Trump's Latest Defeat Is One of Many Decisions That Suggest SCOTUS Won't Rubber-Stamp His Agenda
Despite some notable wins, the president-elect's overall track record shows he cannot count on a conservative Supreme Court to side with him.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to block his sentencing in New York for falsifying business records to conceal his 2016 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels. Todd Blanche, whom Trump plans to appoint as his deputy attorney general, and D. John Sauer, Trump's pick for solicitor general, warned that "forcing President Trump to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case while he is preparing to lead the free world as President of the United States in less than two weeks imposes an intolerable, unconstitutional burden on him" that undermines "national security and vital interests."
Most of the justices were unimpressed by that argument. In an unsigned order issued on Thursday evening, they declined to intervene in the New York case, saying "the burden that sentencing will impose on the President-Elect's responsibilities is relatively insubstantial in light of the trial court's stated intent to impose a sentence of 'unconditional discharge' after a brief virtual hearing."
Since that sentence amounts to no punishment at all and Trump can still appeal his 34 felony convictions, the practical consequences of that order are indeed "relatively insubstantial." But the decision confirms what should have been clear from Trump's track record at the Supreme Court: Even though six of the nine justices are Republican appointees, including three nominated by Trump himself, that does not mean he can count on the Court to rule in his favor. Even the Court's harshest critics on the left are apt to be grateful for that fact during Trump's second term, especially in light of his authoritarian impulses and his threats to deploy his powers against his political opponents.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh said they would have granted Trump's application for a stay. But the majority included Chief Justice John Roberts, a George W. Bush appointee, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, as well as the three justices nominated by Democrats.
That lineup, New York Times reporter Adam Liptak argues, is further evidence of Barrett's "independent streak," which he says was also apparent last summer in Trump v. United States and Fischer v. United States. But these examples are more complicated than Liptak implies.
In the former case, the majority endorsed a broad view of presidential immunity from prosecution for "official acts," casting doubt on whether Trump could be prosecuted for trying to overturn the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. In a partial concurrence, Barrett took a narrower view of presidential immunity that would give prosecutors more leeway to charge a former president based on arguably official conduct. But the majority opinion was written by Roberts, who in other cases has not been shy about ruling against Trump.
In Fischer, which involved a Capitol rioter charged with obstructing an official proceeding, Roberts' majority opinion said a defendant can be convicted of that crime only if he "impaired the availability or integrity for use in an official proceeding of records, documents, objects," or "other things used in the proceeding, or attempted to do so." That ruling also helped Trump, who had been charged with obstructing an official proceeding in the federal election interference case.
In a dissent joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, Barrett disagreed with the majority's reading of the statute. But Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a Biden nominee, joined the majority opinion and wrote a concurrence, which was consistent with civil libertarian concerns about due process and fair notice.
Liptak also mentions Trump v. Anderson, the March 2024 case in which the Court said states could not exclude Trump from the 2020 presidential ballot as an insurrectionist under the 14th Amendment. But although the justices were divided on the rationale for that decision, they were unanimous in concluding that state officials did not have that power.
Those three decisions, Liptak says, "undermined the reputation [Roberts] had built over almost two decades as an institutionalist who sought to defend his court against charges that it is warped by politics." But the assumption that any decision favoring Trump must be "warped by politics" is neither fair nor reasonable, as illustrated by Jackson's position in Fischer and the unanimous result in Trump v. Anderson. By the same logic, justices appointed by Democrats must be motivated by partisan considerations every time they rule against Trump.
Justices who do what they are supposed to do by interpreting and applying the law according to politically neutral principles are bound to agree with Trump in some cases and disagree with him in others. And given Trump's repeatedly demonstrated disregard for statutory and constitutional restraints, you would expect that the Court would rule against him more often than not, which is what happened during his first term.
"In his first administration," Liptak notes, Trump "did poorly in the Supreme Court in signed decisions in orally argued cases in which the United States, an executive department, an independent agency or the president himself was a party, prevailing only 42 percent of the time, the lowest rate since at least Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration. In other words, a fundamentally conservative court, now with a six-justice majority of Republican appointees that includes three named by Mr. Trump himself, has not been particularly receptive to his arguments. The Biden administration, by contrast, has been on the winning side 54 percent of the time."
During the last century, every president has fared substantially better at the Supreme Court than Trump, with success rates ranging from 52 percent (Barack Obama) to 75 percent (Ronald Reagan). They typically have prevailed more than 60 percent of the time.
Trump's broader judicial track record in his first term was even worse. When it analyzed the outcomes of federal cases involving Trump agency actions from 2017 through the end of his administration, the New York University School of Law's Institute for Policy Integrity found that the government was unsuccessful 78 percent of the time.
Trump's defeats at the Supreme Court included its 2020 ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which held that federal law bars employment discrimination based on sexual orientation. Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion, which was joined by Roberts and four other justices.
Another memorable loss was the Court's 2019 decision in Trump v. Mazars, which rejected Trump's attempt to block a state subpoena for his tax returns. The majority included two Trump nominees, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, whose "betrayal" reportedly enraged him. "In our system of government, as this Court has often stated, no one is above the law," Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion joined by Gorsuch. "That principle applies, of course, to a President."
Later that year, Trump took his anger at the Supreme Court public after it declined to hear two cases challenging the outcome of the 2020 election. He complained that the justices—including Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett—had "just 'chickened out' and didn't want to rule on the merits." Two weeks later, Trump called the justices "totally incompetent and weak" as well as cowardly. By refusing to consider his "absolute PROOF" of "massive Election Fraud," he said, they effectively endorsed "corrupt elections," meaning "we have no country!"
Trump reiterated that complaint during his pre-riot "stop the steal" speech on January 6, 2021. "I'm not happy with the Supreme Court," he told his supporters. "They love to rule against me."
The hits kept coming after Trump left office. Last June in Garland v. Cargill, the Supreme Court rejected Trump's unilateral ban on bump stocks, ruling that it exceeded the statutory authority of federal gun regulators. While Trump's left-leaning opponents might have been displeased by the outcome, the ruling vindicated the separation of powers and the rule of law—principles that progressive critics of the bump stock decision will be keen to uphold during the next four years.
Similarly, the Supreme Court's June 2024 repudiation of the Chevron doctrine provoked much consternation on the left but is apt to facilitate challenges to Trump's second-term policies. Under that doctrine, which the Court disavowed in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, judges deferred to agency interpretations of "ambiguous" statutes as long as the interpretations were "permissible" or "reasonable."
As critics of Loper Bright saw it, the decision was bound to benefit the wealthy and powerful by blocking regulations aimed at protecting the public. But as Gorsuch noted in that case, the Chevron doctrine imposed a bigger burden on ordinary people confronted by bureaucrats who were empowered to invent their own authority. Anyone who is worried about what Trump might do during his second term should be glad that his agencies will no longer have that license.
Although it did not directly involve Trump, the Court's July 2024 ruling in Moody v. NetChoice and NetChoice v. Paxton, which addressed challenges to state laws restricting content moderation by social media platforms, did not go the way he wanted. Contrary to Trump's view that such laws protect freedom of speech, Kagan's majority opinion, which was joined by Roberts and Barrett, made it clear that "government efforts to alter an edited compilation of third-party expression are subject to judicial review for compliance with the First Amendment." That position is plainly at odds with Trump's desire to override private moderation decisions, as exemplified by the agenda of his pick to run the Federal Communications Commission.
In another pair of social media cases last March, the Court unanimously held, in an opinion by Barrett, that public officials may be violating the First Amendment when they selectively block critics on platforms such as Facebook. That was the same issue Trump raised when he tried to block dissenting voices on Twitter during his first term.
"Trump has made clear that going forward he is going to be even less concerned with abiding by the Constitution and federal law than he was the last time he was in the White House," Brianne Gorod, a lawyer at the Constitutional Accountability Center, told NBC News after the election, "so the courts, including the Supreme Court, are on notice that their role as a vital check in our constitutional system will be tested." On balance, the Court's prior decisions suggest it will not shirk that responsibility.
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But I thought Trump was a Dictator that would destroy Our Democracy. Weren't all the judges he was Stacking The Courts with supposed to be his yes-men?
That was then, this is now.
They still are.
Also Trump is a rapist.
Retard.
I am not the one who looks at a rapist and a liar and says "Wow I want him to be president".
It is my sincere hope that Trump implements every policy and idea he had on the campaign trail.
Maybe you had difficulty reading.
He said retard.
Strange. Where is the rape conviction? I don't remember one and in fact, seem to remember someone in the news media shelling out $15,000,000 to Trump for calling him one.
That juuuust might get the Dems to fire some of their obvious KGB and CHICOM lackeys, and instead pick up some of the Libertarian Platform planks that terrify Christian Nazis to no end. Gary Johnson proved there are a LOT of votes there. I rejoice in every ocean of sobbing lachrymation oozed by BOTH halves of the looter kleptocracy--all the more when their loss results from Libertarian spoiler votes. To train a mule, first you gotta get its attention...
lol, and you doubled down on it.
Fascinating.
Also Trump is a rapist.
ABC, George Stephanopoulos, and $15,000,000 say something different.
ABC:
Always
Been
Crap.
Molly.
Godiva.
Remains.
Full.
Of.
Shit.
Fuck off and die, asshole.
It's almost like the "conservative" justices adhere to higher principles than partisanship and actually try to rule based on the law.
To be fair, they haven't ruled on the law yet. What Roberts seemed to do is rule on proper procedure. Waiting for the appeals process to occur before ruling on the law.
Yeah, this was a punt. If they weren't going to shut down this stuff before then there is no reason for them to interfere now.
Yep. There’s going to be more liberal tears when they throw out the conviction.
Yeah I don't see this as a big defeat and Trump doesn't seem particularly worried about it. This is run of the mill procedural BS.
That judge Juan Merchan is as corrupt as they come should have some bearing as to what happens next.
Come Jan.20 he may think about skipping out of the country.
I read rthat the indictment was defective.
The best thing Trump has ever done to date is to be the major factor in giving the American people by far our most pro-Constitution, pro individual liberty USSC of my lifetime (54 years). Gorsuch in particular is probably the best Supreme Court justice the country has had in generations.
I know you hateful lefties reading this comment right now are seething with rage about Roe v Wade, but even there, the court absolutely made the constutionally correct decision by putting the very difficult issue of abortion back in the purview of the states, which is where the issue belonged all along, just like most issues do. I'm sorry if you don't like that, but of course I'm not really sorry (tough shit in other words).
Supporting the law means supporting Trump.
Poor sarc.
Pour sarc.
Um... mebbe not NY law.
Yes, on law and the Constitution.
Wait until Kash Patel hears about this.
Yes, it suggests that, if you are drunk and high. The court will have orange lips just like they have for the last 8 years.
Yep, retarded.
and drunk
So you can't read! Thanks for admitting it.
On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump's lawyers urged the U.S. Supreme Court to block his sentencing in New York for falsifying business records to conceal his 2016 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels.
Good lord. This is the most biased phrasing of the situation I can imagine.
Convicted for a crime that doesn't exist and for an incident that happened decades ago.
This is how the other side plays.
The Democrat party no longer exists.
This Court is not conservative in any sense of the word. Only Thomas and Alito can be counted on to rule with some semblance of 'originalism' or attempting to understand just what the writers of the Constitution meant. Trump's picks appear to be more like the courts progressives in that they don't really have any coherent basis for their rulings, they just decide as the mood suits them. They seem to profess a commitment to 'textualism' but if Gorsuch's ruling in Bostock v Clayton County is an example of that, then conservatives really are in trouble.
he cannot count on a conservative Supreme Court to side with him.
Leave it to Jakey Jakey News is Fakey to double-down on the lie that SCOTUS operates in a partisan fashion.
Agreed. Perhaps there is a regression to the mean in the history of partisan politics and the Court. A whopper of an outlier in either direction is likely to be followed by something closer to neutral, even in the same Court.
I do have a question. If Blanche and Sauer were willing to contend that "to prepare for a criminal sentencing in a felony case" would be an intolerable burden for the white knight of the free world, will they also be willing to argue that preparing for the appeals of his convictions would be equally intolerable? Of course not. He wants his tiara to be unblemished by a felony conviction, even after getting away with less than the proverbial wrist slap.
"even after getting away with less than the proverbial wrist slap...for a non-crime in the first place based on a novel interpretation of law that has never been used in recorded history and with a judge not requiring the jury to unanimously agree on WHAT THE ALLEGED CRIME WAS IN THE FIRST PLACE."
FTFY.
"...Of course not. He wants his tiara to be unblemished by a felony conviction,..."
That would be felonious late return of a library book, right, TDS-addled pile of shit?
Maybe SCOTUS "Rubber-Stamping" partisanship agenda is just Liberal(leftard) Self-Projection.
Checks the data on liberal justices.... Yes, yes; That's exactly what it is.
After Jan.20, people like fat Alvin Brag, Jack Smith, and Juan Merchan are going to become the hunted.
Don't leave out Merrick Garfinkle. Fanny Willis and Letrashia James.
The new, improved White House should instruct the new improved Dept. of Justice to thoroughly investigate Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and Gov. Newsom for their total failure to protect the people of that state.
The disaster in L.A. is going to destroy greasy Gavin's chances of a presidency.
Only in the fevered TDS dreams of Sully would the reasonable ruling by SCOTUS be called a defeat. Telling Trump that since there would be no penalties, sorry orange jump suit fans, and Trump wasn't even going to have to leave his home he would have to just appeal through the standard process which requires the judge to put the whole thing to rest before the appeal process could start is not a defeat in any way. That is, unless you hate the process of our court system.
Note to foreign readers: pass the mouse cursor over the fake name. If it glows and reveals a link to a blog or website, then that is perhaps part of the 2% of Reason subscribers surrounded by a thick crust of noisome, ordure-flinging christian nationalsocialist and anarcho-fascist trolls, infiltrators and human skunks. Otherwise, flag the doodooposter or use the Mute Loser option to transform the idiot into an inoffensive grey rectangle. Eventually Reason will stop importing foreign terrorists or work out a defense better than inoculation by turd sandwich.
Rubber baby buggy bumpers.
Reason should build a wall.
Sullum is a slimy pile of TDS-addled shit, ain't he?
Get reamed with a barb-wire-wrapped broomstick, Sullum, and then fuck off and die, asshole.
No surprise.
Assistant NSAWP sockpuppet shill. Flag or mute for a more productive interface.
Sometimes the Supreme Court's refusal to hear a case is an abdication of responsibility. And sometimes their refusal to hear a case is a ruling against the appellant. What I would have preferred would have been for the Supreme Court to review the appeal as an excuse to strike down the conviction altogether since it was clearly a politically motivated violation of Trump's constitutional rights from the very beginning, and a travesty for the rule of law.
The USSC doesn't do that sort of thing though.
Sullum overplays the significance of what happened here.
The USSC merely said that, in light of the expected sentence (expected because the judge announced what the sentence would be early), there was really no reason for the USSC to step in at this early junction - Trump still hasn't exhausted the appeals process.
That's it. Trump wasn't in danger of having his liberty taken and the court process isn't done so the *supreme* court declines to intervene early.
The headline doesn't track. SCOTUS wanting the case to follow the normative procedural course and to wait until Trump has exhausted every option available to him in the New York courts doesn't tell us anything aside from that one thing. SCOTUS wants to the case to follow the normative procedural course. They may or may not rule in his favor if it ultimately comes to them down the road. That said, I don't believe SCOTUS will be a rubber stamp for him. Most of the judges have a reasonable modicum of judicial integrity and actually do have philosophies of jurisprudence they apply to the cases that here. People painting them as partisan when they don't like rulings is often the result of slander, spin, or simple illiteracy and a refusal to read the decisions.
Where besides Reason do you see links to Suprema Corte decisions?
You seem to be ignoring decades of hundred-page opinions designed to obfuscate rather than enlighten in order to arrive at a sociopolitical engineering goal rather than to interpret the Constitution and apply reasonable laws. There are now an uncountable number over four thousand individual laws listed in the Code of Federal Regulations (uncountable because almost all of them have "included by reference" cascading amendments) almost all of which should have been struck down by the Courts on Constitutional grounds. The rare "modicum of judicial integrity" seems to me to be the exception. It is not encouraging.
No, it's proof that John Roberts is shriveled-scrotum little rat ba*tard.
But rhetorically and strategically this is a great way to prepare for rubber-stamping. Get your reputation for independence by rulings like this (after all, most Justices do not believe the charges) and then on things that matter, stamp,stamp,stamp.
The sentence amounts to nothing but making the adulterer were a large red letter "A" on his chest. But that adulterer is President , with a powerful cabinet, and 4 years -- Oh, and a VP who is not a fool.
You wait, this will be what they point to as they "stamp, baby, stamp" That ruling will be reversed on appeal. Just wait.
But rhetorically and strategically
What about strategically and reluctantly?
No difference at all. Think about it, the SCOTUS is supposed to be above politics and clear rather than rhetorical. As to strategy, impossible for me to see anything concerted in say the last 10 years of SCOTUS except for maybe Thomas and Alito.
Another reason that this looks like a prelude to commendable rubber stamping. Most of them must be sick of that bozo Biden, who seems to not grasp the Constitution at all. Even after Pelosi said tuition forgiveness was forbidden to the Chief Executive he received 3 major rejections of his tuition plan. As dumb a man as walks the earth.
I think the rubber stamp is doing fine and even Washington Post seems to agree
Ruth Marcus
The Supreme Court’s ‘no’ to Trump was dangerously close to ‘yes’
In ruling 5-4, the high court showed how close it is to becoming a rubber stamp.
January 10, 2025 at 5:31 p.m. ESTJanuary 10, 2025
EVEN the Washington Post... that paragon of journalistic integrity? Be still my beating black heart.
The fact is that 4 justices dissented from a denial of stay on no obvious grounds - they didn't give a reason - and despite the law being extremely clear.
The fact is that on the most important case involving Trump, the immunity case, the 6-justice majority invented a doctrine out of thin air to the immediate and obvious benefit of Trump. After that case, anyone who thinks that only liberal justices are activist or who thinks that Alito and Thomas or any other conservative justices are truly rextualists or originalists, are deluding themselves.
Hmmm, a thousand smirks greeted your "6-justice majority invented a doctrine out of thin air" --even if you take them to be wrong they are not idiots, they gave reasons and you ignored that completely.
Page 4 of the 119-page opinion puts even your premise to shame.
"The first step in deciding whether a former President is entitled
to immunity from a particular prosecution is to distinguish his official from unofficial actions. In this case, no court thus far has drawn that distinction, in general or with respect to the conduct alleged in particular."-
Hmmm, a thousand smirks greeted your "6-justice majority invented a doctrine out of thin air" --even if you take them to be wrong they are not idiots, they gave reasons and you ignored that completely.
Indeed they did give reasons for the doctrine they invented out of thin air. It is surely unnecessary to note that SC justices usually give reasons for their decisions and dissents. The have been reasons given for non-public takings, qualified immunity and asset forfeiture as well.
I commend to you the dissents in Trump.
"The first step in deciding whether a former President is entitled to immunity from a particular prosecution is to distinguish his official from unofficial actions.
No, the first srep is deciding whether there are any grounds in the Constitution itself.
It hardly makes you look logical to say both things. IF it were invented out of thin air, you wouldn't have 4 dissimilar dissents. You must be saying they are all clueless.
IF it were invented out of thin air, you wouldn't have 4 dissimilar dissents. You must be saying they are all clueless.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/23pdf/23-939_e2pg.pdf
ROBERTS, C. J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, ALITO, GORSUCH, and KAVANAUGH, JJ., joined in full, and in which BARRETT, J., joined except as to Part III–C. THOMAS, J., filed a concurring opinion. BARRETT, J., filed an opinion concurring in part. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which KAGAN and JACKSON, JJ., joined. JACKSON, J., filed a dissenting opinion.
That's basically a 6-3.
The SC was never going to "rubber stamp" Trump's agenda, that is just another regime media lie.
Well, if every time they agree it's gping to be called rubberstamping and every thime they don't it's called 'acting right' then we aren't talking about the Consistuion anyway 🙂
Um, okay?
So which part of this means I should fear this "literally Hitler" again?
All that is , is equivocating on the meaning of the word 'conservative'. Laughable (I did actually chortle reading that)
Just humor me and tell me who the official real REASON magazine conservative is, Is it Trump, Is it Scotus ?