After months of tension between President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, the country’s high court ended its term by delivering its biggest win for Trump in his second administration, deciding to decrease the power of lower courts while increasing the president’s own.
The Supreme Court’s decision curtailing nationwide judicial injunctions from federal courts comes after Trump has repeatedly complained about judicial constraints on his policy agenda. Those complaints have caused critics to express concerns that the country was on the precipice of a constitutional crisis.
Recommended Stories
- Trump says he saved Khamenei from 'very ugly' death, slams Iranian victory celebration
- Behind the scenes: Trump trades golf for bully pulpit with 'big, beautiful' July 4 deadline rapidly approaching
- Republican Curtis Sliwa urged to drop out and unite with Adams against Mamdani in NYC mayoral contest
Trump welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision during a rare and impromptu press conference in the White House briefing room on Friday alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche was once the president’s personal lawyer.
“Well, this was a big one, wasn’t it?” Trump told reporters. “I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical-left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers.”
Despite some of those judges being appointed by Republican presidents, Trump described the trend of trying “to dictate the law for the entire nation” as “a grave threat to democracy.” The president contended that he has encountered “more nationwide injunctions than were issued in the entire 20th century together” from his executive action regarding birthright citizenship to sanctuary cities and other federal funding and refugee resettlement.
The Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision concludes a particularly contentious term with Trump, punctuated by Chief Justice John Roberts issuing an atypical statement in March. In that statement, Roberts condemned the president’s call for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge James Boasberg. Boasberg stopped him from deporting alleged noncitizen members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act for 14 days.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts wrote at the time. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
Then, after Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed onto their more liberal counterparts’ majority opinion preventing Trump from freezing foreign aid, the White House confirmed to the Washington Examiner that the president was disappointed in them, specifically Barrett, whom he appointed in 2020. Barrett also partially dissented to a decision related to the deportation of Venezuelan nationals over due process protections after she and Roberts permitted Trump’s sentencing in his New York hush money trial to proceed before his inauguration.
Trump’s frustration with Barrett and others created and then exacerbated distrust between him and the Federalist Society, a more traditionally conservative legal organization that advocates originalist and textualist interpretations of the Constitution. The Federalist Society arguably helped him win the 2016 election with its list of possible Supreme Court nominees.
As a result, the White House told the Washington Examiner that Trump is personally directing a more loyalty-preoccupied judicial vetting process during his second administration rather than simply outsourcing it to the Federalist Society.
“This is Trump 2.0, and we have learned a lot when we were taking a four-year break, and we’ve come into this administration now as a well-oiled machine that is relying on sound counsel from his White House counsel, his DOJ, and his most senior advisers here, where every single person advising the president on these judges is committed to the America First agenda, committed to making sure that these justices align or judges align with the priorities of what a constitutionalist judge would support, and that’s the priority,” a White House aide told the Washington Examiner.
Regardless, during Friday’s press conference, Trump reiterated that he had “great respect” for Barrett, asserting “her decision was brilliantly written today, from all accounts.”
“Universal injunctions likely exceed the equitable authority that Congress has given to federal courts,” Barrett had written. “The Court grants the Government’s applications for a partial stay of the injunctions entered below, but only to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”
Trump, too, was pushed on concerns from critics with respect to the further concentration of presidential power without judicial oversight, as he put into practice what was the academic unitary executive theory. Under unitary executive theory, there are few exceptions to the president’s authority.
“This really brings back the Constitution,” he said. “This is what it’s all about, and this is really the opposite of that. And the question is fine, but it’s the opposite, the Constitution, that’s been brought back.”
Trump has had a complicated relationship with the Supreme Court and the judiciary, which he has not hesitated to criticize when he considers a decision to be adverse to him.
During the 2016 campaign, for example, Trump claimed California-based U.S. District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel could not be impartial toward him because he was “Mexican.” Curiel decided against him in a class-action lawsuit from students accusing Trump University of fraud.
More recently, Trump has scrutinized the judges who presided over the post-first presidency criminal and civil cases against him, including New York State Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan. Merchan was on the bench for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s hush money trial, with Trump promising retribution against the likes of Bragg during his second administration.
Then, when the Supreme Court decided 7-2 against his attempt to resume deportations of supposed Venezuelan gang members, Trump denounced the justices, writing on his social media platform Truth Social that “this is a bad and dangerous day for America.”
For Claremont McKenna College politics professor John Pitney, a former Republican operative, “a conservative [Supreme Court] majority is not always the same thing as a Trump majority.”
“Even when Trump wins, the results might not please Republicans in the long term,” Pitney told the Washington Examiner. “Right now, the administration is happy that the court has curbed nationwide injunctions by district judges. But in the recent past, Republicans have sought such injunctions against Democratic presidents. The next time there’s a Democratic president, they won’t be able to do that.”
On the specifics of the birthright citizenship case, through which the Supreme Court decided on the nationwide injunctions, former Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler noted to the Washington Examiner that the Supreme Court “did not reach the merits” of the matter, so that is “just hot air.”
“The Supreme Court, and other federal courts, have ruled with him and against him thus far,” said Gansler, now a partner at Cadwalader, Wickersham, and Taft. “The Supreme Court is affirming him great deference, but not completely unfettered deference on clearly unconstitutional actions.”
Trump announced the last-minute press conference Friday morning after changing his weekend plans to remain in Washington as congressional Republicans continue to negotiate his legislative agenda, packaged as the “one big, beautiful bill,” before his Independence Day deadline.