Faulty reasoning signals

• Confirmation Bias - 20.1% (125 hits)
• Anchoring Bias - 0%
• Availability Heuristic - 9.6% (60 hits)
• Representativeness Heuristic - 5.3% (33 hits)
• Hindsight Bias - 4.5% (28 hits)
• Overconfidence Bias - 2.9% (18 hits)
• Framing Effect - 8.8% (55 hits)
• Loss Aversion - 0%
• Status Quo Bias - 5.6% (35 hits)
• Sunk Cost Effect - 0%
• Optimism Bias - 0%
• Pessimism Bias - 0%

Article text

What the Amy Coney Barrett backlash reveals about being a moderate conservative woman in Trump’s America

Last week, the Supreme Court struck down President Donald Trump’s executive order to end birthright citizenship, an issue so important to the president that he attended oral arguments in person back in April.

Despite the court’s conservative majority, the ruling should not have surprised the president — not really.

For one thing, his order had been rejected by every lower court that had considered it.

Because, as many, many legal scholars had pointed out, it seemed to clearly run counter to the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.

Following oral argument, the consensus among legal scholars was that a majority of justices did not buy the government’s argument.

They were correct, as Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion made clear.

Roberts, appointed by President George W.

Bush, in 2005, has remained a solidly conservative jurist.

But it was Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s vote in favor of the majority which took some court watchers by surprise.

And it was also Barrett’s vote which seems to have enraged conservatives in a specific, and perhaps specifically revealing, way.

It was also Barrett’s vote which seems to have enraged conservatives in a specific, and perhaps specifically revealing, way.

Following the ruling Trump called on Congress to take action on social media.

“Congress should start TODAY to work on ending expensive and unfair to our Country, Birthright Citizenship.”

Right on cue, his sycophants picked up the chorus.

Never mind the inconvenient reality that experts across the political spectrum widely believe the issue settled, or that changing the 14th Amendment would require a supermajority vote in both the House and Senate (or an even less likely constitutional convention), and ratification by three-fourths of state legislatures.

Misogyny in Trump world is nothing new.

But there’s something especially galling about watching a once trailblazing woman like former Rep.

Nancy Mace call for Barrett to be removed from the bench in what feels like a desperate attempt to stay relevant.

I didn’t see Mace, the first female cadet to graduate from The Citadel in South Carolina, calling for the chief justice to be removed.

Right-wing commentator Matt Walsh’s inflammatory comments were even more inane: “The worst Supreme Court Justices of all time have all been women.

That’s just a fact.

Republican presidents should take the hint.”

This is ragebait, pure and simple, designed by Walsh to monetize the moment by insulting four vastly superior legal minds.

But the fact that we know what Walsh is doing doesn’t make it any less gross.

As transparent as his motivations might be, they still do come at a cost.

Barrett’s occasionally centrist legal opinions merely confirm the fact that she is, in fact, a principled and thoughtful jurist.

But conservatives, who have spent the past decade heckling liberals about purity tests and cancel culture, are now demanding ideological subservience and judicial groupthink.

And they are singling her out in a way they don’t seem to be doing with other conservatives on the court who sometimes side with liberals.

Justice Neil Gorsuch, for example, joined Barrett and the liberal majority to strike down Trump’s international tariffs earlier this year.

Meanwhile, Barrett voted to overturn Roe v.

Wade.

But that’s irrelevant, according to Notre Dame’s College Republicans chapter (where Barrett attended law school), who called their famous alumnus an “absolute disgrace to the Notre Dame name.”

When Barrett is demeaned by self-serving ideologues, every conservative, liberal and moderate member of the Supreme Court is diminished.

America’s judicial system is one of our most treasured principles, and it is all of our jobs to defend it – not just when it is convenient, but even when we disagree with its conclusions.