Despite losses for Trump, Supreme Court enhanced presidential power: ANALYSIS
Chief Justice John Roberts led the court through a term of landmark rulings.
Chief Justice John Roberts' closing opinion of the Supreme Court term effectively slammed the door shut on President Donald Trump's bid to redefine American citizenship by executive order.
But the anticipated setback for the president belied a series of rulings by the court's conservative majority this term that significantly enhanced his power.
"We see a court making the president more accountable over his own branch of government but also less powerful against Congress," said Sarah Isgur, author of “Last Branch Standing” and ABC News legal contributor.
The landmark questions the court confronted were pushed by Trump himself: Does a president have unchecked authority to impose tariffs on any country, at any level, for any amount of time. The court answered resoundingly no.
It was the same answer for Trump's unprecedented attempt to deploy National Guard troops to Chicago to support federal agents, and for Trump's unprecedented attempt to fire a member of the Federal Reserve without formal notice or opportunity to contest the charge.
The court's conservative supermajority, including three justices appointed by Trump, showed it was decidedly not a rubber stamp for the president's signature priorities.
In each case, the court ruled the president's actions conflicted with the clear text of federal law.
"A president can't legislate through executive orders and needs to go to Congress to ask for new laws," Isgur said of one message the justices delivered.
Yet, on the heels of its 2024 decision extending broad immunity to the president in his official capacity, the Roberts Court did empower the nation's chief executive with new control over federal regulators and virtually unchecked discretion to crack down on immigration.
In a trio of 6-3 decisions, the conservative majority bolstered the ability of border agents to turn away asylum-seekers without giving them a chance to ask for refuge and to deport green card-holders who may have committed a crime but have not yet been convicted.
Over claims of racism, the conservatives also blocked courts from even reviewing the Trump administration's rationale for canceling Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of migrants who have lived legally in the U.S. for decades.
Most consequential for the balance of power in Washington, the court overturned 90 years of precedent to give the president direct control over independent, bipartisan commissions overseeing many aspects of American life, from stock trades and nuclear power plants to transportation networks and consumer product safety.
Roberts wrote for the court that Trump and his successors should have authority to remove members of those organizations for any reason or no reason at all -- despite the fact that Congress designed them to be free from direct political interference.
"The change that is being practically effectuated here," said Kannon Shanmugam, a veteran Supreme Court litigator at Davis Polk, "is one that every administration is going to take advantage of. I don't see a world in which the next Democratic administration is not going to immediately remove all of the Republicans."
At every major turn, it was Roberts behind the wheel.
"He has a tremendous amount of power," said Notre Dame law professor Derek Muller, a leading scholar of election law and federal courts. "It's a convergence of factors that's allowed him to write about things he's long cared about, sometimes for the administration, sometimes against."
Joining Roberts' project to strengthen the presidency were staunch conservative justices who, in some cases, indicated they would have gone even further.
"There was not a single case where Justices Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito voted against Trump," said James Sample, Hofstra Law professor and ABC News legal analyst.
"Three justices -- Thomas, Alito, and [Justice Brett] Kavanaugh -- would have let the president read a power to tax the globe into a statute that never mentions taxes, for example," Sample said of the dissenters in the Trump tariffs case.
Thomas and Alito also would have endorsed Trump's aggressive deployment of National Guard troops to American cities and let him singlehandedly strip U.S. citizenship at birth from children born to unlawful immigrants or temporary visitors on U.S. soil.
"These are jurists who demand that Congress speak with unmistakable clarity," Sample observed, "yet faced with the far larger claim that one man may tax nearly all of American trade based on a statute's silence, three of the justices were ready to say yes."
Three justices united in repeatedly saying "no" were liberals Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. In every case involving Trump's assertion of expansive power, they stood opposed.
"We did see more 6-3 decisions along ideological grounds this term -- 22% -- as opposed to last term when it was only 9%," Isgur said.
In an impassioned dissent in late June, Sotomayor accused her conservative colleagues of repeatedly overriding the democratic process "in favor of a [regime] that distorts the structure of government to fit the majority's theory of unitary, total executive control."
"The result is a president who emerges with far greater power than ever before," she wrote. "It is a power, however, that neither the people, nor Congress, nor the Constitution bestowed upon him."
As liberal legal activists now renew talk of how to "reform and reclaim power" from the court, many conservative legal groups are celebrating a major milestone in their long-running campaign to transform the law and structure of government.
And, ironically, they are crediting a man that movement has frequently criticized.
"Chief Justice Roberts is known, typically, for being a minimalist. He likes to issue rulings that address the question needed to resolve the case and typically doesn't reach as far to touch on other issues," Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan said.
Over the past few years, on matters of presidential power, however, Roberts has shown a willingness to go far.
"I think the chief has disproportionate power," Shanmugam said. "I think he is exerting a lot of control over the court and where the court is going right now.
Said Sample: "The Roberts Court really and truly is John Roberts' court."
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