In one of his State of the Union speeches, Barack Obama criticized the Supreme Court for its 2010 ruling in the Citizens United case, which he said would “open the floodgates for special interests, including foreign corporations, to spend without limits in our elections.” In one of his addresses, Joe Biden critiqued the Dobbs ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade.
Heading into Donald Trump’s latest congressional appearance on Tuesday night, he has already thoroughly lashed out at Friday’s tariffs ruling against him and — in dehumanizing terms — the justices behind it. Now, just a few days after the decision, he’ll come face to face with whichever justices decide to show up to the House chamber of the Capitol.
Follow MS NOW’s State of the Union live blog for the latest updates and analysis on the president’s address.
There has long been an awkwardness to the affair, with the nominally apolitical justices sitting through a decidedly political speech and the accompanying cheers and jeers from either side of the aisle.
“To the extent the State of the Union has degenerated into a political pep rally, I’m not sure why we’re there,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in 2010, after Obama’s remarks on Citizens United.
Along with Justices Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Roberts attended Trump’s joint address to Congress last year, during which the president was in a more grateful mood toward the chief justice and the high court, which had granted him broad criminal immunity and cleared the way for his latest presidential run despite the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. Different combinations of justices have attended over the years.
Roberts authored the tariffs ruling, joined in the 6-3 bottom line by Trump appointees Barrett and Justice Neil Gorusch, as well as the court’s three Democratic appointees: Kagan and Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. On Friday, while calling the justices in the majority cowards, disgraces, traitors and embarrassments to their families, the president praised Kavanaugh, as well as Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, who all dissented. He said the dissenters are “happily” invited to the State of the Union and that the justices in the majority are “barely” invited and he “couldn’t care less if they come.”
Recommended
Jordan Rubin
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro,” a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
Latest Post
- Tuesday’s Mini-Report, 2.24.26
