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Justices tell Congress of threats to Supreme Court safety in push for more security 30%
By LUENA RODRIGUEZ-FEO VILEIRA9% MICHAEL WARREN8% JEFF McMURRAY34%
7/14/2026, 2:57:19 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 24 faulty reasoning types, including Post Hoc (False Cause), Appeal to Emotion, and Appeal to Authority, with Negativity Bias as the most egregious example at 34.4% saturation with 243 hits. Analysis detected 1,244 faulty-reasoning hits from 707 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 39.9% and a BS Rank of 30% (11,167 of 15,853 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 70.40% of the article peer group.
Supreme Court Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett are testifying before the Senate to request a bigger security budget amid a rise in threats to the judiciary.
Fears of burnout for Supreme Court’s security staff
Kagan says that when she joined the court in 2010, the need for security was vastly different.
She drove herself to work, and security personnel only came along for high-profile speeches.
That started to change after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia in 2016, and the need ramped up after the leak of the opinion overturning Roe v.
Wade in 2022.
Today, each justice has a security team of four to eight people, and they’re having to work overtime to provide the level of security needed, raising fears of burnout, Barrett said.
Supreme Court now requires NDAs for employees, Justice Barrett says
She said the move and others are aimed at controlling leaks of internal deliberations.
She said the court has long required confidentiality agreements, but recently upgraded to non-disclosure agreements with carveouts for whistleblowers.
The documents serve as an “additional check” on inappropriate or illegal information sharing.
They come after the 2022 leak of the draft opinion overturning abortion as a constitutional right, a major breach for the nation’s highest court.
The new NDA requirement was previously reported by the New York Times.
Collins calls attacks on judiciary ‘appalling’
Republican Sen.
Susan Collins said rhetoric from public figures attacking judges is “appalling.”
The Maine senator said officials on both sides of the aisle have gone after the judiciary.
Collins, who is up for reelection this year, pointed to examples of criticism of the conservative-majority court from the left.
Democratic Sen.
Jack Reed, meanwhile, highlighted Trump’s targeting of justices who ruled against him and struck down his wide-ranging tariffs.
Justices Kagan, Barrett split on enforcement mechanism for Supreme Court’s new code of ethics
All nine justices agreed to the code in 2023 amid a storm of criticism over undisclosed trips and gifts from wealthy benefactors to some justices.
Kagan and Barrett both said the court is taking the code seriously, but Kagan also supported creating a way to enforce it.
The liberal-leaning justice acknowledged it could be tricky since any enforcement would have to come from the judicial branch and the Supreme Court sits at its head.
Barrett, who is part of the court’s conservative majority, said she wasn’t so sure.
There are significant questions over who would do the enforcing and how, and it’s not clear whether there is a way to address them effectively, she said.
How does the court decide emergency appeals?
Barrett said the relatively quick process of deciding emergency docket cases centers on whether the petitioner will eventually win, and how they could be legally harmed if the court doesn’t step in.
The justices declined to talk about specific cases, including suits where the court sided with the Trump administration and allowed cuts to the federal workforce to proceed.
The court often begins by considering the case from the petitioner’s point of view, Barrett said, though Kagan pointed out the court can also consider how the other side might be affected if the court intervenes.
Supreme Court justices address rise in ‘shadow docket’ appeals
Kagan and Barrett address the rise in appeals on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket.
While the court can’t control how many are filed, Kagan points out that some high-profile decisions may have encouraged attorneys to file more appeals.
Those appeals are decided without full briefing or arguments, Kagan said, and “we should consider those downsides.”
The leaked Dobbs opinion’s shadow on the Supreme Court’s security concerns
Kagan said threats against the Supreme Court increased after the leak of a draft of the opinion that later overturned the Roe v.
Wade abortion decision, and have continued to grow since then.
In 2022, shortly after the leak, a would-be assassin was arrested near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.
Chief Justice John Roberts has condemned the threats to all U.S. judges, saying during a speech in March that criticism of judicial opinions is understandable, but personally directed hostility is “dangerous, and it’s got to stop.”
Analysis
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