Justice Samuel Alito wrote the opinion that sent the Left into a blind fury.
Radicals never forgave him for it, and they never stopped coming after the Justices who stood beside him.
And Samuel Alito just laid bare one ugly truth about what wearing the robe costs now.
Alito tells CBS what Dobbs took from him
Alito sat down with CBS News chief legal correspondent Jan Crawford for an interview the network released in October 2026.
Crawford asked him whether any case stood out as one that demanded particular courage. Alito didn’t need long to think about it.
“Well, the leading example is Dobbs,” Alito said. “I think that required courage by all of the justices in the majority.”
Alito authored the 2022 ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v Wade and handed the question of protecting unborn life back to voters and the lawmakers they elect. For nearly 50 years, Roe had tied the hands of every state that wanted to defend children in the womb.
Somebody leaked a draft of that opinion before the Court released the final version. The Court’s own investigation never publicly named the leaker.
But the Justices in the majority went ahead anyway. And Alito told Crawford the fallout followed him home.
“There are others. I mean, there are cases that have resulted in the loss of old friendships, and it’s something that you have to live with,” Alito said.
Crawford pressed him on whether he lost friends over Dobbs specifically. “Yes, sure,” Alito answered.
Then Crawford ran down the list as though she were reading off a job posting. “You’re going to lose friends, you’re going to get protested, you’re going to have death threats, you’re going to have to wear a bulletproof vest today?” she asked.
Alito separated ordinary anger from something much darker.
“It’s part of the job that you’re going to displease people by making decisions on controversial matters, because one side or the other is going to really dislike you because of the decisions,” Alito said. “The physical threats and the harassment represent something new in our society, and something that’s quite disturbing. And I think it’s a danger. It’s a danger for the courts, and it’s a danger for others in public life.”
The whirlwind Chuck Schumer promised
Alito called the threats “something new.” He’s a careful man, so he didn’t say where the new thing came from. The record fills that part in.
In March 2020, US Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) stood outside the Supreme Court at a pro-abortion rally while the Justices heard a Louisiana case inside.
“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price,” Schumer said. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”
Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare public rebuke that called such statements “dangerous.” Schumer later said he should have chosen different words and denied that he threatened anyone.
Two years later the Dobbs draft leaked, and left-wing activists marched to the Justices’ homes. Vandals and arsonists hit pro-life pregnancy centers around the country in the weeks that followed.
And on June 8, 2022, police arrested a California man named Nicholas Roske near Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s Maryland home. Fox News reported that Roske carried a pistol, a knife, a lock picking set, duct tape, a hammer, and a crowbar.
Roske pleaded guilty in April 2025 to attempting to assassinate a Supreme Court Justice. According to NBC News, he told investigators he was angry that the Court might overturn Roe.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation after the ruling came down. Biden said he stood with those who opposed the decision and urged Americans to “keep all protests peaceful.”
That plea arrived after an armed man had already traveled across the country to kill a Justice in his own house.
A Biden judge and the price of trying to kill a Justice
Federal prosecutors asked for at least 30 years in prison for Roske. In October 2025, US District Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, gave him 97 months.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called that sentence “woefully insufficient” and announced the Justice Department would appeal.
NBC News reported that Boardman weighed the fact that Roske, who now identifies as a woman, would serve his time in a male prison. So a man who planned to murder a Justice over abortion got a break of more than two decades, partly over gender ideology. A reader could be forgiven for wondering what message that sends to the next guy with a suitcase and a grudge.
Maybe that’s unfair to one judge on one day. But eight years for a plot to change the Court’s majority with a pistol doesn’t sound like deterrence.
Alito said the danger reaches “others in public life,” and the country has watched that happen. An assassin murdered Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025, at Utah Valley University. President Trump survived attempts on his own life during the 2024 campaign.
Left-wing political violence keeps aiming at the same kind of target: judges, elected officials, and conservative activists who refuse to back down. And the press keeps reaching for the claim that both sides do it equally, which conveniently changes the subject every time.
Notice how Crawford framed her question. Death threats and bulletproof vests showed up as “just part of the job,” like bad weather. Nobody at the networks talked about threats against public officials that way when the politics ran the other direction.
Here’s the part the Left never counted on. The leak, the mobs outside the homes, and the man with the gun were all supposed to scare one vote loose from that majority. Nobody flinched. Five Justices signed the opinion, and Roe is gone.
But intimidation that fails doesn’t go away. It changes shape. Democrats who can’t frighten the Court now talk about packing it, expanding the bench to 13 seats to install a permanent Democrat majority they can’t win through elections and confirmations.
A packed Court would come for Dobbs first, then for the rulings that ended affirmative action and racial gerrymandering. After that, the Second Amendment, free speech, protections against warrantless spying, citizenship for illegal aliens, and special legal status for transgender ideology all land on the table. It’s a scheme to steal the Court, plain and simple.
Alito is 76, and he told CBS he lost old friends for doing what the Constitution required. He said so without a trace of self-pity.
And the next big ruling the Left hates will test whether anyone in Washington learned a thing from June 2022.
Sources: Mediaite, “Alito Warns About ‘Disturbing’ Physical Threats to Justices, Says He Lost Friends After Dobbs Decision”; CBS News interview with Justice Samuel Alito, conducted by Jan Crawford; Fox News, “Justice Kavanaugh’s attempted assassin sentenced to 8 years in prison”; NBC News, “Woman sentenced to 8 years for attempting to assassinate Brett Kavanaugh”; CBS News, “8-year sentence for plot to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh”; RealClearPolitics, “Schumer to Kavanaugh, Gorsuch: You Will ‘Pay The Price'”