For months, President Donald Trump has griped in private about some of the Supreme Court justices he appointed during his first term, believing they were not sufficiently standing behind his agenda.
But on Friday, all of his appointees — including Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the one who’s earned his particular ire — ruled in his favor in a case challenging his executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship, with Barrett writing the majority opinion.
The ruling was a decisive win for a president who has long railed against unelected judges blocking some of his executive actions. The decision limits lower courts’ ability to issue nationwide injunctions, which have stymied some of the president’s executive actions.
It could help improve the president’s view of Barrett in particular.
In private, some of Trump’s allies have told him that Barrett is “weak” and that her rulings have not been in line with how she presented herself in an interview before he nominated her to the bench in 2020, according to sources.
Many conservatives were apoplectic in March when Barrett voted to reject Trump’s plan to freeze nearly $2 billion in foreign aid.
“It’s not just one ruling. It’s been a few different events he’s complained about privately,” a senior administration official told CNN in June.
Now, however, Barrett — along with the court’s other five conservatives — handed Trump a win in the most prominent case of the term.