Donald Trump’s supporters have turned sharply on one of his own Supreme Court nominees, Amy Coney Barrett, calling her a “turncoat” after she wrote the majority opinion in a ruling that dealt the President a major setback over mail-in ballots.
The decision left in place a Mississippi statute allowing mailed ballots to be counted if they arrive within five days after Election Day, closing off a key legal avenue for Trump in his long-running campaign against postal voting, which he has repeatedly and without evidence tied to the fraud he claims cost him the 2020 election.
The justices split 5-4, with Barrett, a Trump appointee, writing the opinion. She was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices: Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
The backlash from high-profile conservatives was swift on Monday, with figures including Steve Bannon and Megyn Kelly publicly condemning Barrett’s position.
“Amy Coney Barrett. Man, she was a lovely pick. Did anybody do any due diligence here? Right to life crowd, did you do your due diligence? Are you happy with what you got?” Bannon said on his War Room podcast, taking aim at the Catholic bona fides that helped bolster her conservative image when Trump nominated her during his first term.
Megyn Kelly was equally blunt on her program, saying: “Amy Coney Barrett is a turncoat, she’s constantly sitting with the left.”
Republican Senator Eric Schmitt described the ruling as “a shockingly wrong opinion,” criticizing Barrett for siding with “liberal justices” in what he said was a decision that “is terrible for election integrity.”
Trump, posting on Truth Social, labeled the outcome a “tremendous loss.” He later told reporters in the Oval Office that the ruling was “a little bit surprising” and argued that it “gives people more time to vote illegally.”
U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett speaks to an audience at the 30th anniversary of the University of Louisville McConnell Center in Louisville, Ky., Sunday, Sept. 12, 2021
Donald Trump and Judge Amy Coney Barrett walk to the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, DC, on September 26, 2020
Megyn Kelly attends the 2025 Time100 Gala at Lincoln Center on April 24, 2025 in New York City
Barrett bluntly rejected arguments that federal election laws supersede Mississippi’s statute allowing late-arriving absentee ballots.
‘The election-day statutes do not set a deadline for ballot receipt, so they do not prevent Mississippi from counting ballots postmarked before election day yet received afterward,’ she wrote.
Justice Samuel Alito penned a ferocious dissent, writing: ‘From this Nation’s founding until the last few decades of the 20th century, a period that spans the enactment of all three election-day statutes, having an “election” on a particular day meant completing ballot collection on that day.’
Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch signed Alito’s dissent in full. Brett Kavanaugh backed his bottom line and his warning that late ballots invite fraud, but stopped short of endorsing two stretches of Alito’s reasoning.
The defeat sharpens Trump’s push for the SAVE America Act, his stalled voting bill demanding proof of citizenship to register and photo ID at the polls.
It would gut mail voting entirely, sparing only the sick, disabled, travelling and deployed troops.
Trump has already torched a landmark bipartisan housing bill over the deadlock, refusing to sign the first major fix to the housing crisis in three decades until Congress moves on his election overhaul.
Documented mail-ballot fraud is vanishingly rare. A Brookings Institution study last November logged an average of four fraud cases per 10 million votes across the last five US elections. Trump himself cast a mail ballot in a Florida special election earlier this year.
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Steve Bannon, political strategist and host of Steve Bannon’s War Room, speaks during the Semafor World Economy 2026 conference in Washington, DC, on April 16, 2026
RNC chairman Joe Gruters vowed the fight goes on, accusing Democrats of ‘inviting chaos at the ballot box by allowing elections to drag on for days and weeks after voters cast their ballots.’
More than a dozen states allow mail-in ballots to be counted after Election Day, including Alaska, Texas, Nevada, Virginia and California.
California Governor Gavin Newsom celebrated the ruling.
‘This is a win for voters, plain and simple,’ Newsom said on X. ‘Today’s ruling helps ensure mailed-in-ballots get counted and people’s voices are heard through the democratic process.’
