Supreme Court

The Roberts Court vs. the Trump Court

Why Trump lost big in the Supreme Court cases he cared the most about

Damon Root | 7.7.2026 7:00 AM

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President Donald Trump seemingly did everything he could over the past year to push the U.S. Supreme Court into upholding his agenda. Trump lobbied the justices, bullied them with vituperative social media posts, and even took the unprecedented step of attending oral arguments in person as a sitting president. Yet none of it worked. When it came to the blockbuster cases that Trump repeatedly told us mattered the most to him—tariffs and birthright citizenship—Trump lost.

To understand why he lost, it's helpful to distinguish between the Roberts Court, named after John Roberts, the conservative chief justice who (often) commands it, and what we might call the Trump Court, named after the increasingly disgruntled president who, despite his best efforts, has never quite managed to remake the lofty judicial tribunal in his own MAGA image.

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