So no, Hakeem Jeffries does not need to withdraw that statement. The crown jewel of the civil rights movement \u2014 the law that ended Jim Crow at the ballot box \u2014 has just been gutted by a 6-3 partisan vote, and calling that Court illegitimate is not a provocation. It\u2019s a description.<\/p>\n
Now. To the man demanding the apology.<\/p>\n
This is the same Donald Trump who, just a few weeks ago, after the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs in a 6-3 ruling that included two of his own appointees, posted what Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney characterized as<\/a> \u201cone of the most incendiary attacks on the court in memory.\u201d The post was riddled with falsehoods and at over 1,600 words across multiple Truth Social entries, declared that \u201cOur Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. The sad thing is, they will only get worse!\u201d He said he was \u201cashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed of them for not having the courage to do what\u2019s right for our country.\u201d He thanked the dissenters \u2014 Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh \u2014 for their \u201cwisdom and courage\u201d while flaying the majority.<\/p>\n That was a few weeks ago. Now the Supreme Court is one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World and Hakeem Jeffries needs to apologize immediately.<\/p>\n The whiplash would be funny if it weren\u2019t such a perfect encapsulation of how this administration \u2014 and this president, specifically \u2014 relates to institutions generally: they are legitimate and great when they rule for Trump, and weaponized, unjust, and in need of immediate denunciation when they don\u2019t. The Court\u2019s legitimacy, in Trump\u2019s framework, is entirely a function of its vote count in any given case.<\/p>\n And *that\u2019s* the real problem with the Court. We have been tracking the Court\u2019s legitimacy crisis<\/a> for years now, and the numbers tell a consistent story: just 22% of Americans<\/a> now say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the institution, down from a high of 52% before Bush v. Gore<\/em>. The Fox News poll from 2024<\/a> showed 38% approval \u2014 a 20-point drop from the 2017 high, with 83% of respondents saying partisanship plays a role in the Court\u2019s decisions at least some of the time. The public has been saying for years, with increasing clarity, that it views this Court as a political institution. The irony is that the president most responsible for making it one is now demanding that a Democrat retract a statement for noticing.<\/p>\n Of course, Trump is not the only one who has struggled with the concept that the Court\u2019s legitimacy crisis might be of the Court\u2019s own making. John Roberts has spent years insisting that critics of the Court are simply sore losers. As my colleague Joe Patrice documented last June<\/a>, Roberts\u2019s official position is that if you have a problem with the Court, \u201cit\u2019s because you lost and you\u2019re just venting\u201d \u2014 going so far as to compare calling out the justices as partisan hacks to burning crosses on the lawns of Southern federal judges in the 1960s. And in his 2024 year-end report<\/a>, Roberts returned to form, suggesting that criticism of the Court amounts to intemperance that \u201cmay prompt dangerous reactions\u201d \u2014 from a Court, as Joe noted, that was \u201cjunking decades of precedent every term while enjoying vacations with right-wing activists.\u201d The \u201call criticism is delegitimizing\u201d school of thought has always been a dodge. Trump just makes it impossible to keep a straight face while delivering it. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting, as we have before<\/a>, that Trump wins at the Supreme Court at a 90% clip \u2014 a number that tracks neatly with the public\u2019s read of the Court as a partisan institution, and one that makes his tariff-loss meltdown even more remarkable. The one time the Court didn\u2019t deliver, Trump called it ransacked and weaponized. The 90% of the time it does deliver, gutting voting rights and reshaping American democracy along partisan lines, it\u2019s one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World.<\/p>\n As Justice Kagan put it in a speech we covered back in 2022<\/a>, judges create legitimacy problems for themselves \u201cwhen they stray into places where it looks like they\u2019re an extension of the political process.\u201d She was right then. She is clearly still right now. But even she probably didn\u2019t anticipate the specific indignity of the president of the United States demanding an apology for a legitimacy critique, weeks after posting the most incendiary attack on the Court in recent memory, when his Court\u2019s partisan majority gutted the Voting Rights Act to tilt the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n Hakeem Jeffries should withdraw his statement immediately, says the man who called the Court \u201cweaponized and unjust\u201d in March.<\/p>\n Sure.<\/p>\n Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n The post Donald Trump Wants Everyone (But Him) To Respect The Supreme Court\u2019s Legitimacy<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n Sure. Okay. Let\u2019s do this.<\/p>\n Donald Trump posted to Truth Social this week to register his outrage at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had called the Supreme Court illegitimate. \u201cHakeem Jeffries just called the Supreme Court of the United States an illegitimate Court!\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cThis is a Low IQ individual, who should not be allowed to talk that way about one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World. He should withdraw the statement, IMMEDIATELY! President DONALD J. TRUMP.\u201d<\/p>\n One of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World, he says.<\/p>\n Well, let\u2019s take a look at what was behind Jeffries\u2019s criticism of the Court. Context matters here. Jeffries was responding to the Supreme Court\u2019s 6-3 decision in Louisiana v. Callais<\/em><\/a>, handed down Tuesday \u2014 a ruling that eviscerated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, a critical civil rights protection that has long served as the backstop against racially discriminatory redistricting. The decision, written by Justice Alito and joined by the Court\u2019s full conservative majority, struck down Louisiana\u2019s congressional map, which had created a second majority-Black district, a map that itself existed only because a federal court found Louisiana\u2019s previous map likely violated the VRA. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Jackson, the majority opinion had rendered Section 2 \u201call but a dead letter.\u201d The practical consequences are stark: analysts estimate that without the strength of the VRA, up to 12 seats in southeastern states could flip from Democrat-leaning to Republican-leaning. Jeffries, standing with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, put it plainly: \u201caffirmative action is gone, diversity is gone, equity gone, inclusion gone, racial tolerance gone, the Voting Rights Act largely gone.\u201d<\/p>\n So no, Hakeem Jeffries does not need to withdraw that statement. The crown jewel of the civil rights movement \u2014 the law that ended Jim Crow at the ballot box \u2014 has just been gutted by a 6-3 partisan vote, and calling that Court illegitimate is not a provocation. It\u2019s a description.<\/p>\n Now. To the man demanding the apology.<\/p>\n This is the same Donald Trump who, just a few weeks ago, after the Supreme Court struck down his tariffs in a 6-3 ruling that included two of his own appointees, posted what Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney characterized as<\/a> \u201cone of the most incendiary attacks on the court in memory.\u201d The post was riddled with falsehoods and at over 1,600 words across multiple Truth Social entries, declared that \u201cOur Country was unnecessarily RANSACKED by the United States Supreme Court, which has become little more than a weaponized and unjust Political Organization. The sad thing is, they will only get worse!\u201d He said he was \u201cashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed of them for not having the courage to do what\u2019s right for our country.\u201d He thanked the dissenters \u2014 Alito, Thomas, and Kavanaugh \u2014 for their \u201cwisdom and courage\u201d while flaying the majority.<\/p>\n That was a few weeks ago. Now the Supreme Court is one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World and Hakeem Jeffries needs to apologize immediately.<\/p>\n The whiplash would be funny if it weren\u2019t such a perfect encapsulation of how this administration \u2014 and this president, specifically \u2014 relates to institutions generally: they are legitimate and great when they rule for Trump, and weaponized, unjust, and in need of immediate denunciation when they don\u2019t. The Court\u2019s legitimacy, in Trump\u2019s framework, is entirely a function of its vote count in any given case.<\/p>\n And *that\u2019s* the real problem with the Court. We have been tracking the Court\u2019s legitimacy crisis<\/a> for years now, and the numbers tell a consistent story: just 22% of Americans<\/a> now say they have a great deal or quite a bit of confidence in the institution, down from a high of 52% before Bush v. Gore<\/em>. The Fox News poll from 2024<\/a> showed 38% approval \u2014 a 20-point drop from the 2017 high, with 83% of respondents saying partisanship plays a role in the Court\u2019s decisions at least some of the time. The public has been saying for years, with increasing clarity, that it views this Court as a political institution. The irony is that the president most responsible for making it one is now demanding that a Democrat retract a statement for noticing.<\/p>\n Of course, Trump is not the only one who has struggled with the concept that the Court\u2019s legitimacy crisis might be of the Court\u2019s own making. John Roberts has spent years insisting that critics of the Court are simply sore losers. As my colleague Joe Patrice documented last June<\/a>, Roberts\u2019s official position is that if you have a problem with the Court, \u201cit\u2019s because you lost and you\u2019re just venting\u201d \u2014 going so far as to compare calling out the justices as partisan hacks to burning crosses on the lawns of Southern federal judges in the 1960s. And in his 2024 year-end report<\/a>, Roberts returned to form, suggesting that criticism of the Court amounts to intemperance that \u201cmay prompt dangerous reactions\u201d \u2014 from a Court, as Joe noted, that was \u201cjunking decades of precedent every term while enjoying vacations with right-wing activists.\u201d The \u201call criticism is delegitimizing\u201d school of thought has always been a dodge. Trump just makes it impossible to keep a straight face while delivering it. <\/p>\n It\u2019s also worth noting, as we have before<\/a>, that Trump wins at the Supreme Court at a 90% clip \u2014 a number that tracks neatly with the public\u2019s read of the Court as a partisan institution, and one that makes his tariff-loss meltdown even more remarkable. The one time the Court didn\u2019t deliver, Trump called it ransacked and weaponized. The 90% of the time it does deliver, gutting voting rights and reshaping American democracy along partisan lines, it\u2019s one of the Greatest Institutions anywhere in the World.<\/p>\n As Justice Kagan put it in a speech we covered back in 2022<\/a>, judges create legitimacy problems for themselves \u201cwhen they stray into places where it looks like they\u2019re an extension of the political process.\u201d She was right then. She is clearly still right now. But even she probably didn\u2019t anticipate the specific indignity of the president of the United States demanding an apology for a legitimacy critique, weeks after posting the most incendiary attack on the Court in recent memory, when his Court\u2019s partisan majority gutted the Voting Rights Act to tilt the 2026 midterms.<\/p>\n Hakeem Jeffries should withdraw his statement immediately, says the man who called the Court \u201cweaponized and unjust\u201d in March.<\/p>\n Sure.<\/p>\n Sure. Okay. Let\u2019s do this. Donald Trump posted to Truth Social this week to register his outrage at House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had called the Supreme Court illegitimate. \u201cHakeem Jeffries just called the Supreme Court of the United States an illegitimate Court!\u201d Trump wrote. \u201cThis is a Low IQ individual, who should not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":150096,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-150095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_5243-1-scaled-e1623338814705-620x568-ia0Jmm.jpg?fit=620%2C568&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=150095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/150095\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/150096"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=150095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=150095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=150095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nKathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of\u00a0The Jabot podcast<\/a>, and co-host of\u00a0Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email\u00a0her<\/a>\u00a0with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky\u00a0@Kathryn1<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"