WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court has wrapped up one of its most consequential terms in decades, delivering a mix of sweeping wins and losses to President Trump while marching forward with long-held priorities of the conservative legal movement.
Just four days before America’s 250th birthday, the high court handed down the term’s final, and perhaps most historic, decision: an affirmation of the broad understanding of American citizenship. That capped a string of landmark rulings that reverberated through the nation’s politics, its economy and its relations with the rest of the world.
The nine justices now begin their summer recess—and they are no doubt grateful for the break. For the past year, their docket was dominated by a president who pushed legal boundaries and sometimes lashed out when the court stepped in. At the same time, the justices were immersed in controversies over guns, immigration, voting rights and gender identity, all of which exposed rifts that reflect broader divisions across American life.
Here are some top themes from a bruising and blockbuster year.
Many Trumps wins—and a few big losses
Trump’s combustible relationship with the courts has been a defining feature of his second term in office. The justices so far have given him much of what he asked for—but they also have drawn a few bright lines.
Since Trump’s return to the White House, the court’s six-justice conservative majority has used short-form, interim rulings to allow an array of his policies to quickly take effect, including on deportations, withholding of foreign aid and layoffs of federal workers. Recently, the president began scoring longer-term victories.
Last week, the court affirmed Trump’s broad authority to implement key aspects of his immigration crackdown. On Monday, in Trump’s biggest win of the term, the court agreed with him that the president has inherent authority to control most policymaking agencies, even if Congress tried to shelter them from political pressure.
But some big recent losses for Trump have piled up, too. The court rejected a lawsuit filed by the Republican Party and supported by the administration that would have disallowed some mail-in ballots during the 2026 midterm elections. The court rebuffed several other attempts by Trump to claim powers that no president before him had ever asserted. It struck down his global tariffs program, blocked him from remaking the Federal Reserve and stopped him from denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants or temporary visitors.
Some legal commentators see Trump’s mixed record as proof of the court’s independence.
“It does take the steam out of the narrative that the court is just a bunch of politicians in robes,” said constitutional litigator Elizabeth Price Foley.
Others say that some of Trump’s power grabs—particularly in the cases regarding the Fed and birthright citizenship—were so extreme that they were doomed to fail.
“The fact that the court rejected wholly unprecedented positions doesn’t signal that it is ready to push back on the president more broadly,” said Pratik Shah, who regularly argues before the court.
Riding the Trump roller coaster
Amid all of the substantive rulings on Trump’s policies, the court grappled with how to deal with the president himself.
The low point in the relationship came in February, after the tariff ruling. The president raged at the justices, calling them “incompetent” and saying he would stop capitalizing the term “Supreme Court” because of a “complete lack of respect.” Referring to Justices Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett—two of his own appointees who voted against his tariffs—he said: “They sicken me, because they’re bad for our country.”
The court didn’t respond directly, though Chief Justice John Roberts, at a public event in March, warned in general terms that personal hostility toward judges “has got to stop.”
At times, the conservative majority seemed to go out of its way to handle the president gingerly. Some decisions against him were couched in deferential language. Others were paired with rulings that Trump favored, almost as if to soften the blow.
By term’s end Tuesday, the president and the court seemed to have reached something of a detente. Trump boasted about Monday’s decision on his power over regulatory agencies, calling it “by far” the court’s “biggest and most consequential” ruling. He didn’t erupt at the adverse rulings on citizenship and the Fed.
And, he wrote, “the Republican Party was treated very fairly by the Supreme Court.” He was back to using capital letters.
Conservative agenda advances
While Trump’s most unconventional initiatives took up a lot of the court’s oxygen, the justices decided other momentous cases that involved more traditional pillars of the conservative movement. In each of them, the court moved the law to the right.
In April, conservatives notched a victory on their longstanding campaign to narrow the Voting Rights Act. The ruling has already allowed red states to change their congressional maps to create more districts that lean Republican.
In two cases involving the Second Amendment, the court expanded the right to bear arms. One case involved the gun rights of drug users; the other involved a state law about the ability to carry weapons on private property.
On Tuesday, just before the birthright citizenship ruling, the court sided with conservatives in major rulings on campaign finance and transgender athletes.
A trio of justices exert their power
Compared with recent years, more cases this term divided the court along stark ideological lines, with all six Republican appointees in the majority and all three Democratic appointees in dissent.
But many of the Trump-related disputes scrambled that alignment. That meant that three conservative justices—Roberts, Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh—continued to be pivotal, often decisive justices in hot-button cases, as in previous terms.
In the Fed case, Roberts and Kavanaugh joined with the three liberals to rule 5-4 against Trump. In the mail-in ballots case, it was Roberts and Barrett who joined with the liberals for a 5-4 ruling that Trump opposed.
In the birthright-citizenship case, the central conservative trio all voted against Trump, along with the liberals. Kavanaugh did so only on narrow grounds, arguing that Trump’s executive order on citizenship violated a federal statute, but not the Constitution. That meant that Barrett provided the crucial fifth vote for the case’s core constitutional holding.
Roberts, for his part, was in the majority in every major Trump-related case this term. He wrote the majority opinion in the four biggest ones.
A good term for business
The Roberts court is often favorable to business interests, and this term was no exception.
Many in the business community opposed Trump’s tariffs and were alarmed by his bid to erode the independence of the Fed. They cheered the court’s decisions on both issues.
In a series of lesser-noticed but important cases, business interests also prevailed. One decision sided with Chevron in its bid to move an environmental lawsuit to a more favorable venue. Two others made it easier for American companies to get compensation for property that they once owned in Cuba but that was confiscated by the Communist regime.
Coming soon: more blockbusters
Even as they begin their summer break, the justices are planning sequels for some of the issues they tackled this term.
On Tuesday, the justices agreed to take up another Second Amendment case—this one asking whether individuals have the right to own AR-15-style rifles. They recently agreed to hear a case about whether states can require proof of citizenship to register to vote using a state’s voter-registration form. Also coming up is a case about whether local governments can sue oil-and-gas companies for contributing to climate change.
Each of those cases will be argued in the fall. The justices will return to the bench in October.
Write to James Romoser at james.romoser@wsj.com
