The Supreme Court has delayed direct conflict with Trump, but history suggests that will soon change

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s good relationship with the Supreme Court could deteriorate in the new year.

The Court’s conservative majority, 6-3, avoided direct confrontations with Trump in 2025 while handing him a string of victories, but it pushed back decisions on a series of controversial White House proposals until this year. And there are signs that the Court could hand the president at least one major defeat.

As 2026 approaches, the court is expected to rule on Trump’s plan to curb the automatic birthright, his drastic tariffs and his attempt to fire a member of the powerful Federal Reserve Board of Governors.

In all three cases, the justices could have acted sooner, but the Supreme Court has long waited until a president has lost some of his post-election power and popularity before inflicting significant legal losses on him.

“The court will not confront the president head-on until the spring of this year,” said Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University Law School. “It’s very different in terms of political strength.”

Trump began his second term with positive ratings in public polls, but surveys have shown that opinions of the president’s job performance have declined throughout 2025. The December NBC News Decision Desk poll showed 42% of adults approved of Trump’s performance, a slight decline from April, while 58% disapproved.

Last year, the court repeatedly granted emergency requests filed by the Trump administration, allowing it to move forward with policies that had been blocked by lower courts, even drawing criticism from some judges.

Trump himself has sharply criticized lower court judges who have ruled against his policies, but he has largely held his own when it comes to the Supreme Court, even on the rare occasions when he has lost, including a ruling last month blocking him from deploying the National Guard to Chicago.

But now the court is poised to issue final rulings, not interim rulings that simply decide whether the government’s actions can be implemented while the litigation continues.

Tensions between the president and the Court are not new, but justices have often been reluctant to rule against the White House at the start of a term, when voters have just given the president a new term. There are many examples of major decisions being made against presidents while they are late in their term and losing popularity.

Near the end of President Harry Truman’s presidency in 1952, the court did not hesitate to declare that his attempt to take control of the steel mills during a labor dispute was unconstitutional.

And in 1974, the Supreme Court helped put a final nail in the coffin of President Richard Nixon’s presidency when it ruled against him for his attempt to withhold tapes of White House conversations during the Watergate scandal. Nixon resigned a few days later.

Most recently, the Court dealt major defeats to the administrations of President George W. Bush over the detention of suspected terrorists and President Barack Obama over his policy of granting legal status to people who entered the country illegally, both during their final years in office. The court, with its current 6-3 conservative majority, has often ruled against President Joe Biden over his use of executive power, including his decision killing his efforts to cancel student debt, a major legacy.

“I’m not suggesting that if they view the president as very popular that they won’t speak out against him or his policies, but you could sometimes argue that maybe the opposite is true,” said Barbara Perry, an expert on presidential history at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.

“It might still be easier for them as human beings, but also thinking about the legitimacy of the Court, to find themselves on thicker ice if they rule against a president if they know he’s unpopular,” she added.

A long-standing concern for the Court is that it lacks the capacity to enforce its decisions, relying on its legitimacy among the public and the goodwill of government officials. And lower court judges have repeatedly accused the Trump administration of failing to comply with court orders.

As Jack Goldsmith, an expert on presidential power at Harvard Law School, wrote in a November law review article, “the Court has acted, as it generally has throughout its history, to maximize its authority in the face of the reality that it lacks sword and purse.”

A notable aspect of the first year of Trump’s presidency is how the Court has fended off a potential conflict with the White House. The administration has also been careful to only appeal to the court cases in which it believes it has a strong chance of winning.

In the spring, for example, the administration asked judges to block lower court rulings that Trump’s plan to end automatic birthright citizenship was unconstitutional. The government asked the justices to address a technical question of whether judges had the power to block the policy nationwide and did not seek a final ruling on the legality of the policy.

The court agreed, issuing a ruling in June that gave the administration a major victory. Some judicial observers wondered at the time why the court, as it had the power to do, did not simply rule that this policy violated the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, as all the justices have ruled to date.

Instead, the court waited until December to rule on the merits of the plan, and its decision is expected by the end of June.

The delay is significant, with most legal experts expecting the court to rule against Trump. The decision will come just months before the midterm elections which will place the president in a lame duck situation.

Similarly, in June of last year, the court rejected a request from companies challenging Trump’s tariffs to rule immediately on the policy and instead heard arguments in November, with the decision expected to be issued early this year. During oral arguments, the justices were skeptical of Trump’s power to impose the tariffs.

And regarding Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserve, the court upheld lower court rulings that blocked the firing while agreeing to hear oral arguments on January 21, 2026. In doing so, it took no action on Trump’s request to be able to immediately remove Cook from office.

The delay doesn’t mean the court will necessarily rule against the administration in all three cases, but Daniel Epps, a professor at Washington University Law School in St. Louis, suggested it would be more likely to do so given a less urgent timetable.

“I think kicking the can down the road is helpful to the court and probably helpful to people who are hoping the court will rule against Trump,” he said.