President Trump celebrated the confirmation of his 200th federal judge this month, a significant milestone in his reshaping of the judiciary in less than four years. But it wasn’t all a party. “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?” Trump asked on Twitter less than a week earlier.
The source of this discordant note was a pair of Supreme Court rulings in which GOP appointees sided with the liberal bloc to deliver outcomes that were potentially demoralizing to portions of Trump’s base in the middle of a tough election year. A big part of the case for Trump’s reelection rests on the conservative judges he has worked with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to install throughout the federal court system. The conservative majority on the highest court seems more fragile and less reliable than previously thought, leading a few prominent Republicans to question the whole project.
