After months of tension between President Donald Trump and the Supreme Court, the country’s high court ended its term by delivering its biggest win for Trump in his second administration, deciding to decrease the power of lower courts while increasing the president’s own.
The Supreme Court’s decision curtailing nationwide judicial injunctions from federal courts comes after Trump has repeatedly complained about judicial constraints on his policy agenda. Those complaints have caused critics to express concerns that the country was on the precipice of a constitutional crisis.
Trump welcomed the Supreme Court’s decision during a rare and impromptu press conference in the White House briefing room on Friday alongside Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche. Blanche was once the president’s personal lawyer.
“Well, this was a big one, wasn’t it?” Trump told reporters. “I was elected on a historic mandate, but in recent months, we’ve seen a handful of radical-left judges effectively try to overrule the rightful powers of the president to stop the American people from getting the policies that they voted for in record numbers.”
Despite some of those judges being appointed by Republican presidents, Trump described the trend of trying “to dictate the law for the entire nation” as “a grave threat to democracy.”