President Donald Trump on Tuesday blasted the Supreme Court justices he appointed after they ruled against him on mail ballots, tariffs and birthright citizenship, portraying their decisions as a personal betrayal.
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“These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court, they are merely a shell of their original selves,” Trump wrote on social media, reacting to the court’s Monday night ruling that blocked his administration’s restrictions on mail ballots in the midterms.
Although Trump blamed all three of his appointees for ruling against him, the court’s ruling did not specify a vote count, leaving some question about precisely how many justices were in the majority.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, whom Trump appointed to the court during his first term, concurred with the decision blocking the administration’s effort to allow the U.S. Postal Service to impose new nationwide rules on mail ballots.
Neither of Trump’s other two appointees — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett — registered dissents.
Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented, drawing Trump’s praise.
The majority did not explain its reasoning, which is typical in cases that come to the court through its emergency docket, as this one did.
Kavanaugh wrote separately to say that even if the administration could prove it had the legal authority to impose the changes, they would be unreasonable because state and local authorities wouldn’t have time to implement them for the midterm election, which is now seven weeks away.
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Trump has previously attacked the justices in personal terms for adverse rulings, baselessly accusing them of caving to foreign influence when they struck down his emergency tariff authority. Legal scholars and occasionally Roberts have warned that Trump’s attacks undermine judicial independence and the separation of powers.
This time, Trump accused the justices of being “bullied and cajoled by the Radical Left,” without explaining further.
Trump also blamed the court system for taking too long to decide the mail ballot issue.
The high court’s ruling ends — at least for this election cycle — a litigation whirlwind involving Democratic-led states, voting rights groups and the administration that has bounced among conflicting decisions. Trump has promoted restrictions that he says are designed to prevent fraud, which he has long insisted without evidence proliferates in mail ballots. Election administrators said the late and strict changes would disrupt the method a third of voters use to cast their ballots.
Kavanaugh and Barrett, but not Gorsuch, also voted with the court’s majority that struck down Trump’s order to restrict the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. In the tariffs case, Gorsuch and Barrett voted with the majority, and Kavanaugh dissented.
“The Supreme Court has really let our Country down!” Trump said of the panel where Republican appointees outnumber the Democratic appointees six to three. “It is a Court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful, and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”
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