Supreme Court deals some blows to Trump's agenda but leaves him with more expansive powers
U.S. President Donald Trump signs an executive order at the White House.
Alex Wong/Getty Images North America
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Alex Wong/Getty Images North America
President Trump came into office last year busting norms, testing legal limits and asserting near endless executive authority.
Now that the latest Supreme Court session is over, it’s clear they handed him a lot of wins when it comes to expanding his executive authority – as well as some high-profile losses on issues he’s staked a lot of energy on, such as overturning birthright citizenship or wielding tariffs unilaterally.
On the whole, Trump has trumpeted his victories and sought workarounds for his losses – either asking for the GOP-controlled Congress to pass laws or seeking alternative paths to accomplish his goals.
But back in February when the court ruled against him on tariffs, the president held an angry White House press conference, calling the conservative justices who sided against him disloyal among other insults.
He campaigned on tariffs and loves to use them as a tool to wheel and deal on the global stage. But polls have shown that voters didn’t share that love – making his legal loss a potential win politically, at least for Republicans running for re-election this fall.
With the birthright citizenship case, Trump’s response has been much more muted.
On social media, he said the decision was quote “too bad for our country.” He also made a joke post congratulating China on the ruling.
While Trump campaigned on ending birthright citizenship – and signed the executive order to overturn it on inauguration day 2025 – it was seen as a long-shot legal theory. It also wasn’t the cornerstone of his immigration agenda, which moved ahead with aggressive deportation efforts and other executive actions while the birthright order remained on ice.
Late last week, in two decisions, the court affirmed the president’s broad authority to make immigration enforcement decisions, siding with the Trump administration on limiting amnesty and stripping temporary protected status from hundreds of thousands of immigrants who had been living and working in the US legally. With these decisions, the court allowed Trump to continue to strictly limit even legal immigration.
Taken as a whole, it’s been an overwhelmingly good year for the president with this conservative court supermajority. Three of the six conservative justices were appointed by Trump during his first term.
In this midterm election year, the court also delivered what look to be two significant wins for Republicans. A decision released Tuesday by the court loosens campaign finance rules, allowing greater coordination between political parties and candidates. On its face this would appear to help both parties equally, but Republican party committees have vastly outraised their Democratic counterparts and now all that campaign cash can be directed much more freely.
An earlier decision from the court throwing out Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act came early enough that some red states were able to scramble and redraw congressional district lines to further favor Republicans. The president has low approval numbers, gas prices are elevated, putting voters in a bad mood – a recipe for a rough election for the president’s party. But, thanks to the Supreme Court, Republicans now have more structural advantages than they did at the beginning of this year.
The court did uphold a state law in Mississippi allowing absentee ballots cast and mailed by election day to be counted up to five days later. That was a loss for the president, who has been raging against mail balloting for years now, but it gave him another chance to call on congressional Republicans to pass his SAVE America act.
And ultimately, despite some high-profile losses, Trump is well aware of his successes.
In recent days, he has posted repeatedly on social media about the expansion of executive power the court granted him earlier this week, which allows the president to fire commissioners at federal agencies that were designed by Congress to be independent.
“This Decision gives tremendous additional Power back to the Presidency, where it belongs,” he said on Truth Social.
Trump is known for his hyperbole, but even those who disagree with the decision on the president’s ability to fire commissioners say this is a huge concentration of power in the hands of the president.
“The Republican Party was treated very fairly by the United States Supreme Court,” Trump added in his Tuesday afternoon post.
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