We have been warning for some time now that Democratic politicians and progressives were playing with fire in targeting the conservative Supreme Court justices. Overheated rhetoric is bad enough, but as always, I stand by my view that political violence is not the fault of political rhetoric, no matter how excessive.
Things have gone rather far beyond mere rhetoric with the Supreme Court, however. In the fall of 2018, protesters opposed to Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination disrupted the hearings and chased one senator into an elevator and another out of a restaurant. Some “protesters broke through Capitol Police barricades and rushed up the steps to the Capitol Rotunda.” Other protesters “pushed past a police line, storming up steps to pound on the doors of the U.S. Supreme Court.” All of this led to hundreds of arrests, which predictably were treated with lenience on the theory that political protesters breaching the Capitol was no big deal. In March 2020, standing on the steps of the Supreme Court, Chuck Schumer bellowed to a crowd of pro-abortion protesters:
I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have unleashed the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.
In September 2021, a mob of pro-abortion protesters from “ShutDownDC” descended upon Justice Kavanaugh’s home over the Texas abortion-law case. Then, we had the unprecedented leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in Dobbs, which would overturn Roe v. Wade. In the aftermath, a pro-abortion group “RuthSentUs” publicly shared maps to the homes of the six Republican-appointed justices, and sent protests there to intimidate the justices. We learned that “law enforcement agencies are investigating social-media threats to burn down or storm the Supreme Court building and murder justices and their clerks,” yet Democrats such as Schumer and Anne Kuster dismissed the mob threat to the Court as no big deal. The Biden White House pointedly refused to condemn either the leak or the targeting of homes, with Jen Psaki saying that “the president’s view is that there’s a lot of passion, a lot of fear, a lot of sadness from many, many people across this country about what they saw in that leaked document” and that “I know that there’s an outrage right now, I guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date, and we certainly do continue to encourage that, outside judges’ homes, and that’s the president’s position.” As protests escalated, churches were vandalized, and a Molotov cocktail was thrown at a pro-life office, Psaki finally allowed that “that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.”
Protests at a judge’s home are already illegal under federal law, but the Biden administration made no move to prosecute the protesters, again on the theory that breaking federal law in a political protest in D.C. is no big deal. A bipartisan bill to beef up security for the justices unanimously passed the Senate, but Nancy Pelosi blocked it in the House. Meanwhile, violence by the group “Jane’s Revenge” has escalated, including just last night, firebombing a crisis pregnancy center in Buffalo.
Now comes the latest news: A California man in his 20s was arrested outside of Kavanaugh’s home at 1:50 a.m. this morning, allegedly armed with a gun, knife, and pepper spray and threatening to kill the justice. The man specifically cited abortion and the leaked Dobbs draft. This is intolerable. It is far outside the bounds of political protest, and it should make Democrats and progressives think twice about the whirlwind they are summoning with the campaign of intimidation against the justices. Pass the security bill. Arrest anyone who protests at justices’ houses. Cooperate with the leak investigation. And call off the dogs, before somebody really gets bit.