In President Trump’s scathing attack on three Supreme Court Justices who voted against his sinister plan to restrict mail-in ballots, he nailed one point when he said: “It’s a court that will go down as having rendered some of the most destructive, hurtful and damaging decisions in our Country’s history.”

Amen to that.

Trump, of course, was referring to the court’s recent decisions that have struck down his sweeping tariffs, his executive order that sought to limit birthright citizenship, and his repeated attempts to restrict mail-in voting. (Perhaps, he has forgotten they also prevented him from firing Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook and sending hundreds of National Guard Troops to the Chicago area for domestic law enforcement, as well as other equally undemocratic actions that were beyond the pale.)

But Trump’s request to restrict mail-in balloting was so over the top even his appointees—Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett M., Kavanaugh and Neil M. Gorsuch—couldn’t go along. Nor could Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, in the court’s 7-2 rejection of Trump’s appeal.

But the court will likely go down in history as the worst for other decisions, including:

• In 2024, at the start of his second term, the court incredulously gave Trump presidential immunity, in what may be one of the worst rulings in the court’s history. Critics and legal scholars said it gives the president “a standard of impunity not found in the Constitution” and fundamentally alters the balance of power between the executive, legislative and legal branches. One could argue it has encouraged Trump to blatantly enrich his family in corrupt activities unprecedented in American history.
• The court has also relied heavily on “shadow dockets” to give Trump emergency powers through executive actions, such as fast-tracking deportations and sidelining independent agency protections (everything from gutting federal agencies to tearing down the west wing of the White House to proceeding with building an arch) without full briefings or oral arguments.
• The court has also allowed questionable asylum limitations and the termination of temporary deportation protections to proceed on an emergency basis, even as human rights abuses and violations of civil rights by U.S. law enforcement (particularly ICE and U.S. Border Patrol) under Trump’s direction have been widely observed and documented.

These three instances in this second term just scratch the surface of a court that will be remembered for the harm done to the nation’s democracy, rather than upholding it.

Trump lambasted his three appointees, saying “they are not the people I interviewed to serve on the United States Supreme Court… they are merely a shell of their original selves…” But that’s just Trump running his diarrhea mouth. His appointees and the Roberts’ Court have done enough damage.

Americans can only hope they now see the threat to the nation they have helped create and will be more judicious in their rulings going forward.

Angelo Lynn