Justices Liberals Love To Hate, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts, Emerge as Powerful Checks on Trump’s Agenda

President Trump’s latest two defeats before the Supreme Court, both announced this week, cement the emergence of Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett as significant checks on the most ambitious elements of the 47th president’s agenda.In Watson v. Republican National Committee, decided by a five to four vote, the high court ruled that mail-in ballots cast and postmarked by Election Day can be counted if they are received after Election Day. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the court’s three liberals to deliver a ruling that Mr. Trump denounced as a “tremendous loss.”A similar formation of votes was decisive in Trump v. Barbara, which was technically decided by a six to three margin. Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett joined the liberals in finding that Mr. Trump’s efforts to outlaw birthright citizenship were unconstitutional. Another conservative, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, reached the same decision but on the basis of federal law rather than constitutional bedrock. Chief Justice Robert’s majority opinion declared that “citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.” He reckoned that “Where the dissents see feudalism, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment saw emancipation.” Birthright citizenship, he notes, was often referred to as “an ordinance of Heaven.” Justice Barrett, who was nominated to the high bench by Mr. Trump in 2020, has not hesitated to rule against him before — often alongside the chief, who owes his place on the Supreme Court to President George W. Bush. The summer before Mr. Trump’s second inauguration the two of them joined the liberals in denying Mr. Trump’s request that his hush money sentence be delayed until 2029. In the event, Judge Juan Merchan sentenced him to only an unconditional discharge and no further punishment.Chief Justice Roberts speaks to the graduating class at the Georgetown Law School at Washington, D.C., on May 12, 2025. Manuel Balce/APLast year Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett again teamed up to thwart the president in his attempt to freeze $2 billion in foreign aid for work that had already been completed by non-profits and contractors. Justice Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts also joined with the court’s left flank in Learning Resources, Inc. v. Trump, which held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president the unilateral power to set tariffs. Then there was the encounter between Justice Barrett and the president at a joint session of Congress, where some observers read hostility into their interaction. The podcaster Stephen Bannon said afterwards that she gave the president “about as close to a stink eye as you can get. I’ve had a couple of my ex-wives look at me like that.” Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett are in no way justices of the left. They have ruled in a conservative direction on cases like Trump v. United States, which expanded presidential immunity, as well as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which overturned Roe v. Wade. In Trump v. Casa, they curtailed the ability of federal district court judges to issue nationwide or “universal” injunctions to obstruct the president’s agenda. All of these have earned them the opprobrium of liberals.At least one study shows, though, that Justice Barrett is the conservative justice most likely to join a majority outcome that leans liberal. A year ago this newspaper ran an editorial reckoning that the “thunder on the right directed toward Justice Amy Coney Barrett is something to behold.” That vitriol has been renewed in recent days, with conservative commentator Matt Walsh calling her a “terrible pick” and asking “When’s the last time we had a Republican president who didn’t put a liberal justice on the court?”

Justices Liberals Love To Hate, Amy Coney Barrett and John Roberts, Emerge as Powerful Checks on Trump’s Agenda

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