President Donald Trump has heaped praise on his Supreme Court picks for helping him thwart “radical left judges” who had blocked some of the most controversial parts of his policy agenda.
The president also singled out Amy Coney Barrett, dismissing earlier rage from the MAGA world that she was not consistently doing their bidding.
“I just have great respect for her, I always have, and this decision was brilliantly written from all accounts,” Trump said after the Supreme Court boosted his powers.
ADVERTISEMENT
The comments came after Coney Barrett led a conservative vote to upend the ability of single federal judges to freeze presidential policies across the country using nationwide injunctions.
The 6-3 ruling, written by Coney Barrett, stemmed from Trump’s push to end birthright citizenship, which dictates that everyone born in the U.S. is a citizen, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.
But the decision could have much broader implications, as Trump has long claimed that the lower courts were overstepping their authority in other areas too, such as blocking him from firing civil servants, defunding foreign aid or relocating transgender women in federal prisons.
At a hastily convened press conference, Trump thanked the Court for “stepping in” with its 6-3 ruling, which was voted along ideological lines.
He also lashed out at the judges across Democratic states who had sought to block several of his executive orders with nationwide injunctions, claiming their decisions were “a colossal abuse of power” and a “great threat to democracy.”
“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,” Trump said.
“I’m grateful to the Supreme Court for stepping in and solving this very, very big and complex problem, and they’ve made it very simple. I want to thank Justice Barrett, who wrote the opinion brilliantly, as well as Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Thomas. Great people.”
Nationwide injunctions have been a powerful tool used to block policies from both Democratic and Republican administrations.
But no administration has been thwarted more in the courts than Trump, as he has sought to use executive orders to push everything from bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth, to imposing “liberation day” tariff policies.
However, Attorney General Pam Bondi, who appeared alongside Trump on Friday, claimed the system, until now, had “allowed district court judges to be emperors.”
She also cited figures showing that 35 out of the 40 opinions blocking the administration’s policies came from “five liberal districts in this country”—Maryland, Washington, California, Maryland and Massachusetts.
“Americans are finally getting what they voted for, no longer will we have rogue judges striking down Trump’s policies,” she said.
Trump’s praise for the Supreme Court comes after reports this month suggested he had expressed frustration with the bench for not consistently backing his agenda.
Of the six conservative justices at the court, three were nominated by the president during his first term: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
But Trump had taken particular aim at Barrett, according to reports, fueled by right-wing allies telling him that she is “weak”.
Today, however, he praised Barrett’s opinion, in which she determined that “when a court concludes that the Executive Branch has acted unlawfully, the answer is not for the court to exceed its power, too.”
