Donald Trump is growing increasingly frustrated that some of the political initiatives of his second term are running into legal roadblocks — particularly as some of his judicial appointees are the ones running interference.
According to a report from Politico’s Kyle Cheney, Trump’s selections to the Supreme Court, Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, have been reliably siding with him on a series of short-term wins via the so-called “shadow docket,” but he continues to suffer setbacks from district judges he nominated to the bench — including one he put in place recently.
That has led to the president privately fuming and then complaining on social media about advisers and outside groups who vetted the judicial nominees for him.
Citing Trump setbacks on deporting immigrants, banning the Associated Press from the White House, handcuffing his tariff campaign, and, most recently, limiting his ability to send National Guard troops into Portland, Cheney noted Trump complained on Truth Social late Saturday, “I wasn’t served well by the people that pick judges.”
According to the Politico report, Trump’s latest broadside “came four months after he similarly sounded off about the ‘bad advice’ he got from the conservative Federalist Society for his first-term judicial nominations — a reaction to a ruling, backed by a Trump-appointed judge, rejecting his power to impose sweeping tariffs on U.S. trading partners.”
The report noted, “While Trump and his allies have spent all year leveling pointed attacks at Democratic judicial appointees, labeling them rogue insurrectionists and radicals, the president is increasingly facing stark rejections from people he put on the bench.”
The trouble the president is running into is being attributed to home-state senators, who are being accused of pushing Trump to “nominate more moderate picks than they might otherwise in states dominated by the opposing party.”
“Still, in some cases in which Trump-appointed judges have heard Trump-related cases, they have gone further than simply ruling against his policies. They have delivered sweeping warnings about the expansion of executive power, the erosion of checks and balances and have criticized his attacks on judges writ large,” Cheney wrote.
