Second Lady Usha Vance, a former Supreme Court clerk who knows the institution from the inside, told ABC News that justices deserve to be treated with basic respect, a message that lands at a moment when criticism of the court has grown sharper from nearly every direction, including from within the White House itself.
"I have a lot of respect for the justices," Vance said in the interview, reported by the Daily Mail. "I think that they have a hard and challenging job being in the public eye, just like a lot of other people in Congress, in the media, in the executive branch."
The comments arrive against a backdrop of escalating hostility toward the judiciary, not just heated op-eds or partisan cable segments, but real-world threats. In 2022, a man arrived at Justice Brett Kavanaugh's home early in the morning armed with a gun before backing out and calling 911 on himself. And just last month, local authorities rushed to Justice Amy Coney Barrett's Virginia home after a swatting call. Those are the stakes Usha Vance was pointing toward.
Usha Vance is not a casual observer of the Supreme Court. She clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts and for Kavanaugh when he sat on the District of Columbia Court of Appeals. She trained as an attorney before setting aside her legal career in recent years as her husband's political trajectory accelerated.
In the ABC News interview, she said she has been "following the activities of the court very closely." She did not, however, directly address the sharp public criticism that both President Trump and Vice President JD Vance have aimed at the court this year.
That silence is notable. Her comments were broad enough to encompass all sides of the political spectrum, but the timing makes them impossible to separate from the friction between the executive branch and the judiciary.
"So, I do want people to treat them with respect, I think that there has been a lot of personalization of feelings towards judges and the courts across the country that probably didn't exist, you know, 150 years ago when they were less in the public eye."
She added a line that carried real weight given the Kavanaugh and Barrett incidents:
"I'm hopeful that people will continue to treat them with the sense of humanity and you know, without the kind of anger that's led to some attacks on judges."
The sharpest recent friction between the White House and the court centers on a ruling against President Trump's unilateral tariffs. In May, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, both Trump appointees, sided against the administration. Trump responded on social media.
"People that I appointed have shown so little respect to our country, and its people."
The month before, Trump had criticized "certain" conservative justices for going "weak, stupid, and bad." Earlier this year, he likened the Supreme Court to "little more than a weaponized and unjust political organization" that had "unnecessarily ransacked" the United States.
Vice President JD Vance joined the criticism. He characterized the court's tariff ruling as "lawlessness" and said the decision would "make it harder for the president to protect American industries."
For conservatives who believe in constitutional order and the separation of powers, this creates an uncomfortable tension. Disagreeing with a court ruling is every American's right. But the language used, and the personalization of that disagreement, is exactly the kind of escalation that Usha Vance, and Chief Justice Roberts, have warned about.
Chief Justice Roberts addressed attacks on the judiciary in March during remarks at Rice University. His comments were pointed without naming any single critic.
"The problem sometimes is that the criticism can move from a focus on legal analysis to personalities. Judges around the country work very hard to get it right. And if they don't, their opinions are subject to criticism. But personally directed hostility is dangerous and it's got to stop."
Roberts also rejected the idea that justices owe loyalty to the presidents who appointed them. He noted that George W. Bush appointed him twenty years ago and called the notion that he carries out Bush's agenda "absurd."
"The issues here now, today, nobody would have thought those were going to be a big deal 20 years ago, and history is full of examples of presidents appointing people and being really surprised how they turned out, going both ways."
That last point is worth sitting with. The premise that a president's appointees should function as reliable votes for that president's agenda is not a conservative principle. It is a political expectation that runs counter to judicial independence, the very thing conservatives spent decades fighting to protect against progressive court-packing schemes and activist judges.
The Supreme Court's public standing has taken damage. A Gallup poll from September 2025 found that just 42 percent of respondents approved of the court, while 52 percent disapproved. Those numbers reflect years of political combat over the institution, from the left's fury over the Dobbs decision and its push to expand the court, to the right's frustration when rulings don't align with policy goals.
The court still has major pending cases pushed by the Trump administration. Those include rulings on birthright citizenship, transgender athletes participating in sports, and the president's ability to fire a Federal Reserve Governor. Each of those cases carries the potential for another round of heated reaction, regardless of how the justices rule.
That is the environment Usha Vance stepped into with her ABC News comments. She chose her words carefully, broad enough to avoid a direct confrontation with her husband or the president, but specific enough that the message was clear. Respect for the institution matters. Personal hostility toward judges is dangerous. The 2022 armed arrival at Kavanaugh's home and the recent swatting call at Barrett's Virginia residence are not abstract concerns.
Conservatives have spent a generation arguing that the judiciary should interpret the law, not make it. That principle requires accepting outcomes you don't like. It means a justice you appointed may rule against your preferred policy, and that this is the system working, not the system failing.
Calling justices "weak, stupid, and bad" when they rule against you is the mirror image of the left's tantrums after Dobbs. It treats the court as a political instrument rather than an independent branch. And it gives ammunition to every progressive who has argued that conservative support for judicial independence was never sincere.
Usha Vance, who knows these justices personally and professionally, offered a quiet corrective. Roberts, from the bench, offered a blunter one. Both were saying the same thing: criticize the reasoning, not the person. Argue the law, not your disappointment.
The Second Lady's Office has been contacted for further comment.
If conservatives want an independent judiciary, and they should, they have to mean it when the rulings go the other way, too. That's not weakness. That's the constitutional order working as designed.