.
“Y’all cool with handmaidens?” asked New York Times contributor Wajahat Ali, referring to Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian book series The Handmaid’s Tale, which depicts women (“handmaids”) as the property of a Christian theocracy.
Speaking of The Handmaid’s Tale, MSNBC’s Joy Reid said elsewhere Friday evening, “Turns out Republicans DO have a platform: The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Such The Handmaid’s Tale references come after a full week of dishonest and bogus attempts by major newsgroups to link People of Praise, the Christian ecumenical group to which Barrett has some association, to the popular book series. The Barrett-affiliated religious group, however, never served as inspiration for the book, according to Atwood herself.
Some in the press have gone as far as to doubt the judge’s qualifications as a mother, questioning whether she is lying about raising her own children.
“I guess one of the things I don’t understand about Amy Comey Barrett is how a potential Supreme Court justice can also be a loving, present mom to seven kids?” asked New York Times Magazine and Vanity Fair contributor Vanessa Grigoriadis. “Is this like the Kardashians stuffing nannies in the closet and pretending they’ve drawn their own baths for their kids.”
She added, “And if there aren’t enough hours in the day for her to work and mother those kids, when she portrays herself as a home-centered Catholic who puts family over career, isn’t she telling a lie?”
Democrats and their allies most absolutely will continue to “go there” with Barrett now that she is a Supreme Court nominee, though some in the commentary business insist this is not a thing that is happening (or will happen). Democrats and their allies have done more than signal their game plan. They have made it abundantly clear their efforts to oppose Barrett will include direct attacks on her family and her Catholic faith, all of it in the service of portraying her as a dangerously unhinged religious zealot.
The attacks began even before Barrett became the official nominee. It only gets worse from here.
