A gunman tried to kill Brett Kavanaugh at his own home in 2022.
Now that same movement has reached Chief Justice John Roberts at his island home in Maine.
His own daughter paddled out to meet them – and told them she agrees with them.
The Mob That Federal Law Cannot Stop
This is not a one-time protest. This is a coordinated harassment campaign that has been running more than four years, and every kayaker outside Roberts' Hupper Island home is breaking federal law to do it.
Title 18, Section 1507 of the U.S. Code makes it a crime to picket or parade near a judge's residence with intent to influence a pending case.
Attorney General Merrick Garland himself admitted protests like these violate that law – and then did nothing to stop them.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr went further, calling it exactly what the statute describes: "that's a federal crime."
The Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project ended up suing the DOJ over its refusal to enforce the law, after the Judicial Crisis Network publicly asked why U.S. Marshals seemed trained to look the other way.
Nobody in the Biden Justice Department ever gave a straight answer.
In 2022, demonstrators left dolls smeared with fake blood on Amy Coney Barrett's front lawn while her young children were home.
The group proudly returned to Kavanaugh's street the same night a gunman was arrested outside his house, armed and ready to kill him.
Now they're floating in kayaks outside Roberts' island retreat, waving signs accusing him of shaming democracy and comparing him to a king.
The New York Times covered it warmly.
When the Chief Justice's Own Daughter Went to the Water
The detail that belongs on the front page is this one.
In August 2025, kayakers protesting outside Roberts' island home were confronted by his own daughter, 26-year-old Josephine.
She did not show up to defend her father's rulings.
The New York Times reported that she told the kayakers her father already knows she's liberal and loves her anyway, calling him, in her words, a "wonderful" father.
That was the entire defense.
The New York Times treated this like a plot twist. It isn't. It's what happens when an elite family sends its kids to elite schools and acts surprised by the result.
But here is what actually matters: the Chief Justice of the United States has been run off his own dock.
He used to linger there after Sunday church. Not anymore.
He doesn't go out in public now without a security detail nearby.
He has pulled back from neighbors he's known for twenty years.
Much of that isolation traces back to a columnist named Becca Shaw Glaser, who published a column telling neighbors to heckle Roberts at the local coffee shop, flip him off, and turn him away if he tried to get served.
Glaser got fired over it. The paper apologized to Roberts. The instructions didn't disappear with her byline.
This Is What Intimidating a Court Looks Like
The left will tell you these are peaceful protesters exercising free speech.
Here is the reality: this same network published Kavanaugh's home address online, swarmed his house again the night a gunman was arrested trying to kill him, and vowed before sundown to come right back.
Now its sympathizers get front-page treatment for making a 71-year-old man afraid to walk to his own dock.
Roske traveled from California to Kavanaugh's house with a gun, a knife, a hammer, and zip ties. The stated goal, laid out in the federal indictment, was to kill three conservative justices so three liberal ones could be appointed, changing the court "for decades to come."
That attempt didn't happen in a vacuum. It followed months of coordinated rhetoric telling the left the court was illegitimate, that justices were fascists, that something had to be done.
The kayak flotillas are the polite version of the same message.
And the New York Times is running feature stories about the suffering of locals – like Wendy Schlotterbeck, who stormed off a Fourth of July picnic the moment she spotted Roberts and joined the kayak protesters the next day.
Her reason: she has transgender relatives, and immigrant friends of hers have been arrested under enforcement she blames on the court Roberts leads.
She was upset at a picnic. She grabbed a paddle.
The Times called it a profile in courage.
Roberts – a man who has ruled against Trump on tariffs, on birthright citizenship, and on other major cases – is being treated like a political enemy by a press corps that cheered whenever he drifted left.
The left does not want an independent court. They want a court that rules the way they want. When it does not, they send kayakers.
Sources:
- Jonathan Turley, "Supreme Court Protesters Target Chief Justice Roberts' Vacation Home," Fox News, October 4, 2026.
- Jodi Kantor, "John Roberts Retreated to His Island. Supreme Court Critics Found Him," The New York Times, October 1, 2026.
- "Man Arrested Near Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's Home, Charged With Attempted Murder," Fox News, June 8, 2022.
- "EXCLUSIVE: DOJ Sued Over Far-Left Protesting at Supreme Court Justices' Homes," The Daily Signal, March 23, 2023.
- "Protesters Again Target Supreme Court Justices' Homes, in Violation of the Law," The Daily Signal, May 5, 2023.
- Bill Barr, "Pro-Choice Protests at Supreme Court Justices' Homes Breaks Federal Law," Fox News, May 2022.
- "The NYTimes on Protests Outside Chief Justice Roberts' Home," Hot Air, October 1, 2026.
