CBS's Suck-Up to Barrett May Be a Taste of Propaganda to Come

Jim Naureckas

Justice Amy Coney Barrett's crucial Dobbs vote "let each state decide whether to allow abortion or not," wrote CBS's Jan Crawford (10/6/25). "But the decision also unleashed something much darker"—referring not to women dying because they were denied access to reproductive healthcare, but to threats against judges.

A softball interview (10/6/25) with Trump-appointed Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett—headlined "As Justices Confront Harassment, Death Threats and an Assassination Attempt, Barrett Declares 'I'm Not Afraid'"—provides a glimpse of the kind of journalism we can expect from CBS News now that it's controlled by MAGA billionaire Larry Ellison, and anti-"woke" ideologue Bari Weiss has been named its editor-in-chief (Defector, 10/6/25).

The interview, by CBS legal correspondent Jan Crawford, praises Barrett's "mental discipline and self control" because she dismisses protesters who object to her having provided the fifth vote to strip women of bodily autonomy in the Dobbs v. Jackson decision: "It doesn't matter to me," she told CBS. "It doesn't disrupt my emotions."

The only breath of criticism of the justice comes in reference to dissents written by Biden-appointed Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who, Crawford sniffed, "impugned the conservatives' motives" when she wrote that the right-wing majority had "no fixed rules" in its so-called "emergency docket" rulings, except "this administration always wins."

Barrett "pointed out," Crawford wrote, that this was "obviously false." The journalist explained:

Just one high-profile example: The Court ruled against the administration's deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and ordered it to work toward his return to the US.

Crawford could not have offered many other examples, high-profile or otherwise: The Trump administration has won 21 of 23 cases it asked to be placed on the emergency docket. And in Abrego Garcia's case, the Court did not in fact order Trump to "work toward his return to the US"; it said the administration should "ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador."

But where the lower court said the government should "effectuate" his return, the justices said that that order "may exceed the District Court’s authority," and the judge should "clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the Executive Branch in the conduct of foreign affairs."

'The people's preferred policy'

The point of the interview, aside from Barrett being a swell person, is that the Supreme Court is not in the tank for Trump, but is wisely deciding each case on its merits.  Crawford refers in her own voice to "public misperceptions that the Supreme Court is driven by politics or outcomes or is loyal to Mr. Trump."

Towards the end, there's an extended discussion of the emergency docket, highlighting Barrett's explanation that the Supreme Court is again and again overturning injunctions against draconian Trump administration moves out of concern for "the harm caused when unelected judges reflexively block policies enacted by popularly elected representatives."

Chart: New York Times, 9/14/25. (The Trump success rate has increased to 91% since then.)

"It was the people's preferred policy," she says of all the Trump programs the Court unblocked. "The president is the one that they elected."

Crawford doesn't raise any of the obvious objections to this. First of all, the Supreme Court's job is to say whether the policies of the elected branches accord with the Constitution. That's what they're there for.

And the Trump policies the Court has allowed to stand are often in direct contradiction to laws passed by Congress—also an elected branch of government, and one more directly accountable to the people than the presidency.

Crawford does not challenge Barrett's contention that the Court naturally defers to the policies of the elected president by pointing out that her colleagues had no trouble using the emergency docket to strike down Biden policies that prevented pollution of US waters, reduced cross-border air pollution, mandated vaccination or Covid testing for employees of large businesses, and paused evictions during the pandemic. Altogether, the Supreme Court sided with the Biden administration only 53% of the time in emergency cases (New York Times, 9/14/25), vs. with Trump 91% of the time so far during his second term.

Is this one-sided apologetics for the MAGA Supreme Court a direct result of CBS's takeover by a Trump-boosting billionaire? It's hard to say; Crawford has a history of boosting Republican spin (Extra!, 11–12/08; FAIR.org, 10/19/12, 5/6/22). But you'd be wise to expect more of this sort of propaganda under the ownership of the Ellisons, the editorial supervision of Bari Weiss and the surveillance of official CBS commissar Kenneth Weinstein (FAIR.org, 9/9/25).