“I knew the justice in ways probably nobody else really knew.”

Balancing the Court

Bryant Johnson, the go-to personal trainer for most of the Supreme Court’s liberal wing, looks back at his run at the nation’s most exclusive gym

By Andrew Zucker

For nearly 50 years, conservatives waged war against Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 ruling that enshrined a constitutional right to an abortion. By the time Donald Trump was in the White House, one person more than anyone else stood between Roe and its demise: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But perhaps the second-most important person was Bryant Johnson, the personal trainer who helped keep Ginsburg alive.

“Gotta make it through to the next election,” Ginsburg told Johnson during the Trump administration. She died just 46 days before the 2020 presidential election. The constitutional right to an abortion died shortly after.