Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan has called out President Donald Trump’s repeated attacks on the court as “dangerous.”
During congressional testimony alongside Amy Coney Barrett, Kagan, 66, was read quotes from the president by Sen. Jack Reed.
“I just want to pick up a point that Sen. Collins made about outrageous statements that are being made by public figures, and I can’t think of a more prominent one than the president,” Reed began. “He said, ‘Disgrace to our nation. Fools. Lapdogs for the RINOs and radical left Democrats.’ He was describing the Supreme Court.”
Kagan did not mince her words in her response.
“Whatever political figure says them, whatever party that political figure is a member of, these statements are really unhelpful,” she said. “They’re dangerous in terms of individual justices’ security, and they’re not appropriate in the way to treat a coordinate branch of government.”
Kagan then referred to Chief Justice John Roberts’ 2024 year-end report, which detailed a rise in threats and harassment.
“He talked about how criticism is fair game... but intimidation is a different thing entirely, and when political figures of any stripe are trying to intimidate judges and justices to do things that they like rather than the things that they don’t, that’s where we really have crossed the line,” Kagan said.
Kagan and Barrett were testifying before the House and the Senate in support of the court’s request for an increase in security funding.
The request comes at a time when Supreme Court justices and judges nationwide increasingly face threats. Trump, 80, frequently complains about the court—sometimes singling out individual justices—when it rules against him.
The quotes that Sen. Reed read back to Kagan were Trump’s response to the court’s February decision overturning his tariffs. In the 6-3 ruling, two of his nominees, Neil Gorsuch and Barrett, joined Roberts and the court’s liberal wing in ruling against him.
Since then, the court has handed Trump losses on big issues like mail-in ballots and birthright citizenship. He has said he plans on requesting a rehearing of the latter case, the result of which was “absolutely insane,” he fumed. Barrett voted with the majority then, too, as did Trump nominee Brett Kavanaugh, though he didn’t believe Trump’s executive order was illegal.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
During Thursday’s hearing, Barrett, 54, talked about her experience facing threats while on the bench. In one instance, she was given a bulletproof vest.
“Maybe I lack imagination, but I didn’t expect that performing this service was going to put me in the position of explaining to my children what a bulletproof vest was and why I had to wear one,” she told lawmakers.
Barrett also spoke about the “swatting” incident at her Virginia home in May.
“One of my teenage sons opened the door to go out with friends and saw in our street, it was full of police cars who had responded to a false report of gunshots and raised voices in my home,” she said.
“I was very, very grateful that I had Supreme Court police outside my home because they were able to stop and meet with and explain to the county police that it had been a false alarm, and so the police did not actually attempt to enter our home.”
