President Donald Trump lashed out at “the courts,” which he said treat him “so unfairly,” in a two-part social media missive Sunday night full of falsehoods and pointed criticisms. He noted that his posts “will cause me nothing but problems in the future, but I feel it is my obligation to speak the TRUTH.”
“Trump just posted a lot of words about the Supreme Court and other courts — many of which were not true,” Politico senior legal affairs reporter Kyle Cheney posted on X, after the President’s Truth Social posts. “The rest is one of the most incendiary attacks on the court in memory.”
The first post started with Trump blasting the Supreme Court for ruling last month that most of the sweeping tariffs the Administration imposed on imports since the start of Trump’s second presidential term were illegal.
“The decision that mattered most to me was TARIFFS!” Trump wrote. “The Court knew where I stood, how badly I wanted this Victory for our Country, and instead decided to, potentially, give away Trillions of Dollars to Countries and Companies who have been taking advantage of the United States for decades.” But the President falsely claimed the Supreme Court gave him the “absolute right” to charge the tariffs in “another form”—something Trump has repeatedly suggested but the six-justice majority did not entertain—and he said his Administration has “already started” to pursue that.
Trump then thanked Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and his own appointee Brett Kavanaugh—all of whom dissented in the tariff ruling—for “their wisdom and courage,” while sharply criticizing the court’s majority. While Trump did not mention particular justices, Trump bristled at how “they openly disrespect the Presidents who nominate them to the highest position in the Land, a Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and go out of their way, with bad and wrongful rulings and intentions, to prove how ‘honest,’ ‘independent,’ and ‘legitimate’ they are.” Of the justices in the majority, Trump nominated Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch, while Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated by former President George W. Bush, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan were nominated by former President Barack Obama, and Ketanji Brown Jackson by former President Joe Biden.
“This completely inept and embarrassing Court was not what the Supreme Court of the United States was set up by our wonderful Founders to be,” Trump added. “They are hurting our Country, and will continue to do so. All I can do, as President, is call them out for their bad behavior!”
In a follow-up post, Trump broadened his attacks, targeting “highly politicized” lower courts. “The Courts treat Republicans, and me, so unfairly, always seeming to protect those who should not be protected,” Trump said, before citing the treatment of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell as an example.
Trump and his allies have targeted Powell, whom Trump blames for the U.S.’s economic woes and has nicknamed “Too Late” for not acceding to his demands to lower interest rates faster, over the central bank’s $2.5 billion renovation of its headquarters, alleging that the Fed Chair mismanaged it and lied to Congress about it.
Trump then said that because of his “well justified criticism” of Powell, he has been “viciously and wrongfully blamed by, as usual, a Wacky, Nasty, Crooked, and totally Out of Control Judge,” naming James Boasberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who has ruled against Trump before and last week ordered subpoenas linked to the Administration-led investigation into Powell to be nixed on the basis, according to an unsealed opinion, that “a mountain of evidence suggests that the Government served these subpoenas on the Board to pressure its Chair into voting for lower interest rates or resigning.”
Trump called Boasberg “a man who suffers from the highest level of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS),” and he criticized the D.C. Circuit as having “eagerly supported the arrest and persecution of innocent Republicans for no crimes at all, but is now preventing even a basic investigation into the gross financial mismanagement of the Federal Reserve.”
“In case after case, Boasberg has displayed open, flagrant, and extreme partisan bias and contempt against Republicans and the Trump Administration,” Trump added. “To preserve the integrity of the Judiciary, he should be removed from all cases pertaining to us, and suffer serious disciplinary action, as should numerous other Corrupt Judges that, unfortunately, our Country has had to endure! What Boasberg has done on the ‘Too Late’ Powell case, and many others, has little to do with the Law, and everything to do with Politics. He is exactly what Judges should not be! Boasberg would do better to focus on Justice and Fairness, not his own, and the Democrats’, Political Agenda, which has become LEGENDARY!”
Who is James Boasberg?
Boasberg, who has been chief judge of the D.C. District Court since 2023, has a storied career in the U.S. judiciary.
In his early days, Boasberg was a U.S. attorney specializing in homicide prosecutions. Former President George W. Bush appointed him to the D.C. superior court in 2002 as an associate judge presiding over civil, criminal, and domestic violence cases, while former President Obama appointed Boasberg to the District Court in March 2011 as a federal judge, which the Senate confirmed unanimously.
Boasberg also served on the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—the court where the U.S. government seeks approval of “electronic surveillance, physical search, and certain other forms of investigative actions for foreign intelligence purposes”—beginning in May 2014, as appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts. Boasberg was the court’s presiding judge from January 2020 to May 2021.
But Boasberg has made headlines and has caught the attention of Trump and his allies for his handling of high-profile cases involving the President and his policies.
In 2023, as one of his first official acts as D.C. District Court chief judge, Boasberg issued a ruling that ordered Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence to testify to a grand jury as part of a special counsel probe into Trump and the Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
And last year, Boasberg ordered Trump to stop his use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants suspected of belonging to transnational criminal gangs, in relation to the deportation of hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador. Trump, in retaliation, called Boasberg a “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge, a troublemaker and agitator” who needed to be impeached, which drew a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts.
The deportation flights continued, and Boasberg indicated in November 2025 that he planned to revive contempt proceedings against Administration officials for violating his orders.Boasberg is also handling a pending case submitted by watchdog group American Oversight against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other Trump Administration officials over alleged violations of federal record-keeping laws for using the encrypted Signal app to discuss a U.S. military operation against Houthi rebels in Yemen last year, which famously leaked by including an Atlantic journalist in the group chat.
