Tipsheet

The Amy Coney Barrett Problem Reared Its Ugly Head Again

Matt Vespa
Matt Vespa  |  June 29, 2026 3:00 PM

In 2020, Justice Amy Coney Barrett was seen as a cultural victory for conservatives: she was young, conservative, Catholic, and the opposite of the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose vacancy she was filling. It was viewed as a return to constitutionalism, or so we thought. Six years later, Barrett’s record has been mixed at best, although some have called it a total disaster. She's not alone: Chief Justice John Roberts also joined the liberal wing, though his record of disappointment is a bit longer than Barrett's. It's the first time Roberts and Barrett have joined the three stooges on the Left here:

The Watson v. RNC ruling was the latest example, where the Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that Mississippi’s law on mail-in ballots, which allows them to be received and counted up to five days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked on that day, does not violate federal standards on what constitutes Election Day. Challengers argued that these ballots must be received by Election Day; Coney joined the liberal wing on this issue (via SCOTUSBlog):

Writing for the majority, Justice Amy Coney Barrett concluded that “the election-day statutes require the electorate’s choice to be made on election day. That occurs so long as election day is the deadline for individuals to vote—as it is in Mississippi. But the election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward.”

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Samuel Alito argued that “from this Nation’s founding until the last few decades of the 20th century—a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes—having an ‘election’ on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day.”

Mississippi passed the law at the center of the dispute in 2020, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Four years later, the Republican National Committee and the Mississippi Republican Party, along with a Mississippi voter and a county election official, went to federal court in Gulfport, Mississippi, to challenge the post-election ballot deadline; the Libertarian Party of Mississippi filed a similar lawsuit a few weeks later, which was combined with the first suit. They argued that Mississippi’s law clashes with a federal law, first passed by Congress in 1845, that designates the Tuesday after the first Monday in November as the “election day.”

[…]

The challengers appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which reversed, holding that federal law requires all ballots to be received by Election Day. Over a dissent by five judges, the full court of appeals turned down Mississippi’s plea to rehear the case, and the Supreme Court agreed in November to weigh in.

In 2025, there were rumblings that we might have an ACB problem: when liberal law professors start heaping praise for you, that’s the red flag. Jack Posobiec listed three other issues that were disconcerting in 2025:

March 5, 2025. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that Trump’s admin can’t block nearly $2 billion in USAID payments to foreign aid contractors—funds for work already done, sure, but cash Trump aimed to redirect under his America First agenda. Barrett joined Chief Justice Roberts and the court’s three liberals, forcing the money out the door despite Trump’s efforts to gut a bloated agency. The dissent—Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh—saw it for what it was: a judicial overreach trampling executive power. Barrett’s vote didn’t just defy Trump, who gave her the robe; it propped up a globalist system conservatives have long despised. That’s not a one-off—it’s a pattern. 

Look at the smoking gun from January 2025. The Supreme Court rejected Donald Trump’s bid to delay sentencing in his New York felony case—34 counts tied to hush money and business records brought by openly Trump-hating Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg. The 5-4 ruling forced the president-elect to face the music before Inauguration Day. Who sided with the court’s three liberals to make it happen? Barrett, alongside Chief Justice John Roberts. The conservative bloc—Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch—dissented, seeing the move for what it was: a partisan jab at Trump. Barrett’s vote didn’t just green-light a political hit job; it undermined the man who put her on the bench. That’s not loyalty to the Constitution—that’s a nod to the left’s lawfare playbook. 

Then there’s the January 6 cases. In Fischer v. United States (2024), the court narrowed the scope of an obstruction law used against Capitol riot defendants. Barrett dissented again, siding with the liberals to keep prosecutors’ tools intact.

On immigration, she again sided with the liberal wing on whether the Trump administration had the right to deport illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act. Luckily, the decision was 5-4 in favor. 

It’s a gut punch that Watson was handed down this way, and especially disappointing that ACB would betray us like this before our 250th birthday. If you can’t get your act together to mail in your ballot before Election Day, it shouldn’t count. There’s plenty of time.