With several consequential Supreme Court cases looming, a distinguished legal expert says that a long-simmering conflict between the Federalist Society and MAGA wings of the Republican party is about to explode.
This is according to court journalist and author of a prominent book on the conservative legal movement Pete S. Canellos. Canellos told the Boston Globe, “When Donald Trump made his fateful trip to the Supreme Court on April 1, he seemed intensely aware that his MAGA movement was on a collision course with a high court dominated by members of the Federalist Society, the conservative organization that had made a generational project of tilting America’s justice system to the right.”
As Canellos noted, lower court judges had previously defied Trump at the direction of Federalist Society chair and former ally Leonard Leo, prompting the president to call him “a bad person” who “probably hates America.” After that, as he waited for the Supreme Court to rule on his order ending birthright citizenship, Trump admitted, “They’ll probably rule against me because they seem to like doing that.”
While Trump seems to think it’s about him personally, according to Canellos, when conservatives on the Supreme Court began asserting their independence from Trump by rejecting policies like his tariffs, this in fact represented a basic ideological battle between party factions.
“The two movements are emphatically not the same,” writes Canellos. “They share some grievances but sprang from radically different places. MAGA is predominantly working class; the Federalist Society is propelled by Ivy Leaguers. MAGA demands authoritative action; the Federalist Society is dedicated to its own reading of the Founding Fathers’ balance of power. MAGA faces strict time limits to enact lasting changes; the Federalist Society takes the long view.”’
Now, with cases relating to several key Trump priorities on the Supreme Court docket for later this year, if conservative justices once again prove their willingness to oppose Trump, it will not only have “major implications” for the rest of his term, but will exacerbate “what could be an epic conservative-on-conservative clash.”
According to Canellos, “The question now is whether those differences outweigh any common political preferences or loyalty to a man who helped to bring the movement to its greatest heights. Might conservative justices side with their president based on partisanship alone?” He writes that many conservative legal experts say no.
“The conservative legal movement is very dedicated to the rule of law and has a much deeper faith in the American system — the separation of powers and, more than that, the durability of our Constitution — than MAGA has,” said Ed Whelan, who served as Deputy Attorney General under George W. Bush and is close friends with several current justices. “I haven’t been able to discern a MAGA judicial philosophy beyond ‘Trump should win.’”
Should conservative justices decide to rule against Trump, it could suggest major complications for the rest of his presidency, “especially in light of a possible Democratic takeover of Congress in November’s midterm election. Democrats have vowed to use their budgetary authority to undo Trump’s DOGE-inspired cuts. If he agrees to a budget deal restoring the cuts, as he might be obliged to do, he’s likely to refuse to spend the money — throwing disputes back onto the Supreme Court.”
Whelan expressed confidence that the justices would remain true to their own philosophies regardless of the president’s wishes, saying, “Trump’s apparent efforts to bully the justices won’t work. They are not his pawns, and they won’t want to be misperceived that way.”
