Standing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court building at a pro-abortion rally, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) gave a speech. He turned and pointed to the Court building, bloviating, “I want to tell you [Justice Neil] Gorsuch, I want to tell you [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh: You have released the whirlwind, and you will pay the price. You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

The reason the pro-abortion protesters had gathered was to voice their opposition to a case before SCOTUS — a challenge to a Louisiana law requiring that any physician performing abortions have admitting privileges to a hospital within 30 minutes of the abortion facility. While there is nothing unusual about various groups rallying for their cause outside the Supreme Court, what was unusual and unprecedented was Schumer’s pointed threats directed at Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

In fact, Schumer’s threats against members of the Court were so beyond the pale that Chief Justice John Roberts took the unusual action of issuing a public rebuke of the senator, stating in part, “Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”

Following Roberts’s rebuke, however, Schumer spokesman Justin Goodman essentially doubled down and defended Schumer’s threat by ridiculously asserting, “Sen. Schumer’s comments were a reference to the political price Senate Republicans will pay for putting these justices on the court.” In fact, Goodman’s blatant mischaracterization of Schumer’s threats was so obviously false that even Leftmedia outlet CNN called it false.

Furthermore, Goodman falsely equivocated Schumer’s threats with President Donald Trump’s recent criticism of Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, while blasting Roberts as biased for not calling out Trump. The truth is Roberts has opposed Trump for his criticism of the judiciary in the past, but, far more significantly, Trump has never issued any threat toward a member of any court.

On Wednesday evening, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) excoriated Schumer: “I would call on Schumer to apologize, but we all know he has no shame. So tomorrow I will introduce a motion to censure Schumer for his pathetic attempt at intimidation of [the] Supreme Court.” But it’s not only Republicans criticizing Schumer; Democrats, advisers, law professors, and pundits piled on, rebuking the Democrat leader for his excess.

Faced with wagons that were not circled around him, Schumer finally apologized this morning. “I should not have used the words I used,” Schumer said. “They didn’t come out the way I intended to.”

In any case, Schumer’s problem is that he views SCOTUS as the Left has for years — as the judicial arm of the DNC. Therefore, whenever the Court fails to rubber-stamp the Democrats’ leftist agenda, the Left falsely attacks the Court as supposedly acting in bias toward Republicans rather than the Constitution. Schumer’s aim was clearly to intimidate the justices into siding with leftist activists’ “living constitution” nonsense rather than the constitutionalists’ approach of using the plain language of the law. Those who use threats and intimidation to defend their position reveal that they have little rationale to support their argument.