U.S. Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is under fire this week for suggesting that critics of federal judges, including justices on the nation's top court, should be thrown in jail.
During a Monday night campaign rally in Pennsylvania, the former president continued his trend of bragging about appointing three of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who ended nationwide abortion rights by overturning Roe v. Wade. He also praised the "brilliant" right-wingers for having the "courage" to issue the June 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization decision.
"They were very brave, the Supreme Court. Very brave. And they take a lot of hits because of it," Trump told the crowd.
"It should be illegal, what happens. You know, you have these guys like playing the ref, like the great Bobby Knight," he continued, referencing a late college basketball coach. "These people should be put in jail, the way they talk about our judges and our justices, trying to get them to sway their vote, sway their decision."
Demand Justice managing director Maggie Jo Buchanan on Tuesday tied Trump's new comments to his past remarks.
"In 2016, Donald Trump said women should be punished if they have an abortion. Now, he says women should be jailed for speaking out when their rights have been taken away," Buchanan said in a statement. "Attempting to stoke fear among those who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights is deeply anti-American."
The campaign of the Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, shared a clip of Trump's comments on social media.
"You know, I'm going to lean forward a bit on my skis and just suggest, hear me out on this, that this Trump fellow is an obvious, unrepentant fascist without the slightest understanding of what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution demands and requires of every citizen, let alone the president," said journalist David Simon.
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) responded with a message for Trump, saying: "The extreme Supreme Court Justices you nominated are corrupt, radical, and ethically compromised. They lied to the Senate and the American people about their actual views on Roe v. Wade. Take your attacks on free speech and shove it."
Pointing to a more recent ruling from the country's deeply unpopular top court, writer and photographer Jason Karsh said, "I know we're sort of numb to Trump openly musing about putting anybody who disagrees with him or speaks out about him in jail, but he is running for president and this conservative SCOTUS did give him complete immunity for any crimes he commits while in office."
Meanwhile, Harvard University professor Maya Sen noted that "Trump himself has made so many attacks on judges and justices that the Brennan Center even released a report on it."
Some of the ex-president's attacks on the judicial system have pertained to his various ongoing legal issues, some of which relate to his attempts to reverse his 2020 loss, which included inciting a violent mob to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Although Trump has campaigned on his role in reversing Roe, he has also tried to distance himself from the GOP's most extreme attacks on reproductive freedom and downplay how important abortion rights are to many voters—which he did again on Monday.
Responding to Trump's rally remarks, Harris campaign spokesperson Sarafina Chitika said late Monday that "the issue of reproductive freedom certainly 'pertains' to women all across this country, especially as we learn women are losing their lives under Donald Trump's extreme abortion bans."
"Trump keeps trying to tell women that our health, our freedoms, and our lives don't matter," she continued. "He tries to tell us what to think and what we care about. Women know better—and we will not be silenced, dismissed, ignored or treated like we're stupid. We will vote like our lives depend on it this November, and we'll elect a leader who fights for us: Vice President Kamala Harris."
Trump's Monday comments followed his Friday night post on social media that if he is elected in November, "WOMEN WILL BE HAPPY, HEALTHY, CONFIDENT AND FREE! YOU WILL NO LONGER BE THINKING ABOUT ABORTION."
That claim came in the wake of reporting that tied Georgia's post-Dobbs abortion ban to the deaths of at least two women. Speaking in Atlanta on Friday, Harris declared that "this is a healthcare crisis and Donald Trump is the architect of this crisis."