Trump’s anger at courts, frayed alliances could upend approach to judicial issues
Donald Trump’s once-transactional relationship with the conservative legal establishment has splintered in recent years, and his frustration toward the court system has grown — potentially heralding more volatility in how he would navigate judicial issues in a second term. Now the dominant front-runner for his party’s presidential nomination, Trump has broken with many of the leaders and allies of the Federalist Society, a powerful conservative legal organization that boosted his campaign eight years ago and helped him stock the federal bench with their preferred picks. It is unclear how he would seek to fill judicial vacancies and make other related decisions should he win a second term, and he has not offered such a potential list of potential judicial nominees as he did eight years ago. Trump has complained publicly and privately that his first-term Justice Department leaders were too weak, that his Supreme Court picks have tried to come across as too “independent” and that the court system has broadly been biased against him, as he faces 91 felony charges. Trump told donors in meetings in late 2023 that one of his only mistakes as president was that he did not pick the right people to lead the Justice Department, according to people who attended, and he regularly discusses plans for the department in a second term. In some ways, the handshake agreement he once held with the traditional conservative legal movement has evaporated.
More From The Washington Post (subscription required):
Rss Feed