The Supreme Court that Trump helped to shape could have the last word

By Mark Sherman, Associated Press

Washington (AP) – President Donald Trump will need the Supreme Court, with three judges he appointed, to allow the most aggressive of the many actions he took during the first weeks of his second mandate from the house White.

But even a conservative majority with a robust vision of the presidential power could fall back into part of what the president wants to do.

The court won Trump’s major victories last year who helped eliminate potential obstacles to his re -election, postponing his criminal trial to Washington, DC, then offering immunity against prosecution for official actions. But Trump’s first term was marked by important defeats – as well as some victories – in court.

“It will be an extraordinary test for the Roberts court, that he is ready to defend the constitutional principles he has long adopted,” said Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center of the University of New York and author of A critical book towards the court. “Some of the things we have seen are so clearly unconstitutional that I am convinced that the court will rise. Other things that align with the accumulation of the power of the presidency make me very nervous. »»

There is no shortage of problems that could find a path to the highest courtyard in the country. The lower courts have already interrupted orders on the citizenship of the dawn, a freezing on grants and government loans and a buy -back order for federal workers.

Other proceedings have been filed on restrictions on transgender persons, limits to asylum seekers, efforts to close USAID, Elon Musk and his team access to sensitive data and the dismissal of agency officials independent federals.

Trump met with a mixed success at the Court during his first mandate. By a vote of 5-4, the judges confirmed his ban on traveling to the United States of several mainly Muslim countries, but only after the courts blocked the first two versions.

The same five conservative judges supported the dismissal by Trump of the head of the Consumer Finance Protection Office and paved the way for the administration to draw billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to build sections of a border wall With Mexico, while a lawsuit continued.

At the same time, chief judge John Roberts joined the liberal block of the court court judge to prevent Trump from putting an end to the DACA program for immigrants who were brought here as a child. The same majority of five justice also prevented the administration from including a question on citizenship on the 2020 census.

Roberts also struck Trump thoroughly for denouncing a judge who rejected his migrant asylum policy as “Obama judge”.

A big difference compared to the first presidency of Trump is that there are only three liberal judges, after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg in September 2020 allowed Trump to appoint a third judge, Amy Coney Barrett, in the last months of his mandate. She joined the appointed by Trump, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh earlier.

Citizenship of the birth law could offer a critical early test

The question that could be the first in the line this time is the order of Trump ending the citizenship of the birth right for the children of the parents who are illegally in the United States. The administration has already indicated that it would appeal a decision of a judge who has so far blocked it.

According to the speed with which the Federal Court of Appeal of San Francisco acts, an emergency call to the Supreme Court could arrive in a few weeks if the Ministry of Justice of Trump wanted to put pressure on the courts to authorize the order to Take effect while the legal struggle continues.

Although there is a certain support in legal circles for what Trump tries to do, the opinion more widespread among the liberal and conservative scholars is that it is a fight that the president will not win.

“I am extremely skeptical about the fact that there are votes for the decree of the citizenship of Birthright, as he is written,” said Jonathan Adler, professor of law at the Western University box in Cleveland who described as a center right.

Will Trump’s order freeze federal expenses?

Trump’s efforts now caused to freeze federal expenses and his call to close USAID could also respond to resistance, even before the conservative court, although more modest reductions can get out of it.

“The court will be more skeptical, especially if the administration tries to completely relax an agency that has been created by status,” said Villanova University Professor Michael Moreland, who worked at the White House of George W. Bush.

The story of the prohibition of traveling, which the court finally confirmed after its twice revisation, is instructive, said Adler.

“Make the wide announcement which is a little Blunderbuss, a little aggressive, which pushed the envelope. Then go back to a more defensible space after hindsight. The result is something more modest, but always dramatic, “he said.

The Biden administration has found a legally defensible way not to spend money from the border walls that the congress appropriated. “There are much more play in the joints than people recognize it,” said Adler.

The power of the president to shoot is on firmer land

Trump is on a firmer land in his dismissal from the member of the National Council for Labor Relations Gynne A. Wilcox and members of the Employment Employment Employment Commission, Charlotte Burrows, and Jocelyn Samuels, all Democrats.

Wilcox has already continued, arguing that federal law protects it from the dismissal arbitrarily.

But even his lawyers have recognized in their deposit that his trial could put in place a contestation of the Supreme Court to a precedent of 90 years that Roberts and the other conservatives have already reduced. The case known as the executor’s executor of Humphrey judged that President Franklin Roosevelt could not arbitrarily dismiss a member of the Federal Trade Commission, a decision which also applied to other independent federal agencies.

This decision, however, has met a legal theory adopted by conservatives who says that the Constitution gives all the executive power to the President, the only person who is responsible for the whole of the US electorate.

In the CFPB case in 2020, Roberts dismissed the complaint of judge Elena Kagan that the court suppressed “a measure of the independence of political pressure”.

Roberts left Humphrey’s testamentary executor, but decreased, even if Judge Clarence Thomas and Gorsuch wrote that they would have done before and would have rejected.

“If I had to speculate, I would say it would be – if not exceeded, at least seriously constrained,” said Moreland.

Originally published: February 9, 2025 at 9:02 p.m. PST