How Trump’s 'controversial agenda' could put him on a 'collision course' with SCOTUS: report

29 November 2024

Many critics of President-elect Donald Trump, from law professor/former federal prosecutor Kimberly Wehle to progressive legal expert Elie Mystal, have vehemently attacked the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 GOP supermajority for being overly favorable to him. Wehle and Mystal were especially critical of the High Court's ruling in Trump v. the United States, which said that presidents enjoy immunity from criminal prosecution for "official" acts but not for "unofficial" acts.

That decision, according to Wehle and Mystal, is a dangerous recipe for authoritarianism.

But Washington Post legal reporters Justin Jouvenal and Ann E. Marimow, in an article published on November 29, stress that the Roberts Court ruled against Trump many times during his first term as president — and could act as a "check" after he begins his second term on January 20, 2025.

"Donald Trump's greatest legacy is arguably the conservative supermajority he created on the Supreme Court," Jouvenal and Marimow explain. "His second term could put him on a collision course with the institution he reshaped. With Republican allies controlling the House and Senate, the Supreme Court could emerge as the most likely check on the president-elect's promise to assert sweeping powers — in ways that could test the boundaries of the law and the Constitution."

The legal journalists go on to cite some of the policies that could result in aggressive "legal challenges" during Trump's second term.

"If pursued, Trump's controversial agenda to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, end birthright citizenship, impose extensive tariffs, fire or relocate thousands of federal workers and abolish the Department of Education would surely unleash a flood of legal challenges," Jouvenal and Marimow note. "Trump has lost at the Supreme Court more than any other modern president, according to one study, and several recent High Court rulings that curbed the power of regulatory agencies could hem in his agenda."

The Post reporters add, "At the same time, Trump's three nominees have moved the Supreme Court further to the right, establishing a supermajority that greatly expanded the definition of presidential immunity."

The 2023 study that Jouvenal and Marimow mention was conducted by law professors Rebecca L. Brown and Lee Epstein for the University of Southern California (USC).

Michael Waldman, president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School in Manhattan, told the Post, "Trump is trying to shift the constitutional balance. In the past, the Supreme Court has pushed back. This Supreme Court should, but it's an open question of whether it will."

Read the full Washington Post article at this link (subscription required).

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