Outnumbered Chief Justice Roberts pretends he’s still in charge of the Supreme Court

In three weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court will convene for its October session. New Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson will be formally sworn in on September 30, ready for the onslaught of extremism her corrupt colleagues promise. On Friday, speaking publicly for the first time since the Court blew up American society by reversing federal abortion protections last June, Chief Justice John Robertsinsisted the court is perfectly legitimate, everything’s absolutely fine, and please stop being mean to them.

Roberts told the attendees of the 10th Circuit Bench and Bar Conference in Colorado Springs, Colorado, mostly judges, that it was “gut-wrenching” to have to come to work every day through barricades because the decisions the Court had made were so enraging to the general public, the people showed up to tell them so. There’s no reason to assume that because one of the justices is married to an insurrectionist, two are there because Mitch McConnell stole their seats for Donald Trump, and a third allegedly has a history of sexual assault—and they lied to the Senate to get their seats—that people should question the Court’s legitimacy.

“You don’t want the political branches telling you what the law is. And you don’t want public opinion to be the guide of what the appropriate decision is,” said Roberts. “Yes, all of our opinions are open to criticism. In fact, our members do a great job of criticizing some opinions from time to time. But simply because people disagree with an opinion is not a basis for criticizing the legitimacy of the court.”

Of course, criticism of the Court is not simply about disagreement with decisions. It’s about the fact that it’s obvious that the Court has been hijacked by the far right, packed by Trump, and is operating on raw power of the majority to upend decades of progress.