WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., capped the first year of President Trump's second term with a slew of decisions that gave him far greater powers to oversee the federal government.
In a series of fast-track decisions, the judges granted emergency appeals and overturned rulings by district judges who had blocked Trump's orders from taking effect.
With the consent of the court, the administration laid off thousands of federal employees, cut funding for educational and health research grants, eliminated the agency that finances foreign aid and cleared the way for The US military will reject transgender troops.
But the court also imposed two important limits on the president's power.
In April, the court ruled twice — including in a ruling after midnight — that the Trump administration could not smuggle immigrants out of the country without hearing them before a judge.
Once in office, Trump said migrants believed to belong to “foreign terrorist” gangs could be arrested as “enemy aliens” and secretly taken to a prison in El Salvador.
Roberts and the court blocked such secret deportations and said the 5th Amendment gives immigrants, like citizens, the right to “due process.” Many of those arrested had no criminal record and said they had never belonged to a criminal gang.
Those facing deportation “have the right to notice and the opportunity to challenge their removal,” said The justices said in Trump v. JGG.
They also demanded that the government “facilitate” the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador. He is now back in Maryland with his wife, but could face further criminal charges or attempts to have him deported.
And last week, Roberts and the court banned Trump National Guard deployment in Chicago to enforce immigration laws.
Trump has argued that he has the authority to challenge state governors and deploy Guard troops to Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, Chicago and other Democratic-led states and cities.
The Supreme Court dissented from conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil M. Gorsuch.
For much of the year, however, Roberts and five other conservatives formed the pro-Trump majority. In dissent, the three liberal justices said the court should step aside for now and reassign the case to district judges.
In May, the court agreed that Trump could end the Biden administration's special temporary protections covering more than 350,000 Venezuelans, as well as another 530,000 migrants who arrived legally from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
It was easier to explain why the new administration's policies were cruel and destructive rather than why they were illegal.
Trump's lawyers argued that the law gives the president's top immigration officials sole authority to decide on these temporary protections and that “no judicial review” is allowed.
Nevertheless, federal judge in San Francisco twice blocked the administration's end to Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans, and a federal judge in Boston blocked the end of entry-level parole granted to migrants under Biden.
The court also ready to support the power of the president dismiss officials appointed for a specified period of time to independent agencies.
Since 1887, when Congress created the Interstate Commerce Commission to regulate railroad rates, the government has had semi-independent boards and commissions headed by both Republicans and Democrats.
But Roberts and the court's conservatives believe that because these agencies enforce the law, they fall under the “executive power” of the president.
The decision could be made outside of the Federal Reserve Board, an independent agency whose nonpartisan stability is valued by business leaders.
Georgetown law professor David Cole, former legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the trial sends mixed signals.
“As far as the emergency list is concerned, it has consistently ruled on the president, with some notable exceptions,” he said. “What I think is important is that it puts an end to National Guard deployments and Enemy Alien Act deportations, at least for now. And I think by this time next year the court will probably strike down two of Trump's signature initiatives – the birthright citizenship order and the tariffs.”
For much of 2025, the court was criticized for issuing temporary unsigned orders without explanation.
The practice emerged in 2017 in response to Trump's use of executive orders to make sweeping, far-reaching changes to the law. In response, Democratic state prosecutors and lawyers for progressive groups filed lawsuits in friendly forums such as Seattle, San Francisco and Boston and won rulings from district judges who halted Trump's policies.
2017 “travel ban” announced during Trump's first week in the White House, set the pattern. It has suspended entry of visitors and migrants from Venezuela and seven predominantly Muslim countries on the grounds that those countries have lax screening procedures.
The justices blocked it from taking effect, and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed, saying the order discriminates based on national origin.
A year later, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and supported Trump's order with the score 5-4. Roberts noted that Congress, in its immigration laws, explicitly granted the president this power. If it “finds that the entry… of any class of aliens… would be harmful,” the report said, it could “suspend the entry” of all such migrants for such period “as it deems necessary.”
Since then, Roberts and conservatives on the court have become less willing to stand by while federal judges make nationwide decisions.
Democrats saw the same problem when Biden was president.
In April 2023, West Texas federal judge Rules in favor of anti-abortion advocates and ruled that the Food and Drug Administration had wrongly approved abortion pills that can terminate early pregnancies. He ordered them to be removed from the market before the appeals were heard and decided.
The Biden administration filed an emergency appeal. Two weeks later, the Supreme Court overturned the judge's ruling because Thomas and Alito dissented.
The following year the court heard arguments and then abandoned the entire claim on the grounds that abortion opponents had no standing to sue.
Since Trump returned to the White House, the court's conservative majority has defied district judges. Instead, he has repeatedly lifted injunctions that had blocked Trump's policies from taking effect.
While these are not final decisions, they are a strong sign that the administration will prevail.
But Trump's early victories don't mean he'll win some of his most controversial policy.
In November judges are skeptical Trump's claims that the 1977 trade law, which did not mention tariffs, gave him the authority to impose those taxes on imports of products coming from around the world.
In the spring, the court will consider Trump's claim that he can change the principle of citizenship by birthright established in the 14th Amendment and strips citizenship from newborns whose parents are here illegally or entered as visitors.
Decisions on both cases will be rendered by the end of June.
