President Donald Trump is headed for more Supreme Court battles in his second term as he attempts to steamroll the judicial branch.
According to a report from The Washington Post, Trump in recent weeks has been making it known that the Supreme Court should not get the final say-so during his administration.
As the Post's Julian Mark put it: "Trump has made it clear that he will not take Supreme Court decisions as the final word on some of his most cherished priorities."
Legal experts who spoke with the Post characterize Trump's approach as pushing the "boundaries" of Supreme Court rulings rather than openly defying them. The strategy involves finding technical limitations in court opinions and attempting to "circumvent" them through alternative methods.
"Without question, President Trump is challenging the bounds of the court's opinions, particularly regarding [Fed member Lisa] Cook's firing and birthright citizenship," Harvard Law professor Richard Lazarus explained.
The Supreme Court affirmed that nearly everyone born in the United States is a citizen. Trump responded by issuing executive orders creating exceptions for children born to "alien enemies," foreign terrorists, foreign lobbyists, or people who obtained tourist visas specifically to give birth in the U.S.
When signing the orders, Trump directly challenged the Supreme Court ruling by declaring, "We're ending it a different way."
On the issue of Cook's firing, Trump's underlying rationale that she engaged in mortgage fraud remains unproven, and she has not been charged. While the renewed push to remove her does not formally repudiate the Supreme Court's opinion, it tests its limits by challenging what the ruling allows.
Georgetown Law professor David Super noted that Trump's second-term approach represents a significant departure from historical presidential practice.
"Most presidents treated Supreme Court rulings as dispositive of the issues involved rather than as technical documents to be evaded," Super said before noting that in his first term, the president was more sanguine after a Supreme Court defeat.
"The second-term President Trump appears to have much less regard for the other branches of the federal government than the first-term one did," Super elaborated to the Post.
The Trump administration's broader conflict with the federal judiciary extends beyond the Supreme Court. A Washington Post analysis found that Trump and his appointees were accused of flouting court orders in more than a third of 160-plus lawsuits against the administration where judges issued substantive rulings. The administration has also clashed with the judiciary over Trump's selections for federal prosecutor positions.
