Jodi Kantor, The New York Times:
She’s very much the justice of the season for several reasons.
She’s part of the fulcrum of the court right now, the center of the court, along with Chief John Roberts and Justice Kavanaugh. This is a court where the power is really concentrated in those three people. Those are the three people you have to convince.
Earlier this year, there was a series of extraordinary attacks and threats against her by MAGA figures. Remember, she was appointed by President Trump. A lot of these statements were way over the line. They were personal. They were about her family. Like many other federal judges, she was getting some very scary threats.
At the same time, she became something of a beacon of hope for liberals who began to notice something we were able to quantify in numbers, which is that she was showing signs of leftward drift. Then, as you say, she wrote the birthright citizen opinion, which was remarkable for a relatively junior justice to take on.
I mean, this is a decision that does some reordering of our legal system. And we can start to hear her voice clearly, more clearly than ever before, and to see that, really just five years after coming onto the court, her influence is very much rising.
