Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan set to testify before Congress after series of high-profile decisions – UK Times

Fresh off a highly consequential term, Supreme Court Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Elena Kagan will testify in Congress next week.

The testimony will be the first by sitting justices in Congress since 2019.

Barrett, a Trump appointee, and Kagan, an Obama pick, will speak before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government and Senate Appropriations Committee next Tuesday.

The Supreme Court has requested a $20.6 million budget increase for the 2027 fiscal year, more than $16 million of which would be directed towards security for the justices, both at work and at home, the Washington Post reports.

Officials and judges tied to both parties have reported an alarming spike in political violence in recent years, a wave that has included direct threats against members of the Supreme Court.

“The justices ask for a significant—and precipitously growing—amount of money from taxpayers each year, and they should be required to justify that request annually before appropriators, just like any other part of government,” Gabe Roth, executive director of judiciary watchdog Fix the Court, told Bloomberg Law.

The justices strain to avoid public partisan political comments, and the focus of Tuesday’s hearings will likely stick to budgeting, but the justices could nonetheless face questioning about this year’s blockbuster Supreme Court term, which concluded at the beginning of this month.

The court issued multiple decisions that boosted the Trump administration’s expansive attempts to wield executive power and influence elections.

The justices expanded the president’s ability to fire the heads of independent federal agencies and weakened what remains of the Voting Rights Act, while loosening campaign finance laws and clearing the way for Republican-backed congressional maps ahead of the midterms.

At the same time, Barrett, part of the court’s conservative supermajority, has angered parts of the president’s MAGA movement by at times siding the court’s liberals or going against the Trump administration wishes.

Barrett and Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court’s liberals to protect a Mississippi law allowing mail-in votes to be counted after Election Day in some circumstances, a blow to the president and his Republican allies, who have long criticized the practice.

Barrett was also part of the 6-3 majority that rejected what it called the Trump administration’s “dramatically revisionist” attempt to eliminate the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship.