Supreme Court Justice Most 'Disloyal' to Donald Trump as New Term Starts
Newsweek · C · trust 54/100
0 Share Newsweek is a Trust Project member See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. President Donald Trump has grown increasingly frustrated with the justices he appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court , accusing them of disloyalty after a string of landmark rulings went against his administration.
The court opens its new term on Monday with the president openly saying he regrets all three of his picks. Over the coming months, Justices Neil Gorsuch , Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett will weigh cases on immigration detention, deportations and voting rules, putting them once again in the position of ruling for or against the man who nominated them.
A Newsweek analysis of 10 major court rulings involving the Trump administration since January 2025 found that Barrett broke with the president most often, voting against his administration's position in seven of them. Kavanaugh did so in five. Gorsuch, who has drawn some of Trump's harshest personal attacks, ruled against the administration in three.
Chief Justice John Roberts , who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, also voted against the administration in seven of the 10 cases and wrote the majority opinion in three of its biggest losses: tariffs , birthright citizenship and the attempted firing of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Trump has treated those votes as personal betrayals. After the court struck down his sweeping tariffs in February, he said the justices in the majority were "very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution." Eight months later, his view had not softened.
"They voted against me too often. I gave them the position of a lifetime, and they vote against me often. They vote for me too," Trump said in an interview with TIME , when asked whether he regretted nominating them.
The analysis covered the cases on tariffs, birthright citizenship, the Fed, independent agencies, the National Guard deployment in Illinois, a U.S. Postal Service rule on mail ballots, late-arriving ballots, two Alien Enemies Act cases and nationwide injunctions.
In one of them, Watson v. RNC , the administration backed one side without being a party.
Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Supreme Court via email on Friday afternoon.
Barrett, the last of Trump's three appointees and the one confirmed weeks before the 2020 election, sided with the court's liberal justices and Roberts in the president's two most consequential losses of his second term.
In February, she joined the 6-3 majority that ruled the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not give the president the power to impose tariffs. She also wrote separately to challenge how Gorsuch framed the major questions doctrine in his own concurrence.
In June, she joined Roberts and the three liberals in striking down Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship. She also wrote the 5-4 majority opinion in Watson v. RNC , ruling that states may count mail ballots postmarked by Election Day that arrive afterward, a position the administration had opposed.
She voted against the administration on the Illinois National Guard deployment, the Postal Service mail ballot rule and one of the Alien Enemies Act cases. In a second Alien Enemies Act case, which Trump won 5-4, she joined parts of a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor .
Trump has singled her out repeatedly. On the day of the tariffs ruling, he called the votes of Barrett and Gorsuch "an embarrassment to their families." On Mother's Day in May, with the birthright case still pending, he wrote that the two "were appointed by me, and yet have hurt our Country so badly!" and added, "It's really OK for them to be loyal to the person that appointed them."
In August, the president amplified an op-ed by conservative legal activist Mike Davis that called the birthright votes of "professors Roberts and Barrett" "especially despicable."
Barrett has rejected the idea that she has become the court's swing vote. Speaking at the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas in May, she said, "I don't like that label because it makes me sound sort of flighty." She added: "I think independent, or just following the law, would be the way to describe it."
Her record still includes major wins for the president. She wrote the 2025 majority opinion in Trump v. CASA , which curbed the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions against his policies, and she was one of four justices, along with Gorsuch, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas , who would have let him remove Cook from the Fed.
"While a modest approach would have been appropriate, the Court chooses to go big," she wrote in her solo dissent in that case.
Kavanaugh is the appointee Trump praised most loudly this year. He wrote the principal dissent in the tariffs case, arguing that "tariffs are a traditional and common tool to regulate importation," and the president responded within hours.
"My new hero is United States Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh," Trump wrote.
His record on the president's cases is more mixed than that praise suggests. Kavanaugh cast the decisive fifth vote in June to block Trump from firing Cook, joining Roberts and the three liberals.
"If the Federal Reserve's for-cause removal protections are to be eliminated, that change must occur through the legislative process," he wrote in a concurrence.
He also concurred in the judgment against Trump in the birthright citizenship case, finding the executive order violates federal immigration law while leaving the constitutional question open. He voted against the administration on the Illinois National Guard deployment and in one of the Alien Enemies Act cases.
In September, Kavanaugh joined the 7-2 order that kept the Postal Service mail ballot rule on hold before the midterm elections, writing that election officials did not have enough time to put it in place. Only Alito and Thomas dissented.
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