With the Supreme Court's new term opening Monday, October 5, President Donald Trump has openly broken with the three justices he put on the bench. On October 1, he said on social media that he regrets nominating Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett — after all three ruled against his administration in a newly decided case.
The trigger was a fresh ruling in which Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett each sided against the Trump administration. Only Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
Shortly after the ruling, Trump lashed out on Truth Social: "These are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court. They are merely a shell of their original selves, a Court that is costing the United States Trillions of Dollars with shockingly bad rulings that are of such magnitude that it won't be easily possible for our Country to recover or heal."
This is far from Trump's first clash with the Court. He has already lost two landmark fights this year:
In June, the justices ruled 6-3 against his bid to undo the long-standing principle of birthright citizenship — that anyone born in the U.S. is an American citizen. Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented.
In February, the Court ruled 6-3 against his use of presidential emergency powers to impose sweeping tariffs on imports, stripping away one of his signature trade tools. Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh dissented.
He has won others: the Court recognized presidential power to fire leaders of independent agencies, allowed the end of deportation protections for Haitians and Syrians, and allowed states to ban transgender women and girls from female sports teams.
The new term opens with heavyweight fights. On November 5, the Court will consider the legality of his sweeping reciprocal tariffs, the centerpiece of his economic agenda. The justices will also decide whether he can fire without cause a Democratic-appointed member of the Federal Trade Commission — a win for the president could invalidate the removal protections Congress built for a host of independent agencies.
Also on the docket: "conversion therapy" for minors, the use of race in redistricting, gun rights (AR-15s and similar rifles), and state laws barring transgender athletes from girls' school sports.
All summer, the administration has racked up wins on the Court's emergency docket: the justices let DHS use a modified SAVE database to flag noncitizens on state voter rolls (the three liberal justices dissented publicly) and allowed third-country deportations to resume while the broader case heads to December arguments. The Court also took up the Bureau of Prisons' policies on transgender inmates.
But legal scholars caution that emergency-docket wins don't predict merits outcomes. "Most Americans aren't following the technicalities on the emergency docket, and so they just think the court is siding with the Trump administration every time," said Allison Orr Larsen, a law professor at William & Mary. "Once the cases are back up before the justices and decided on the merits, that's going to do a lot to either cement that assumption or upset that assumption."
Will Trump get to nominate a fourth justice? In August, Alito said he plans to remain on the bench through at least the next session, dousing speculation that a conservative retirement could open a seat.
In his first term, it was Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett who voted in 2022 to overturn the constitutional right to abortion under Roe v. Wade, delivering conservatives a decades-long goal. That Trump now says he regrets nominating them is less a legal judgment than a political signal: ahead of every big fight this term, the White House will publicly dress down its own appointees first.