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The Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling against Donald Trump’s global tariffs prompted the president to berate the justices in the majority at a seething press conference on Friday. Trump declared that he was “absolutely ashamed of certain members of the court for not having the courage to do what’s right for the country.” He condemned these justices as “fools and lapdogs for the RINOs and the radical left Democrats” who are “very unpatriotic and disloyal to our Constitution,” adding that “the court has been swayed by foreign interests.” And he then singled out Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he himself appointed, as “an embarrassment to their families.” (By way of contrast, Trump praised Justice Brett Kavanaugh—who strongly dissented—for “his genius and his great ability,” noting that he was “very proud of that appointment.”)

This furious reaction should come as no surprise: The president has been pressuring the justices to side with him for months, warning that the United States’ economy would be “screwed” without the tariffs and calling the case “one of the most important” in history. But this strong-arming clearly failed. After nearly a year of indulging almost every presidential wish, the Roberts court drew a line. The court’s opinion evinces no concern about political backlash or economic ruin. Instead, the majority reflects a kind of serene intellectual indifference toward the consequences of this ruling, with both Gorsuch and Barrett far more interested in an academic debate over statutory construction than the potential for a presidential tantrum that could further destabilize an embattled judicial branch. And there is no indication that these justices ever wavered in their resolve to strike down Trump’s signature second-term policy.

On this week’s episode of Amicus, co-hosts Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern discussed the agreements and fractures among the six-justice majority, and all the ways in which the White House’s pressure campaign clearly fell flat, if it was experienced at all. A preview of their........

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