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\n

When President Donald Trump speaks to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the audience with the most sway over his second-term agenda won’t be the lawmakers. It’s the Supreme Court justices.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s blitz of early executive actions have triggered a tsunami of more than 100 lawsuits \u2014 many of them heading toward the high court. Two of those actions have already made it to the justices, and their looming rulings could strike at Congress\u2019 power to control federal spending and the independence of executive branch watchdogs.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s muscular moves to crack down on legal and illegal immigration, fire tens of thousands of government employees, shutter the U.S. Agency for International Development, end diversity, equity and inclusion programs and strip the rights of transgender people all raise significant questions about the legal limits of executive power.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a president\u2019s agenda relies on unlawful actions, a lot of the action is going to be in the courts,\u201d said Elizabeth Goitein of New York University\u2019s Brennan Center. \u201cThere\u2019s no question that all of this is going to be challenged. This will be a true test of the Supreme Court in many, many ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chief Justice John Roberts and a few other justices typically attend State of the Union addresses, though the full bench doesn\u2019t always show up. The justices sit in the front row of the House floor, typically putting on their best poker faces while the members of Congress around them cheer and jeer.<\/p>\n

In previous years, even subtle reactions by the justices have stoked controversy. And this time, the speech will be occurring while the court is facing two imminent decisions that could affect the trajectory of Trump\u2019s term.<\/p>\n

The two major disputes about Trump’s assertions of presidential power at the high court have the potential to deliver another jolt to his rocky relationship with the conservative justices, including the three he appointed in his first term.<\/p>\n

One involves Trump’s ability to fire executive branch officials<\/a> despite laws Congress passed to protect those appointees from removal without cause. The other revolves around Trump\u2019s authority to oversee an abrupt and sweeping freeze<\/a> on billions of dollars in foreign aid. Trump is likely to discuss<\/a> in his remarks Tuesday some of these efforts as part of his administration\u2019s work to shrink the federal bureaucracy.<\/p>\n

At the heart of both cases is Trump\u2019s desire to test and stretch the outer boundaries of executive power \u2014 and whether Trump can bypass laws meant to limit his ability to fire people and curtail programs he doesn\u2019t like despite Congress funding them.<\/p>\n

The two cases have another thing in common: They have zoomed to the court on the so-called shadow docket, where the justices handle emergency requests. And more requests are likely given the scores of pending challenges to Trump policies.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s penchant for executive action driving much of the litigation stems from his desire to be seen as getting stuff done and his impatience with process and congressional negotiations. It\u2019s also born out of necessity.<\/p>\n

Thanks to a razor-thin GOP margin in the House and the effective veto that the Senate\u2019s filibuster rule hands to Democrats, the prospects for Trump passing much in the way of legislation are minimal. In crudely partisan terms, Trump\u2019s policies may stand a better chance with the six-justice conservative majority he cemented in his first term than they do across the street at the Capitol.<\/p>\n

During his first term, Trump repeatedly trashed judges who ruled against him. His invective against the judiciary grew so pointed that Roberts issued an extraordinary statement disputing the president\u2019s description of a jurist who ruled against the administration\u2019s asylum policies as an \u201cObama judge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them,\u201d Roberts declared.<\/p>\n

During Trump\u2019s first term, his policies got a mixed reception at the Supreme Court. The court largely upheld his pro-business environmental policies and allowed him to spend billions of dollars on his border wall project despite failing to get funding for it through Congress. On the other hand, the court rejected Trump\u2019s effort to end the program for so-called Dreamers.<\/p>\n

One of his highest-profile and most controversial moves \u2014 the travel ban dubbed a \u201cMuslim ban\u201d by critics \u2014 was effectively slowed and watered down by litigation. The high court ultimately let part of the ban take effect and ultimately upheld the president\u2019s authority to issue it.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes, if you listen to the mainstream media, you’d think that the court handed him everything on a silver platter, which isn’t true. But I think [they] went his way more often than not,\u201d said Curt Levey of the conservative Committee for Justice. \u201cAt least some of the justices didn’t seem crazy about Trump. If you were predicting it based just on ideology, probably more would have gone Trump’s way. But there seemed to be a certain desire to push back against Trump, right? Until I see otherwise this term, I’ll just assume that it’s going to be the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

As his first term came to a close, Trump was bitterly disappointed that none of the justices \u2014 including his three picks: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett \u2014 backed any of the legal challenges to his loss in the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Supreme Court, they rule against me so much,\u201d Trump told the crowd at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021. He also complained that the justices were too worried about their standing on the \u201csocial circuit.\u201d \u201cAnd the only way they get out is to rule against Trump. \u2018So, let’s rule against Trump.\u2019 And they do that. So, I want to congratulate them,\u201d he said sarcastically.<\/p>\n

As Trump was mounting his bid to return to the White House, he often groused about the justices. In 2022, when the court refused to step in to prevent his tax returns from being turned over to a House committee, he made his bitterness clear.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would anybody be surprised that the Supreme Court has ruled against me, they always do!\u201d he wrote on Truth Social<\/a>. \u201cThe Supreme Court has lost its honor, prestige, and standing, & has become nothing more than a political body, with our Country paying the price. They refused to even look at the Election Hoax of 2020. Shame on them!\u201d<\/p>\n

At other times, Trump has been almost effusive about the court, particularly on the role the justices he appointed played in overturning the federal constitutional right to an abortion<\/a> after nearly half a century.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the help of six very wise and brave Supreme Court Justices, I was successful in terminating Roe v. Wade – Something which few thought was possible to do!\u201d Trump wrote. (Only five justices actually joined in the decision to end Roe. Roberts, an appointee of President George W. Bush, did not sign onto the majority opinion when the court took that momentous step in 2022.)<\/p>\n

Of course, but for a couple of key wins at the high court last year, Trump wouldn\u2019t be speaking to Congress or advancing any government agenda because he may never have returned to the presidency.<\/p>\n

In March, the justices unanimously rejected<\/a> a bid to knock Trump off the ballot in Colorado due to his role in fomenting the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. And in July, the high court split largely along ideological lines as it upended special counsel Jack Smith\u2019s prosecutions of Trump by ruling that presidents enjoy broad criminal immunity<\/a> for acts taken while in office. The justices\u2019 ruling helped fuel Trump\u2019s narrative that he was being unfairly persecuted by his enemies.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s conflicted view of the court and his tendency to harbor perpetual disappointment in the justices was at its clearest in 2023 as he addressed a National Rifle Association convention in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey don\u2019t help me much. I\u2019ve got to tell you that. They vote against me too much,\u201d Trump said. \u201cIt\u2019s one of those little things in life, right?….They are outstanding people and great scholars, brilliant. And they\u2019ve done a very good job, I always say\u2013-except for me.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When President Donald Trump speaks to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, the audience with the most sway over his second-term agenda won’t be the lawmakers. It’s the Supreme Court justices. Trump\u2019s blitz of early executive actions have triggered a tsunami of more than 100 lawsuits \u2014 many of them heading toward the high […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6884\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}