'Destroy its legitimacy': Trump's war on the Supreme Court escalates
With the Supreme Court soon to rule on three of President Donald Trump’s key priorities, court commentators say he is escalating his attacks against the very conservative justices he appointed. “As the justices prepare to rule on three signature Trump initiatives,” writes Washington Post Supreme Court reporter Justin Jouvenal, including “limiting birthright citizenship, firing the heads of independent agencies and reshaping the Federal Reserve… many legal experts believe that the justices have signaled they will rule against Trump on two out of the three, blocking his bid to deny citizenship to those who were born to parents here illegally or lacking permanent residency, as well as his effort to remove a governor of the Fed board.” This is almost certain to draw the president’s ire.According to Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford University, “It seems like almost 100 years since you’ve had a clash approaching this level between the president and the court. You’d have to go back to the New Deal to have any kind of an analogue.” Says Jouvenal, Trump’s growing fight with the court is especially notable as he himself appointed three of its conservative justices, who have already been instrumental in handing him several key victories over the course of his first term, like allowing him to freeze foreign aid and dismantle the Department of Education. But as Jouvenal writes, “The wins have not satisfied Trump, who has attacked the court — including his own nominees — in increasingly caustic and personal terms that legal scholars say have little historical precedent; Trump has called the justices ‘bad,’ ‘stupid,’ ‘weak’ and other epithets.”According to one MAGA ally who helped secure Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch’s seat, the president’s attacks on the justices are a good thing because “Sometimes feeling the heat helps people see the light." To rule against Trump, he argued, would "destroy the legitimacy" of the court. Harvard University law professor Richard Lazarus says that, ultimately, Trump believes that conservative justices should be loyal to him rather than act as an independent branch of government. “There’s no question that Trump, starting with the tariff case, has taken aim at the court and made quite clear his expectation that justices who were nominated by Republican presidents should vote for his positions,” Lazarus said.After the court struck down most of Trump’s tariffs in February, with conservative justices Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Chief Justice John Roberts joining liberals in the decision, the president erupted over the outcome, saying he was “ashamed” of the justices and that it was an “embarrassment to their families.” Then in April, he became the first sitting president to attend court arguments in what was widely viewed as an attempt to pressure conservative justices. Shortly after that, “Trump accused the liberal justices of embracing ‘warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases’ and said the conservatives ‘give the Democrats win after win.’ He added that ‘certain “Republican” Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad.’" Then, Trump posted a nearly 550-word rant where he complained about conservative justices’ lack of “loyalty,” claiming, “Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!!”For their part, say insiders, the justices have privately grappled with whether to quietly ignore the attacks or offer a more forceful public response. So far, they have avoided criticizing Trump directly. When recently asked about the question of judicial loyalty to the president, Gorsuch did assert that his “loyalty is to the Constitution.” And Roberts has argued that attacks against judges and justices are “dangerous” and have ”got to stop," though he did not specify Trump as the assailant.
