WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) – Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine blamed top Capitol Hill Democrats for the dangers facing the U.S. Supreme Court during a congressional hearing this week about security funding for the nation’s highest court.
As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan appeared Tuesday before the House Appropriations subcommittee on financial services and general government to discuss a requested $228.4 million appropriation request, a 10% increase the court says is necessary for improved security measures, explaining that there have already been 512 investigations of threats to judges in 2026 according to the U.S. Marshals Service.
The Daily Signal reported that during the hearing Collins (who is currently running for reelection) suggested several of her colleagues shared responsibility for the situation.
“It’s appalling to me that some of the rhetoric is coming from public officials on both sides of the aisle who should know better than to levy personal and political attacks against the judiciary and the court specifically,” she said. “For example, a senator stood in front of the Supreme Court building and called out two members by name, saying that they had released the whirlwind, and that they will pay the price. Other public officials have called the court corrupt, out of control, and serving an extremist agenda.”
Collins did not name him, but she was referring to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s comments in March 2020 on the steps of the Supreme Court: “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price! You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
At the time, those words elicited a rare rebuke from moderate Chief Justice John Roberts, who said that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate they are dangerous.”
The left-wing climate of hostility against the Court steadily grew over the course of President Donald Trump’s first term due to expectations that his nominees would help overturn Roe v. Wade, which eventually happened in June 2022. When a leaked draft indicated the court’s decision on Roe a month ahead of its official release, a pro-abortion group calling itself Ruth Sent Us organized “walk-by protests” at the “homes of the six extremist justices” and published a map containing those homes. The protests, which included chants like “no uterus, no opinion” (despite Barrett being female), violated federal law against “picketing or parading” with the “intent of influencing any judge” in or near “a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.”
The Biden administration refused to condemn the choice of private homes as protest sites, and then-Democrat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went so far as to praise the “righteous anger” of the protesters. Schumer himself would go on to say the leaked opinion marked a “dark and disturbing day for America, and that the prospect of returning abortion to the democratic process was an “abomination.”
The leak and subsequent ruling were also followed by numerous acts of violence, vandalism, and intimidation against churches and pro-life pregnancy centers and, most alarmingly, California man Nicholas John Roske taking a gun and ammunition to the home of Barrett’s fellow Justice and Trump appointee Brett Kavanaugh with intent to kill.
In June 2022, the 26-year-old Roske was indicted for attempted murder after allegedly taking a “firearm, two magazines loaded with 10 rounds each of 9mm ammunition; 17 rounds of ammunition contained in a plastic bag, a black speed loader,” and more to the home of Kavanaugh with intention to “to kill a specific United States Supreme Court Justice.” He was swiftly arrested without incident outside Kavanaugh’s home, after which he reportedly confessed to police “that he was upset about the leak of a recent Supreme Court draft decision regarding the right to abortion as well as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.”
Last year, Roske was sentenced to eight years and one month in prison, far short of the 30 years prosecutors had sought, with U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman considering Roske’s “transgender” self-identification a mitigating factor in light of Trump’s executive order that biological males not be housed with female inmates.